Okay, so here we are. I mentioned that I would discuss churning in my next post. Well, it's time! When I first caught a glimpse of what credit card rewards could do for our family, I'll admit I was hooked. After we received our Delta SkyMiles, I thought hotels would be the next venture. They were. Then I questioned how we would get our rental, then we found the Chase Sapphire cards.
Then after our trip, we relaxed for a minute. We took a breath. I mean with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, we get 3x points for dining. Not sure if you know our family, but we really like to go out to eat. I thought that this was great. We'll eat our way to our next vacation.
To be honest, the return on this method was not enough for me. For you it may be, but it wasn't for me. I'll admit I got a little bummed. Here we were able to score a fantastic trip to California, and I was afraid it may be another year or more before we get to do something like that again. I mean I opened 4 cards within maybe a 6 month period. That's ludicrous. If anybody I knew told me they were doing this, my response would be..."Yeah, good luck with that."
However, I started reading some articles by my new friend, The Points Guy:
https://thepointsguy.com/2014/07/how-card-applications-affect-your-credit-score/
https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/how-closing-card-impacts-fico-score/
https://thepointsguy.com/2015/10/5-things-that-affect-your-credit-score/
I joined a couple of Facebook groups, asked some questions, and obviously talked to my wife. You know what? I kept going. Yep, found some neat cards out there. I opened new accounts to meet the minimum spends. Then I moved on to the next one. If I was in between, I went back to my Chase Sapphire cards or Chase Freedom. It's been a blast so far. Have some trips planned this year. It's very possible that what we are working on now will benefit us in 2018! Also in case you were worried, I still have a FICO score over 800.
Well, anyway. Thanks for reading. I don't know what you call what we are doing now, credit card jumping? Whatever it is. It definitely isn't churning. Stay tuned for Part 2 :)