Questions and Answers

So 1st year chasing points/miles. Many new cards w/bonuses. What of the future? Can’t have 50 cards. So far I’ve done well with the miles I earned, a good purchase from Avianca andthe bonuses from Chase Sapphire and Amex Platinum. I spend a lot of $$$ but still not hundreds of thousands. Ideas? How do you points gurus do this?

For a normal person with normal spend, I’d suggest keeping a lookout for welcome bonuses for a few cards, then kind of rotate-and-cancel them as you need, and also before large purchases. Keep one card that offers the best mileage accrual rate.

For instance, say Card A has the best accrual rate, then use it for everything until a good offer comes along from Card B. Apply for Card A, spend the required amount and get the bonus, then resume using Card A. Cancel Card B as soon as possible (making sure that you’ve passed the penalty period if any for cancelling a card too soon).

Then if you are about to make a costly purchase, apply for Card C, then use it to buy that item, get the bonus, and then cancel Card C as you did with B.

After a while, you can then apply for Card B again and receive yet another welcome bonus. 🙂

[USER=1494]@Hanoi IG[/USER]

Welcome

CharlieB approach is good from a overall perspective, but you should try to downgrade cards to a non-fee version rather than cancel outright. The keep average life of your credit cards up which in turn helps your credit score.

Also having more credit available as a whole helps your credit score as it would seem that you are using only a fraction of available credit, even if 90 % of that credit is on cards that never leave the bottom of your sock drawer.