Questions and Answers

This might have been asked and answered before, but I don’t know where to find the answer.

Canceling Credit cards so one can get bonus miles again

Is it OK to cancel a credit card again after getting the bonus miles posted to FFmiles, possibly before the first time the fee comes due and apply for a different card to get again those miles or does one have to keep all the cards?
I saw that some cards can only be applied for after not having them for 2 years.
Also, what does canceling cards again and again do to ones credit score?

Welcome [USER=4044]@Cbmaedle[/USER] –
Card issuers typically frown on cancelling a card right after receiving the sign-up bonus. They want you to keep it at least a year before canceling. Each issuer has different criteria as to how often you can receive the bonus. With most publicly available Amex offers you get one bonus per lifetime.

[URL=’http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2018/01/24/can-get-credit-card/’]Frequent Miler[/URL] just had a post about this topic yesterday and summarizes it very well so I’d head to his site where he’s got that info in one handy place that he keeps updated.

As for what this can do to your credit score I think there are 2 factors at work here:
1. part of your score is average age of accounts, so that’s a negative if you don’t keep cards open very long
2. another part of the score is the number of applications in the last 24 months. Even having 1-3 applications will knock that score down from an A to a B.

And finally, for most of its cards Chase has the 5/24 rule, meaning that if you’ve applied for more than 5 cards (from any issuer) in the last 24 months you’re much less likely to get approved for their cards. There are a few exceptions but pretty much any Ultimate Rewards-earning card is subject to this 5/24 rule.