The Travel Bookings Start: Credit Card Churning Month Seven

THIS PAGE CONTAINS REFERRAL LINKS. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO.

I’m officially past the halfway point on my credit card churning experiment. Let’s see how it’s going, shall we?

If you want to see the previous posts in this series, here they are:

• Travel Hacking? Credit Card Churning? Let’s Do This!
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month One
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Two
• Miles and Miles and Miles: Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Three
• Q&A: Credit Card Fee Waivers and Churning Plans
• Where Are My Points? Credit Card Churning Experiment: Month Four
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Five: My Points Come In!
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Six: Stymied

The cards

My New Card: The Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus!

Whelp, it was time for a new card.

A quick review: so far in this experiment I’ve opened a Chase Sapphire Preferred and an AMEX Platinum, and completed the minimum spend to receive the signup bonus for both. I applied for the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus in early January.

Then, if you read last month’s report, you know I was annoyed because my application wasn’t immediately approved. I left off by telling you that I was still waiting to find out whether I was approved for the card.

I can tell you I was approved for the card. I can also tell you what caused my application approval to be delayed.

I’ve mentioned a few times now that I moved apartments in the last few months. Well, as soon as I moved apartments – and before applying for this card – I changed my address with Chase. So all should be good, right?

Nay.

When Chase does their magic in the background to approve an application, it doesn’t check to see if the address I entered on the application matches the address in their system. Instead, it checks to see whether the address on my application matches the address the credit reporting agencies think I live at.

I think that’s pretty important information to know, don’t you? Especially for us military members who move around all the time! So there’s lesson #1 for today’s credit card churning report: be careful when applying for cards at around the same time you are moving. Your application may be delayed because of it.

Why does a delayed application matter? Well…

Other Things To Know About The Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus

The whole point of getting this particular card was so I could use the signup bonus from this, plus the signup bonus from my next card, to earn the Southwest Companion Pass.

If you aren’t familiar with the Southwest Companion Pass, here is the CliffsNotes version:

• Earn 110,000 (or more) qualifying points in a single calendar year
• Or you can fly 100 qualifying one-way flights, but that seems more difficult….
• You’ll earn a Companion Pass! Not just for the remainder of that year, but for the full calendar year following
• One person can fly with you for free (except taxes and fees) every time you either purchase a flight, or redeem those 110,000 points on a flight

Magic, right?

You can change your companion up to three times each year. That’s important because I’d been thinking I wouldn’t get this card just yet because I don’t have a companion that I fly with out of here. But, changes they are a’comin’. I’ll tell you more about that later, but just know that I decided it made sense to get the Companion Pass.

The other important thing about the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card is, obviously, the signup bonus. And the other reason it was important that I get this card now is that the bonus is currently boosted.

Until January, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card had a 40,000 point signup bonus for spending $1000 in the first 2 months. However, the current bonus is 50,000 points for spending $2000 in the first 3 months. That’s easy enough to do, for me! Because of the delay in getting this card I didn’t get started spending until early February, so I’m predicting I will finish my minimum spend on this card in approximately mid-March.

I’ll then get another Southwest card (either the personal or business Premier card) to get the bonus on that around late April/early May. That will finish out my 110,000 point requirement and presto! Companion Pass for over 1.5 years, check. Tons of points to spend, check.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Interested in this card?

If you are interested in getting the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card and pursuing the Companion Pass for yourself, you can use my referral link. As of the dates of publication of this post (February 21st, 2018), the 50,000 point bonus is still active (update: it’s now 40,000 points for spending $1000 in three months). See the notes at the bottom of the post for more information on referral links.

Hopefully it will still be a 50,000 point bonus by the time you apply, but understand that their promotions can and do change. Sometimes it goes up higher, sometimes it’s lower. I make no guarantees as I have literally 0% control over it.

If you use referral links to sign up for credit cards, there is no additional cost to you. The person who refers you usually receives some points/miles or cash in exchange for the referral. The bottom of this post explains more.

