I haven’t churned cards for a few years, so I could jump right back in and open like four this year, lol.
Chase has a few business cards offering $750 cash, with no annual fee. I’ve also been looking at the Marriott card that’s $95/yr, you get five nights free as the SUB plus one night/year free, though it’s limited to rooms costing 35k points/night or less. It also comes with silver elite status, which isn’t worth much but it can get you a little more wiggle room on checking in early or checking out late.
Southwest is offering a companion pass through 2/28/25 plus 30k points with $4k in spend, that’s kind of tempting. If Southwest works for you it’s a solid deal.
I’ve never used a travel rewards card. We’re looking at Japan this fall so arguably I could make some good plays there… but what if I have a bunch of Southwest points and Delta makes way more sense?
Feels like I should just stick to straight welcome bonus cards. I can still book $2k in tickets for a $500 bonus, that’s not shabby.
Gave my notice leaving my job April 1. Boss asked me to stick around through the end of the month as he hopes to hire someone soon.
They eliminated my stock & options compensation this year and increased my bonus an additional 20%, that was a nice gesture. Overall it is more money to me and less costly for them since “vesting” is no longer part of my vocabulary.
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Nothing wrong with cash. The other thing I like for travel is Chase or AmEx points. I’m with Chase, they use Expedia as their travel thing. So Chase points are worth $0.01 each with a basic card or $0.015 each if you have the Sapphire Reserve (which is expensive to own).
But Chase and AmEx points can be used for pretty much any airline, any hotel. So I wouldn’t say no to a 50k+ Chase bonus.
That’s likely going to be AT LEAST TWO credit card offers, MAYBE THREE to get ONE FLIGHT. Like many flights the cost depends a lot on exactly when you go. If you go to Europe you can get there and back with ONE if the offer is good and you find a flight you can afford which may mean booking well in advance. I have gotten a lot of value out of American Airlines miles in the past but I would take them from anywhere I might go. I even did a credit card hack with Air France last year and now I’ve got 70K which will get me there and back if I choose wisely.
I just booked a summer flight to Toronto, goodbye 57K United miles. Not cheap, but this is for a particular event so I have no control over the timing.
You know what’s better than churning credit card intro rewards?
Never buy any food. Just visit grocery stores and Costcos when they are having free samples. Each as much as you possibly can and then never buy food. Why limit yourself to 4% to 6% cash back. Get every calorie for $0.00.
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Ultimately, churning a credit card ends up being in the area of $250 for 25 minutes of work, and all of that “work” is being on hold to pay and cancel the card. I don’t mind doing it a few times a year, when I’m buying exactly the same things I was going to.
I generally don’t do credit card rewards for less then $500 or 50K miles. It’s the same 25 minutes of work. If you get into it there is a limit to the number of credit cards over a span of time, so make them count.
Real credit card churning has unfortunately died
My parents used to sign up for like 10-20 airline credit cards a year and fly back to their home countries.
They would get paper applications on flights and fill them out for every member of our family, including our pets
Things started slowing down about 10-20 years ago when they started restricting sign up bonuses for people who already received the sign up bonus in the previous 2 years
I used to crank out Hilton points but that has also petered out with Hilton exclusively branding with Amex and dropping Citi. I also haven’t been on a vacation so the need for points has been non existent these past few years
I still churn around $1000/year off 4-6ish cards. Could probably do closer to $2,500, but I don’t put a lot of effort into juggling them throughout the year. I usually plan to make a big purchase, then open 1 or more cards, so they’re only actually active for about 30 minutes. If I can exhaust multiple cards on the same purchase, even better.
It’s also become a lot less significant than when I began work, and $1,000 was nearly equivalent to a 2% bonus for the year.
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Just noticed my HYSA silently bumped up my APR from something like 5.07% to 5.21%.
Noice. $72 interest earned last month.
When y’all invest in index funds, do you do broad market, or S&P 500 type index? I admit I had previously not paid too much attention, and then noticed that my portfolio was doing worse than the S&P 500, and it is because the funds I have are broader market. Nothing to do about the past, but wondering if I should rethink this going forward.
S&P 500 Index for me mostly.
Find the one with the lowest expense ratio and you’re good really.
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By far the biggest chunk is in S&P 500 / Large Caps, although I always include some exposure to international and smaller companies. I also generally buy ETF’s rather than funds.
Technically ETFs rather than index funds.
I put 60% into VTI (Vanguard Total Domestic Market) and 40% in VXUS (Vanguard Total International Market). This is for my non-retirement brokerage as I don’t have those funds in my current 401k, but I do something similar. Eventually in my retirement accounts I might purchase some amount of bond ETFs, but not for quite a while.
Every 2 weeks I deposit more money and purchase the one that is below 60% or 40%. Haven’t changed that for about 10 years, don’t plan to. Expense fees are something trivial.
Why is VTI domestic and VXUS interational? No idea.
I’ve got about 10% of my holdings in IAK & KIE (Insurance), 10% in bonds, 25% in SGOV I’m a bit conservative right now. S&P feels frothy to me but we get signals that interest rates will come down there could be even more upside.
Less interested in international exposure although I followed Buffet’s lead and bought sone EWJ.
I prefer total market over large cap because small cap stocks are the only index that have outperformed large caps over the long term. It certainly doesn’t feel that way right now
Y’all were supposed to give the same response.
Thinking I will keep the funds in broad market, but as I add to the account, put it in S&P 500 tracking fund.
