Credit Card Churning Month Nine: Less Than Successful

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

Let’s jump right in. This is what happened last night.

Not enough info? Okay. Let me tell you what has happened over the last few weeks.

Want to catch up on the previous posts in this series?

• 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
• Card Churning Experiment Month Five: My Points Come In!
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Six: Stymied
• The Travel Bookings Start: Credit Card Churning Month Seven
• Credit Card Churning Month Eight: My Favorite Resources
• Bonus because people like the chart on this one: Just A Bunch Of Random Money Thoughts

The cards

The Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus

I am not currently happy with Chase Southwest cards.

Don’t get me wrong – the card itself is fine. If you are looking for an airline card and you fly Southwest, this is a good one. I have had no problems using the card.

I have, however, spent significantly more than the minimum spend and haven’t received my signup bonus yet. As in, I’m at about 150% of the minimum spend and no signup bonus. I do seem to get my points on the 27th of the month, so I’m willing to wait until Friday before I call in and ask what’s up. But I’m not particularly pleased with this.

Additionally, I’ve had a number of people try to use my referral link to get their own Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card, and I haven’t seen those points either. It is possible they will show up when the other points show up. It’s also possible people weren’t successful at getting the card, or didn’t complete the application. I’m not really worried about this, other than it seems to be another indication that things aren’t going as they should. Referral points are nice and all (thanks to all of you who use my referral links!) but they aren’t necessary.

Oh…except…

You may remember from previous posts in this series that I’m working on earning a Southwest Companion Pass. Here is a reminder in case you don’t remember, or an intro if this is new to you.

• Earn 110,000 (or more) qualifying points in a single calendar year
• 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 some of those 110,000 points on a flight

You can find out more about the Companion Pass in the month 7 update.

The plan was to use the SW RR Plus card to get me 47% of the way to that Companion Pass! (50,000 point signup bonus + 2000 points on spending)

Then I was going to get the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Business card. That one (once I got it) was going to come with a 60,000 point signup bonus for spending $3000 in the first 3 months. I’d have more than the 110,000 points necessary to get the Companion Pass.

Oh, but it all went so wrong.

Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Business Card

Problem #1: I didn’t get the business card!

Despite having a legitimate business (this blog is a business, registered with the IRS and everything) and my other side income from my rental property. Despite having a large primary income and a very low credit utilization ratio. Even despite having terrific credit scores and a long history. I was denied!

Then I appealed, and was denied again. Then I appealed a second time, and was denied again.

I’m not super excited about this, if you couldn’t tell.

Plan B: Get the other Southwest personal card

Chase has a second Southwest Rapid Rewards personal card, the Premier. When people don’t want the business card (which I did want, so I could separate out my business expenses from my personal spending) they frequently get both personal cards and reach the 110,000 points for the Companion Pass that way.

Problem #2: Chase has now taken away the ability to have both Southwest personal cards at the same time.

This was reported by several websites a few weeks ago. As of April 5th 2018, you can’t open a new Southwest credit card if either of the following conditions apply:

1. You are a current Southwest consumer credit cardholder; or
2. You have earned a new cardmember bonus on a Southwest consumer credit card in the last 24 months.

So, I also can’t open the Southwest Premier card. On to…

Plan C: Referral bonuses

Update: after I posted this, Chase released a different referral bonus for this card. You can now use my referral link to get this card with a 40,000 point signup bonus after spending $1000 in the first 3 months. Please use credit responsibly!

Okay, I’ll just hope that enough of you use my referral link to open your own cards and get your own Companion Pass. I’ll use those referral bonuses to get me to my own Companion Pass. Right? Right?

Nope.

Problem #3: I haven’t actually seen this one revealed online yet, but from what I can tell, Chase has ended the referral bonus program for the Southwest cards. It’s not showing up on the Refer-A-Friend page, and when I use my old referral link I get this message:

And this is on the main Refer-A-Friend page:

So…I can’t use the signup bonus from the business card because I didn’t get it. I can’t use the signup bonus from the second personal card because I’m not allowed to open it. And unless I do have several referral bonuses that are going to (happily) surprise me on Friday, I’m not getting those points either.

That means I will only be halfway to the Companion Pass. There are a few other ways to earn large chunks of points, but they involve spending money on things I don’t need. Since I’m about to move to a new duty location and have nobody there that I plan to travel with, it seems silly to spend money to earn a benefit I may not use.

So right now, I am resigned to not getting the Companion Pass. I *should* still get the signup bonus from the Plus card. That’s 50,000 points on Southwest, or enough for 5-6 one-way flights. That’s not nothing. I’ll report back on that in next month’s post.

Oh well. Not every part of this experiment was going to work perfectly.

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 and why I chose it here.

Chase Sapphire Preferred

Nothing significant to report.

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

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.***

Discover Card

Nothing significant to report.

Month Nine Experience

Purchases

None

Month Nine Lesson: Talking through a Card Churning Plan

In the spirit of teaching you something new each month, today I’m bringing you a conversation between myself and someone who is just getting into card churning.

Like many of you, he had questions about which cards to get and why. I’m not going to post the whole conversation because it will give away personal details about this person. Furthermore, it’s not my place to tell you which credit cards another person decided to open. However, I think there is benefit to seeing this back and forth.

Remember, I’m no card churning expert. I’m learning this as I go! So if you see something here that is wrong or maybe just not the best answer, let me know in the comments.

Note: The other person is a military member, so they are planning to receive waived annual fees just as I do. That’s important in the planning and selection of their cards.

(those last two comments are to show I really did have his permission to post this. Also he knows more about me now 😂)

My Month Nine 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: 40,835
• United: 545
• Delta: 2,915
• Southwest: 2,018
• AMEX: 166,485

Total Points/Miles as of March 21st: 212,798

Points/Miles Earned:

• Ultimate Rewards: 0
• United: 376 (I have no idea why I got these points??)
• Delta: 0
• Southwest: 1275 (normal points)
• AMEX: 15,099 (referral bonus + normal points)

Points/Miles Earned In Month Nine: 16,750

Points/Miles Spent:

• Ultimate Rewards: 0
• United: 0
• Delta: 0
• Southwest: 0
• AMEX: 0

Points/Miles Spent in Month Nine: 0

New Point/Mile Totals:

• Ultimate Rewards: 40,835
• United: 921
• Delta: 2,915
• Southwest: 3,293
• AMEX: 181,584

Total Points/Miles as of April 24th: 229,548

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. I’m now planning to buy a car! I probably won’t take out a loan for it, but I want a great score just in case I can get 0% financing and decide to leverage my money. 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 11 points. That’s a 1 point increase since last month.

Looking at my Credit Scorecard, between July and now my credit score fell 15 points. This is up 4 points since last month.

My Experian Score 8 was first baselined in October. It went down 9 points this month! I’m not sure why this one has a big negative drop when the others both went up slightly.

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

This month kind of sucked, experiment wise.

No business card. No signup bonus for the Southwest personal card yet, even though I’m way past the minimum spend. Falling credit scores. What’s going on?

I now have to reassess my plan, which is why I have no report for you on what my next card will be. I’m basically waiting to see what happens on Friday. Wish me luck! And the delivery of some SW points…

Tell me about your travel hacking and credit card churning failures in the comments. I can’t be the only one!

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 some other nice bonus.

• 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.
• And if you apply for the new Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Plus card while the limited time offer is available, you can earn 3 Free Award Nights for spending $3000 in the first 3 months.

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!