What you should know before getting the card

The Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus comes with a $69 annual fee that is applied to your first billing statement and is not waived for new signups. If you are a civilian, unfortunately, you would just have to pay that. But it does come with 3000 bonus points at your card anniversary to offset the cost…plus the chance at the Companion Pass…it might be worth it. Up to you.

Military members who open this card after September 20th, 2017 and are serving in active status can request Military Lending Act (MLA) benefits be applied to their card. If you receive the benefits, your annual fee will be waived, as well as other benefits as described here and here.

***I’m seeing conflicting reports on whether Reserve Component members who are not in active status can receive MLA benefits. You will have to contact Chase to confirm this for yourself.***

American Express Platinum

Nothing significant to report.

I am maintaining my position that any responsible credit user who is in the military, or married to the military, should get this card. There are so many benefits and considering the annual fee is waived for military members in active status, it’s just a smart idea. That is of course assuming you want a credit card and will use it responsibly.

You can find out more about the AMEX Platinum card (referral link) and why I chose it here.

Chase Sapphire Preferred

Nothing significant to report.

I was using the Chase Sapphire Preferred regularly while using the AMEX, since some places don’t take AMEX and the Chase cards are Visas. However, now that I have the Southwest card that isn’t as necessary. I will still use it occasionally to keep it active for the time being but don’t plan to put more than a few dollars on it per month.

You can find out more about the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (referral link) and why I chose it here and here.

Discover Card

Nothing significant to report.

Month Seven Experience

Purchases

My first purchase using points I earned on this experiment: I got my parents a sweet room for their upcoming trip to DC!

Back in my very first post in this series, I laid out the things I wanted to use these rewards points for. One of them was to pay for some hotel nights for my parents. Well, I did it. Travel hacking success.

After a lot of looking online, I ended up getting three nights at a Hyatt Regency for them for 36,000 points total. Now, that’s a lot of points. But they are coming to DC during a major event, so room prices were really high. Everything was a good 50% or more above normal prices. Cheap motels miles outside the city were $100 per night, while nice hotels started at about $230.

I looked for rooms for longer than I care to admit, trying to find something that made sense. I’ve said before that I try to get a 1.5 cents-per-point valuation, minimum, when I spend travel points. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything near that good at the hotels I was looking at, especially when looking through the AMEX and Chase travel portals.

Booking rooms using travel rewards points

Lesson #2 in today’s report: I’m pretty dang sure that the travel portals for credit cards charge significantly more to book a room than if you transfer the points to a travel partner and book directly!

Looking at the AMEX portal, the absolute “cheapest” hotel I could find was a Red Roof Inn for 17,000 points per night. Even worse, I could’ve paid $120 if paying cash. That means I’d only be getting 0.7 cents-per-point if I’d chosen that (which I almost did). Everything else was equally ridiculous. Some had better cents-per-points valuations of almost 1:1, but at such expensive hotels that I was looking at 35,000-40,000 points per night! Sorry, too rich for my blood.

Eventually I moved on to the Chase portal, and things seemed a bit better. I was able to find nice hotels for “only” 20,000-25,000 points per night. That was better than AMEX, right?

But something made me say “this isn’t right.” I’m always reading about people getting cheap hotels for 6000 points/night, and nice hotels for 10,000-15,000/night. Where were those deals?

I decided to Google “Ultimate Rewards best redemption value hotels” and found this article. That made me realize I should check the hotel websites, which led me to the fantastic Hyatt Regency deal for only 12,000 points/night. I was able to instantaneously transfer Ultimate Rewards points from the Chase website into my Hyatt account, and booked it within minutes.

So instead of paying 17,000 points/night for a 2-star hotel, they are staying in a 4-star hotel for 12,000 points/night.

