Questions and Answers

Yo Lucky! Newsletter items are awesome, first and foremost.

Wanted to get your take on how a how best to play the “game” as a Husband/Wife team.

I have been collecting points for a while, but now that my wife has seen the light 🙂 , how travel can be free and or drastically reduced in price at really nice places/bus/first class airfare, etc…we are ready to get serious!

What is the best way to tackle/apply for cards and or strategizing as a team? Can you provide any helpful insight to this.

Do we both apply for the same cards to maximize sign up bonuses or offset them one at a time?

We have only a few of the standard cards AA, Delta, Chase Bus Ink. After educating myself a little more on how to maximize points we are earning a lot more though helpful links like your and others but I have not found a lot of info on how to best attack/strategize as a team?

Can you provide any insight or helpful tips?

Cheers

Well you should each try and get the Chase Sapphire Reserve and then the Chase Sapphire Preferred for the bonus’s. Remember to add each other (or someone else) as authorized users on the cards for the extra bonus.

I’d also read the [URL=’http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/whats-the-point/#_ga=1.112370435.626558736.1473424423′]Beginners Guide[/URL] and go from there

The CSR does not offer any bonuses for authorized users so I probably wouldn’t pay the authorized user fees to add each other on. Otherwise David’s advice on targeting Chase first is a good place to start given 5/24 (I assume you are familiar with this since you have been opening cards). Otherwise the strategy for a couple is not all that different than the strategy for one person: be aware of the bonus cycles for different cards, apply when bonuses are high, try to build up balances in transferable currencies that not only give you options but usually also allow easier options to combine points across accounts as needed. There is no doubt that having a second person apply for cards can significantly boost your earning potential. Good luck!

Riiiiiiight. I meant AUs for the CSP

Also you may want to check out Frequent Miler’s blog as he often details how he and his wife work the CC applications.

I think the biggest thing, and first thing, is to start with your travel goals. That informs [I]everything[/I] else.

If you want to do domestic travel, one of you should work the Southwest cards to get the Companion Pass. No reason to double up there.

If you want to do international travel, then it can make sense to get a lot of the same cards, so that you have a better pile of points to work with, and can actually fly together. It’s so sad when someone comes to us where they have exactly the wrong miles to be able to take a round trip together.

It can also make sense to have one person keep their approvals to a minimum, so that if a great bonus offer comes along you can jump.. That’s what we do in my house (the husband hates calling banks, and we do eventually want to buy a house), so my husband gets one credit card a year. That also means he can keep getting Chase bonuses, as he’s only at 2/24.

But, if you tell us more about your travel goals we can maybe give some more specifics 🙂