How to Travel For Free with Credit Cards (Part 2) – Sign-Up Bonuses

 How to Travel for Free – Getting Miles & Points from Credit Card Sign-up Bonuses

The truth is, for a person (like me!) who needs to earn miles & points without actually paying for flights or paying to stay in hotels, credit card sign-up bonuses are the way to go. You can read the first installment to learn the basics about travel rewards cards (How to Travel for Free – Credit Cards - Part 1).  Once you understand the basic concept of what a travel rewards credit card is & how it benefits the person applying, you can decide how to go about building up your own stash of miles & points to use for planning your cheap trip.  In this second installment, I will discuss how I go about deciding which credit cards to apply for at any given time.

Step One : Analyzing My Current Credit Situation

Is my credit score good enough to support some credit card applications?  See my information here about understanding and checking your credit score and credit report.  I generally want to make sure that my score is over 750, knowing that it will dip a bit temporarily when I sign up for some new cards.

One thing that many people who follow this hobby tend to do with credit card applications is an app-o-rama (or AOR).  An AOR is essentially the practice of applying for multiple credit cards all on the same day.  The reason for this has to do with the fact that a new credit application gets reported to the credit agencies.  You can get turned away (even with a stellar credit score) for having “too many inquiries” recently.  If you apply for a bunch of cards on the same day, each of the credit card companies does not see the information about your other inquiries for that day.  I use this strategy, and it works for me.  Some in the hobby have a set schedule of when they will apply for new cards (something like every 90 days for a new AOR).  I don’t generally do it that regularly, but enough to have the miles & points in my accounts that I want to use.  Which brings me to….

Step Two : Knowing my Travel Goals

I like to keep a running list of places we want to go and dates when we can travel.  See here is one example).

Step Three : What are the best Credit Card offers at the time of my application(s)?

It helps to know what the current credit card offers are, and for this I always go to this specific Flyertalk thread to learn about the different sign-up bonuses that are being offered.  I also try to jump on any really spectacular bonuses that come along, as many of them are very limited as to how long the applications are available.  For example, last year I was able to get in on a 100,000 point bonus for the American Express Platinum card that was only available for about a day, which was a great deal for us!

Some tips:

  • My husband and I generally both apply for the same offers if they are really good, so we end up getting double the bonus points in many cases
  • We keep a spreadsheet with all of our application dates, how much the bonus is, how much we need to spend to get the bonus, annual fee (usually waived the first year, but I like to know what it is), and when the bonus points post
  • I continually evaluate and reevaluate which cards I have, which ones I’m keeping, and which need to be cancelled before the annual fee hits
  • You can often get the fee waived or an offer for a retention bonus when you call to cancel your card (more on that later)
  • If you are denied, you can call the reconsideration line to plead your case & this works for us 99% of time (more on that later too)

 

Just like we do, you can put your credit to work for you and save thousands of dollars in the process.  Free travel with credit card sign-up bonuses has become a way of life for us at this point!

 

 

 

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