I’ve been following this board for a few months and think I am ready to dip my toes into the water…I must admit I still get headaches and my eyes may glaze over a bit when too many CSP, CSR, CIP, RIP (lol) acronyms are bandied about.
A bit of history… I am 54 and would travel the world if both my finances and my hubby were in agreement. MY dh is 61 and isn’t so inclined. He has some health issues and is looking at open heart surgery sometime ??? this year. We have a WDW trip for 10 days scheduled for March and that will be the extent of travel for this year, except maybe a trip to Alaska to visit my parents around the end of the year, health willing. If my Disney Jonesing gets too bad we MIGHT do a short trip to DLR sometime early 2019, but my dh proclaims he HATES DLR, even though it was 1993 when we were last there!
My goals: Travel is mostly on the west coast; Alaska, L.A., Vegas, B.C., and when we have an AP to WDW we try to squeeze in 3-4 trips to Florida. We fly Alaska Airlines because it works the best for us. As long as they keep the direct PDX-MCO flight we have little interest in SW Air. We will be getting an AP again sometime after Star Wars Land opens. I would like to maximize my AK Air miles for that travel and have the ability to book WDW hotels with points.
Credit: I believe I am at 1/5 as of 1/4/18. TU 834 EQ 832 (Dipped in 12/17 to high 700’s due to credit utilization)
Disc IT 11.5k Joint no fee 02.09.94
US Bank Flex Points 20k Joint no fee 08.01.11
BoA AK Air Signature 7.5k Ind $75 07.12.13
CITI Costco 20k Ind no fee 08.25.13
AMEX Blue Pref 20k Ind no fee 01.04.16
Disney Visa 15k Ind no fee 10/13/17
Additional info: My monthly spend is not large and I don’t want to MS. Three thousand in three months is a number I can usually attain. There will be times that number can increase; when my husband has his surgery as we have a large deductible to meet (time unknown as of now), in October insurance is due, and this March we are going to DW. I usually pay for this with Disney Gift cards bought at a discount (currently @ BJ’s with my 5% Discover, or AMEX at grocery store for 6%) but can certainly use a new CC to pay for some of it.
Cards with a large AF but with travel credits are not of great interest to me right now due to the uncertainty of our travel abilities this year, but could be of more value once we are ready to get our AP in late 2019 or early 2020.
I can probably qualify for a Business card on a Rental Property Income of around $6k annually.
This is mostly an individual endeavor. I have not spoken to my DH about it, because he would most likely freak out. I can probably get a card or two in his name, but I will be responsible for the spend. I just sent him out SPECIFICALLY to put a small spend on our US Bank Visa just to keep activity on it and he managed to use the WRONG card! LOL! During the Economic Crash we had a few cards closed by the issuers due to lack of use.
Thanks in advance for the help. You all are so friendly and helpful here!
Well you're starting in a great place - you are at 1/24 for Chase's purposes (I see you say 1/5 above but it's expressed as 1/24 meaning 1 card in the last 24 months).
One of the topics we've discussed a lot around here recently is using
Chase Ultimate Rewards (URs) to book hotels and packages at Disney World. URs are easy to earn for beginners, but much harder for those who have applied for a lot of cards recently due to that pesky 5/24 rule mentioned earlier. URs are amazing because when you have a
Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR) they are worth 1.5 cents per point towards travel such as hotels and airline tickets. Additionally, URs can be transferred to partners too if that makes sense for you. Just yesterday I had a post that detailed all the cards that you can use to earn URs so I'll paste an excerpt here:
85k = Chase Ink Preferred (CIP) => 80k bonus + 5k min spend
(business card)
54k = Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR) => 50k bonus + 4k min spend + $300 Travel Credit which can be hit twice in the first year
59k = Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) => 50k bonus + 4k min spend + 5k AU
33k = Chase Ink Cash (CIC) => 30k bonus + 3k min spend
(business card)
18k = Chase Freedom (CF) => 15k bonus + 2.5k AU + 500 min spend
18k+ = Chase Freedom Unlimited (CFU) => 15k bonus + 2.5k AU + 750 min spend (1.5x URs)
Many of these cards also don't charge the Annual Fee for the first year so that's a great benefit! Now I'm not specifically recommending you go right out and hit all of those cards. BUT if you did you'd earn over 267,000 URs which would be worth over $4,000 in hotels at Disney, Flights OR could be transferred to a program like Singapore Airlines which I believe can be used to book on Alaska Airlines
(I am SO not an expert on this one so please check me on that).
The reason you'd want to consider Chase first is once you're over 5/24 (5 cards in 24 months) the cards I list above will not be available to you again (unless you wait to be under 5/24 again which sometimes doesn't make sense). Once you move past Chase there are numerous options including BofA Alaska Airlines cards, Barclay Arrival+ and other cards that offer flexible travel points, Hotel specific cards and of course the
AMEX Membership Rewards (MRs). MRs can be earned on over a dozen cards and also have some nice travel partners and redemption options.
I know this doesn't exactly give you a road map but my advice would be to do some reading and ask some more specific questions as you narrow things down. Remember that you're in a great starting spot and with a good plan you can achieve A LOT of free and deeply discounted travel.
Also - when you're ready to apply please consider supporting other DISers by using links on our DISchurners group on Reddit where it makes sense.
. This survey may take approx. 10-15 minutes and you will be responding for ALL cards you have or have had while playing the churning game. I think this could be neat to see what the most popular cards are here among our DISchurners. I've attempted to include every popular card that is available nationwide. At the end there is a comment section in the event I missed a important card.
