I love credit cards so much! v6.0 - 2023 (see first page for add'l details)

[Disfamilylife]

Hi all,

I am new here and hoping to benefit from your experience and insight. I would like apply for a rewards focused credit card to start gaining some of the benefits. My ultimate goal being to save money or related points for a trip to Africa. I do have a trip to Disney World coming up but that’s already paid for.

Right now, I have one credit card that gets paid off monthly and offers 1% cash back. I haven’t applied for any new cards in the past 24 months. I have a high credit score.

For existing monthly credit card spend, baseline spend is $2,000 for groceries and bills. Additional spend can add up to an additional $2000 and can vary widely as far as what’s included there but most likely includes things such as home goods or travel. I rarely eat out due to living in a remote area with few options.

I believe I have signed up in the past for an Alaska airline mileage plan and a Delta mileage plan but only fly 1-2x per year at most and the accounts are not actively used.

Also, my husband owns a business just in case there are any business specific opportunities, too.

Thank you!

 

[hsmamato2]

Since you mention transferring then I gather you wish to book an AA operated flight using Avios and booking on the BA website using BA Avios. You would need to search by segment on BA and see if the AA flight is listed. If it is not, you need to be sure that the AA flight you are trying to book is a saver flight on AA’s website. If it is not a saver AA award flight then BA cannot book it with Avios. If it were me and I was unsure, I’d call BA verify it can be booked with Avios and ask them to wait with me while I transfer the points to BA. My transfers have always been instant but theoretically it can take up to 3 days. If you are booking for multiple people online, under your Avios account be sure to add them to your list of people you can book using your account ahead of time. Hope this helps.

thank you!

 

[palhockeymomof2]

So I messed up, forgot I closed the bank account linked to my Serve card and did a transfer that is pending.
Since the account is closed does anyone know if the funds will automatically returned to the serve account.
Do you think I should call Serve or wait and see. Ugh what a mess

Edited to add….went to the bank, they were able to reopen the account so hopefully the transfers go through

 

[reliev]

So I messed up, forgot I closed the bank account linked to my Serve card and did a transfer that is pending.
Since the account is closed does anyone know if the funds will automatically returned to the serve account.
Do you think I should call Serve or wait and see. Ugh what a mess

i would reach out immediately. not sure how good customer service is never used it.

 

[Arcades]

Hi all,

I am new here and hoping to benefit from your experience and insight. I would like apply for a rewards focused credit card to start gaining some of the benefits. My ultimate goal being to save money or related points for a trip to Africa. I do have a trip to Disney World coming up but that’s already paid for.

Right now, I have one credit card that gets paid off monthly and offers 1% cash back. I haven’t applied for any new cards in the past 24 months. I have a high credit score.

For existing monthly credit card spend, baseline spend is $2,000 for groceries and bills. Additional spend can add up to an additional $2000 and can vary widely as far as what’s included there but most likely includes things such as home goods or travel. I rarely eat out due to living in a remote area with few options.

I believe I have signed up in the past for an Alaska airline mileage plan and a Delta mileage plan but only fly 1-2x per year at most and the accounts are not actively used.

Also, my husband owns a business just in case there are any business specific opportunities, too.

Thank you!

Airfare to Africa will probably be the largest expense of that future trip. I'm not experienced in international travel, so I'll defer to others that may have suggestions on which airline to target. But, once you know the airline, you can focus on one of the transferable currencies from Amex, Chase or Citi depending on which transfer partner you need.

For Amex, check out the "public" Resy offers: https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/credit-cards/offers/resy

The Gold Card is particularly appealing since the restaurant credit wipes out the annual fee and you get 75,000 MR + 4x Groceries 4x Restaurant multipliers on your next year's worth of purchases. Amex typically has the best lineup of airline transfer partners, subject to your own research.

 

[becauseimnew]

Hi all,

I am new here and hoping to benefit from your experience and insight. I would like apply for a rewards focused credit card to start gaining some of the benefits. My ultimate goal being to save money or related points for a trip to Africa. I do have a trip to Disney World coming up but that’s already paid for.

Right now, I have one credit card that gets paid off monthly and offers 1% cash back. I haven’t applied for any new cards in the past 24 months. I have a high credit score.

For existing monthly credit card spend, baseline spend is $2,000 for groceries and bills. Additional spend can add up to an additional $2000 and can vary widely as far as what’s included there but most likely includes things such as home goods or travel. I rarely eat out due to living in a remote area with few options.

I believe I have signed up in the past for an Alaska airline mileage plan and a Delta mileage plan but only fly 1-2x per year at most and the accounts are not actively used.

Also, my husband owns a business just in case there are any business specific opportunities, too.

Thank you!

Hi Welcome,

Business cards are the way to go to earn large amount of miles and points. Most of us here have a side gig that we use to open business cards.

I just booked our summer 2025 trip, we are going to South Africa.

