We had a few posts in the 2024 thread recently, but found this thread on the topic.
No so much churning, but an AMEX platinum offer came in the mail that i opened target than just ripping up and tossing. 150k points for signing up, lots of card perks that i won’t use, $695 annual fee.
The weird outlier: a Walmart+ monthly membership credit. This seemed like an odd fit among all the other upscale perks. I haven’t regularly gone near a Walmart either physically or virtually in about 15 years, usually only when it’s the only store nearby our family vacation rental.
I started looking up cards to churn last night as we plan to make a few big purchases, and it looks like I’ve used up a lot of the welcome-bonus straight cash back ones.
There are some like “Spend $4000 get $750” which isn’t terrible, but much less convenient than “Spend $1000 get $250” where I could often make 1 or 2 large purchases and have it opened, used, paid off and closed inside of 30 minutes.
Maybe I’ll bundle together buying the smoker, electric fireplace, and freezer to exhaust that larger spend need. Had planned to buy the fireplace as winter got closer and just deal with it being broken for the summer.
If you do this a lot, some companies will not want to see more than 5 credit cards opened in the last two years, or maybe you can only have a certain credit card bonus every two or four years.
So if you can only do this maybe three times per year, go for the $750. It does mean you have to keep charging purchases for a couple months, true. But I generally don’t do it for any less than $500 or a a bunch of frequent flyer points (preferably 60K+)
It just requires me to get the spouse on board, only use this credit card for a few weeks, okay now I cancelled it so I’m taking the card and cutting it up…
I know, I’m being very "Why are they making it slightly inconvenient for them to give me free money??" I try to handle finances without roping my partner in to the extent possible, it’s just cleaner to churn a card and have it fully complete almost instantly.
The only time I’ve been denied was I believe a 5th card I attempted to open in about a 3 month span. I’ll probably go ahead with the $4,000 spend-need card anyway.