Oh yeah, that valuation? Well I priced out the lowest price I could find for those nights at the same hotel, and it came to $920.73. I paid 36,000 points total. That’s a 2.56 cents-per-point valuation. Not record setting, but I’m pretty damn pleased with it.

By the way, I checked this exact hotel on the Chase travel portal – they were charging 21,046 points/night for the exact same dates. Almost double!

Now, I don’t want you to think that booking directly with the travel partner is always better. From my research, the answer varies. What I’m saying is, don’t assume the travel portal price is *the* price. You might be pleasantly surprised by booking directly with the hotel.

My Month Seven Results!!

Everything here is based on my statement date, which happens to be the 17th of each month. You can expect my monthly updates to happen about week three of every month.

Starting Points/Miles:

• Ultimate Rewards: 66,462
• United: 545
• Delta: 2,915
• Southwest: 1,637
• AMEX: 149,006

Total Points/Miles as of January 23rd: 220,565

Points/Miles Earned:

• Ultimate Rewards: 123
• United: 0
• Delta: 0
• Southwest: 0
• AMEX: 15,880 (one referrals + normal points earned)

Points/Miles Earned In Month Seven: 16,003

Points/Miles Spent:

• Ultimate Rewards: 36,000
• United: 0
• Delta: 0
• Southwest: 0
• AMEX: 0

Points/Miles Spent in Month Seven: 36,000

New Point/Mile Totals:

• Ultimate Rewards: 30,585
• United: 545
• Delta: 2,915
• Southwest: 1,637
• AMEX: 164,886

Total Points/Miles as of February 20th: 200,568

My Credit Score

Credit scores may drop or rise if you start churning. I have no major purchases planned, no need to take out a loan anytime soon, and a high starting score. If you plan to take out a loan soon or are concerned about your score dropping, credit card churning might not be for you.

Between July and now, my CreditCheck (Experian) credit score has gone down 9 points. It’s been this way since December, when it went down due to apartment hunting.

Looking at my Credit Scorecard, between July and now my credit score fell 14 points. That was a big drop, but it has held steady since September despite opening 2 more cards and having multiple credit pulls from apartment hunting. I’m not worried.

My Experian Score 8 was first baselined in October. It is now one whole point higher.

Note: These “monthly updates” on my credit score aren’t monthly. That’s kind of annoying, since I’m trying to closely track them for your benefit so you can see how card churning affects a real person. When I check, they are often 45 days or more behind despite being advertised as updating monthly or even weekly. So I’m trying to give you regular updates, but keep in mind when I say “now” that “now” might not be “today.”

Final Thoughts

I’ve learned a lot about earning points in the last 7 months, but I still have a lot to learn about redeeming points. Hopefully my next experience will go more smoothly. But all in all, worth it!

What tips have you learned to maximize your travel points?

Referral Links

As I said before, if you sign up for a credit card via my referral links, I receive referral bonuses. In turn, you receive the same signup bonus I got on the cards or something similar.

• You’ll earn 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points if you get the Chase Sapphire Preferred and spend $4,000 in three months.
• You’ll get 60,000 Membership Rewards points on the AMEX Platinum if you spend $5,000 in three months.
• You can get 40,000 Southwest points via the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus if you spend only $1000 in the first 3 months. This is 10,000 points lower than the signup bonus I qualified for, but for a much lower minimum spend.

You don’t have to sign up via the referrals to receive the bonus, but if you sign up through my link you are helping support this blog. If you use the referral link, great! Thank you very much! If not, I completely understand. No hard feelings.

Make sure you will be able to meet the minimum spend requirements before you sign up. That’s the whole point, right?

NOTE: Please do NOT use the referral links or start churning cards if you don’t plan to pay off your balance in full every month. I’ve been through the pain of having credit card debt, not paying off my bill each month, and even a couple late payments. That’s not something I recommend for anyone. Besides, the rewards are only a good deal if you pay off your balance in full each month. If you don’t, the interest you are paying will outweigh the rewards. Use credit wisely!