I booked flights using American Membership Rewards that I transferred to Qatar and American Airline miles for the return flight. To earn those points we opened an American Express Business Platinum card, we earned 150,000 points from the sign up bonus (SUB) + 15,000 from the minimum spending requirement (MSR). Then I transferred the points over to British Airways, then transferred them again to Qatar.

For the return flight we booked American Airlines, those miles we earned from several American Airline cards, both personal and business for my husband and I.
I would start with Google Flights to see what airlines fly to/from the airports you are interested in.

I booked hotels with Chase Ultimate Rewards (URs), I always book all hotels with my Chase points. Some I booked through the Chase travel portal and others I transferred to Hyatt.

My goal is to always be earning Chase points and business cards make that possible.

I would suggest applying for all Chase business cards, but there are several Chase rules that you need to know.
Chase 5/24 rule: Chase won't approve you for any card after you've opened 5 PERSONAL credit cards in the last 24 months, even personal cards that you are an Authorized User, meaning never add your spouse as an authorized user on PERSONAL cards.
Chase velocity soft rule: Space your chase cards (business and personal) every 90 days. There are exceptions, the goal is to not open more than 4 Chase cards in a 12 month period. So you could do a modified double dip (MDD) where you open 2 chase cards in consecutive days to bypass other Chase rules.

If you are going to start with personal cards I would suggest the Chase Sapphire Preferred, you'll earn 60,000 Chase URs that you can transfer. Then you can
If you want to start with a business card I would suggest the Chase Ink Preferred, you'll earn 100,000 Chase URs that you'll be able to transfer. The Preferred & Reserve cards allow you to transfer points to the hotel and airline partners, you always want to keep one of those in your household. Of course those come with a fee, the preferred annual fees (AF) is $95. There are plenty of other Chase cards that don't have AFs but those won't allow you to transfer points, you should still get those cards as you can transfer Chase points between cards and within household.


You will also earn points for referring your spouse, we have support links in our Reddit group that you can use to open your first card.

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

Thank you! They called us back and told us they could escalate it in an hour and to call back again. We are now waiting on another call back. I'm sure escalating it will do nothing though.

50k MR is a lot to just give up on. If Aeroplan doesn't relent does anyone know what you do next?

In the mean time if I could book a business class fare via BA but it'd mean transferring my MR (the missing points are my husbands) but of course I am gun shy on that!

This kinda happened w/ me an Avios last year. It was the transfer between BA and Aer Lingus. It was annoying. It took forever. I ended up emailing the CEO of Aer Lingus and BA and then suddenly it was all fixed. But I was in limbo like 3 weeks.

 

[nickle831]

I want to start chasing UR's again to use for hotel stays when we go to Europe next year. Should I close both my Sapphire and CIP and reopen new ones, stagger closing or can I do at the same time? Is there a waiting period before reapplying after closing? I referred my mom for the Sapphire several years ago and I think she still has it open. Can she now refer me?

Here is my CC layout currently.

02/19 Chase Sapphire $3000 limit 4200 UR's
06/11 Chase Disney (the no fee one) $2000 limit
04/16 Chase Southwest Priority $12000 limit 51000 pts ( I use this one for most purchases)
2019 Chase Ink Business $5000 limit (rarely use after initial bonus, but didn't want to close b/c it was my last chase business card)
When I was doing the business cards I transferred limits so that is why most are low.

02/20 Amex Hilton Surpass $8000 limit 140,000 pts
2019 Amex Marriott Bonvoy Business $9000 limit 85,000 pts
09/23 Amex Delta Just applied for this one and will be working on the bonus $3000/6 months for 85000 pts, also going to use this one for Global Entry application

Other cards Rarely used:
9/15 citibank
05/05 Bank mastercard
07/17 Bank of America

 

[georgina]

I would suggest applying for all Chase business cards, but there are several Chase rules that you need to know.
Chase 5/24 rule: Chase won't approve you for any card after you've opened 4 PERSONAL credit cards in the last 24 months, even personal cards that you are an Authorized User, meaning never add your spouse as an authorized user on PERSONAL cards.
Chase velocity soft rule: Space your chase cards (business and personal) every 90 days. There are exceptions, the goal is to not open more than 4 Chase cards in a 12 month period. So you could do a modified double dip (MDD) where you open 2 chase cards in consecutive days to bypass other Chase rules.

Small quibble - the 5/24 rule means they won't approve you after 5 personal cards in 24 months. We have been approved several times while 4/24.

 

[palhockeymomof2]

i would reach out immediately. not sure how good customer service is never used it.

Thanks…I actually decided to visit my bank on the way to work and they were able to reopen the account, so will see what happens…

 

[my523]

The fee is annoying but it doesn't need to be a DD to waive it. An electronic transfer of 500 each statement will do it and it doesn't need to stay there. I transfer from one of my other accounts and then use it to pay one of my Chase CCs, but you could always send it back to the original account.

If there's no other way to get the discount on the room that you want, you could calculate that savings as part of the CC value. So the sign up bonus is small but with the room savings how does that compare with the bonus on a different card? We usually don't recommend the Disney cards because you could have better savings with others, but what would be your alternative for that slot? How does it compare?

After doing this for a few years I realized my P2 will never be close to 5/24. I think the highest he's been is 3/24 and at one point I the middle of this journey was actually 0/24. So some cards that aren't the best value and a 'waste' of a slot aren't really a waste since nothing else was going in that slot anyway! Something is better than nothing so look at your roadmap and see where everything fits in. (I never call CC churning 'plans'. Things change in the game so always need to adjust. But still a good idea to map out your route to a goal with plenty of alternatives and room for detours)

Thanks for your response!

For the fee, that’s a good idea. It’s just too much for P2 to have that one extra thing to worry about and keep track of if we transfer in and out. He needs things simple. I threw out this idea and he said no.

Yes, I have read all the things about credit cards and travel hacking, but we will personally never dive that deep. Making at least one of us likely always under 5/24. There’s no other cards we want right now.
That’s a good idea to think about the value like that. We are saving over $500 to get the credit card version.

 

[lsutigers03]

so you went directly from refer-hit msr-ask for match?

I've asked for a match before and after hitting the MSR. This time I'll probably wait a few weeks and then ask and I doubt I'll have hit the MSR. I don't want to wait too long and have the 90k offer go away.

 

[becauseimnew]

Should I close both my Sapphire and CIP and reopen new ones, stagger closing or can I do at the same time? Is there a waiting period before reapplying after closing? I referred my mom for the Sapphire several years ago and I think she still has it open. Can she now refer me?

Yes, can close at the same time. And yes, if she still has the card you can use the link. I would probably go with the Business card first since the SUBs are higher than normal.

Small quibble - the 5/24 rule means they won't approve you after 5 personal cards in 24 months. We have been approved several times while 4/24.

Thanks, Fixed.

 

[DogCat]

Airfare to Africa will probably be the largest expense of that future trip. I'm not experienced in international travel, so I'll defer to others that may have suggestions on which airline to target. But, once you know the airline, you can focus on one of the transferable currencies from Amex, Chase or Citi depending on which transfer partner you need.

For Amex, check out the "public" Resy offers: https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/credit-cards/offers/resy

The Gold Card is particularly appealing since the restaurant credit wipes out the annual fee and you get 75,000 MR + 4x Groceries 4x Restaurant multipliers on your next year's worth of purchases. Amex typically has the best lineup of airline transfer partners, subject to your own research.

Question on the Gold Card - Does the restaurant credit apply to all restaurants or only certains ones?

 

[StephPlum]

I want to start chasing UR's again to use for hotel stays when we go to Europe next year. Should I close both my Sapphire and CIP and reopen new ones, stagger closing or can I do at the same time? Is there a waiting period before reapplying after closing? I referred my mom for the Sapphire several years ago and I think she still has it open. Can she now refer me?

Here is my CC layout currently.

02/19 Chase Sapphire $3000 limit 4200 UR's
06/11 Chase Disney (the no fee one) $2000 limit
04/16 Chase Southwest Priority $12000 limit 51000 pts ( I use this one for most purchases)
2019 Chase Ink Business $5000 limit (rarely use after initial bonus, but didn't want to close b/c it was my last chase business card)
When I was doing the business cards I transferred limits so that is why most are low.

02/20 Amex Hilton Surpass $8000 limit 140,000 pts
2019 Amex Marriott Bonvoy Business $9000 limit 85,000 pts
09/23 Amex Delta Just applied for this one and will be working on the bonus $3000/6 months for 85000 pts, also going to use this one for Global Entry application

Other cards Rarely used:
9/15 citibank
05/05 Bank mastercard
07/17 Bank of America

It looks like you have 4200 URs. Don’t close all your Chase UR cards without a place to keep them. You can downgrade the CSP to a freedom for a place for your URs to live until you get your new cards.

 

[EACarlson]

Question on the Gold Card - Does the restaurant credit apply to all restaurants or only certains ones?

The restaurant credit is Cheesecake Factory, Shake Shack and Grubhub.

 

[bnf0522]

Question for the Chase Freedom Flex users: does the 3% on dining include fast food & fast casual restaurants? Waiting on my new card to come in the mail so I wanted to clarify before I started using it.

Thanks in advance!

 

[nickle831]

It looks like you have 4200 URs. Don’t close all your Chase UR cards without a place to keep them. You can downgrade the CSP to a freedom for a place for your URs to live until you get your new cards.

Yes thank you I thought about that after I posted what I need to do to keep my points active. Forgot about the option of down grading.

 

[DogCat]

Question for the Chase Freedom Flex users: does the 3% on dining include fast food & fast casual restaurants? Waiting on my new card to come in the mail so I wanted to clarify before I started using it.

Thanks in advance!

Yes

 

[bnf0522]

Yes

Thanks a bunch!