The Southwest Companion Pass: Buy One Ticket Get One Free!

This is a post geared towards prospective credit card churners who are under Chase's 5/24 rule. If you aren't sure what the 5/42 rule is, you can read about it here: Chase 5/24 Rule

You'll want to be at 3/42 or lower to take advantage of this method of earning the Southwest Companion Pass because it will require you to open two new Chase cards. These cards are the Southwest Premier and the Southwest Plus.

The Southwest Premier is publicly available on Chase's website but you should not use that link because the current bonus is only 40,000 points. We want a bonus of 50,000 bonus points. And the Southwest Plus is not publicly available on Chase's website. So the method we'll want to use to apply for these two cards are referral links. Be absolutely sure the referral link you apply through offers a 50,000 point bonus. You'll understand why in a bit.

The best place to apply for these cards through referral links is on reddit.com/r/churning. They have referral links for just about any credit card thats worth churning. There is also a lot of information on that subreddit about churning in general so I do recommend you stick around and read what they have over there as well.

The Southwest Companion Pass allows you one free ticket for every ticket you purchase for yourself. The limit is one free ticket per trip but you can use it on as many trips as you'd like for as long as you have the pass. This makes the Companion Pass a really good deal if you have a spouse or significant other you plan on bringing with you or even a family or friend (but do keep in mind you are limited to 3 different companions in a single calendar year).

To get the Companion Pass, you'll need to accrue 110,000 Southwest Points in a single calendar year. Points earned from signup bonuses and credit card spending will count towards the total, but purchasing points outright will not count. This is why its important to get the two cards with the 50,000 signup bonuses so you can minimize how much you'll need to spend on your credit card.

The two cards mentioned above, the Southwest Premier and the Southwest Plus, both have signup bonuses of 50,000 points for spending $2,000 in a 3 month period (assuming you use the reddit.com/r/churning referral links). This means that after completing the minimum spend on both cards you'll have at least 104,000 points. Only 6,000 to go! The quickest way to get those 6,000 would be via Manufactured Spending.

One very important consideration with the Southwest Companion Pass is that you get the pass for the year you earned the 110,000 points, plus the following year. So the earlier in the year you can accrue those points, the longer you have the pass. In fact, I've read stories of people who applied for the card in December and completed all of the spending requirements in their January billing cycle. This means they effectively have the pass for almost 2 full years.

A common question people will ask is whether they get to keep the 110,000 points. The answer is yes! And those 110,000 points are worth about $1,100 dollars so you can get two round trips out of it if you are savvy.

Thanks for reading,
Rybos

Chase 5/24 Rule

In 2016, Chase introduced what the credit card churning community calls the 5/24 rule. What it boils down to is Chase will only allow an individual to open 5 credit cards in a 24 month period. You'll want to keep the 5/24 rule in mind if you're planning on applying for a credit card through Chase because it can be the difference between getting approved or denied for a credit card. If you haven't received a new credit card within the last 24 months, you would be in the clear to open 5 credit cards with Chase. But also keep in mind that Chase does not approve more than 2 cards in a 30 day period. There are also some data points to suggest that Chase will not extend you a combined credit limit that is greater than half your annual income. So if you make say, $60,000/year, there is a chance that Chase will deny you more credit cards if your credit limit with them is already $30,000 or greater. The total credit limit rule is not a hard and fast one and seems to vary a bit from person to person but its good to keep in mind.

There are cards that do and don't count towards 5/24. Below is the list of known cards that fall into either of these categories.

Cards that fall under and count towards Chase's 5/24 rule:

• Cards from any other credit card lender (Citi, American Express etc.)
• Chase Sapphire Cards
• Chase Freedom Cards
• Chase Ink Cards
• Chase Southwest Cards
• Chase United Cards
• Chase Marriott Personal Card (all data points seem to suggest the business Marriott is exempt from 5/24)
• Chase Slate

Cards that do not fall under under and count towards Chase's 5/24 rule:

• Chase Hyatt Card
• Chase IHG Card
• Chase Ritz-Carlton Card
• Chase Marriott Business Card

If you don't see a card that falls under either of these lists, its because there aren't enough data points for it.

Thanks for reading,

Rybos

Earnhoney: The only site worth watching videos on

Today we'll talk about Earnhoney.com, which is in my opinion the only site worth watching videos on because of the comparatively high payouts.

Earnhoney is a website a lot like Swagbucks, but with less offers. Earnhoney has surveys, signup offers, and video playlists just like Swagbucks does. And the Earnhoney surveys actually have higher payouts but they are not prescreened. This means you might click through ten or more survey offers before you find one that you actually qualify for. The signup offers on Earnhoney are almost always also on the Swagbucks website and the Swagbucks offer will payout slightly more. Thus far it might seem like Earnhoney is a lower quality, lower-paying version of Swagbucks. But when it comes to the video playlists, Earnhoney beats out Swagbucks by a wide margin. This is because the payouts are much, much higher than Swagbucks.

When you visit Earnhoney, click on either the MatchedCars playlist or the TVGlee playlist. These will payout roughly $0.30/hour (you are lucky to get $0.10/hour on Swagbucks). That doesn't sound like much but it can add up if you stream these playlists on several devices at once. I currently stream the MatchedCars playlist on my laptop when I'm not using it (at night and while I'm at work during the day) and I stream TVGlee on my kindle. This consistently earns me about $3-5/day. You could earn a bit more if you have more devices and stream the other playlists.

Theres one thing you'll want to keep in mind when you're running the Earnhoney playlists: You'll want to stick with one video playlist per device. This is because you'll only get credited for the in-focus internet tab. So if you have two tabs open, each streaming one playlist, you'll only get credited for one. This is why I use two devices.

Thanks for reading,
Rybos

Swagbucks.com: Earn up to $100 per month and possibly more!

            In this post, I’m going to talk about Swagbucks.com – a website that allows you to earn gift cards for performing simple tasks by trading in the Swagbucks you’ve earned (Swagbucks are the website’s currency). In the online work-from-home community, Swagbucks is known for being one of the most reliable sites out there.  There are essentially five main ways to earn gift cards on Swagbucks and none of them are going to be powerful enough for you to quit your day job, but they will give you some extra spending money. I earn a little over $100 a month through Swagbucks on average and I use this to pay for most of the stuff I buy on Amazon. Some months are better than others and I’ve seen reports of people earning as much as $800 a month on Swagbucks but that is almost certainly not the norm and requires a significant time investment due to diminishing returns. I spend maybe 30-45 minutes each day so when you break this down on an hourly basis my earnings come out to less than $6//hr. For many people this makes Swagbucks not worth their time, but since I use it during my downtime at my day job I don’t mind the low payout rate (its a good way to kill time and I'm already in front of a computer). Even if you don’t think you’ll use the site very often it’s probably worth signing up for anyways. They offer some really good deals every now and then and there also some good ways to churn your credit cards through the shopping portal.

            So let’s breakdown the five main ways to earn with Swagbucks:

Earn Method 1: The first method we’ll discuss and the one I use most often is surveys. Swagbucks offers many surveys to their users and in return, the users earn Swagbucks currency. The payouts are not large, typically a 15-20 minute survey will earn you 80-100 Swagbucks (with 100SB = $1). Both the survey payout and estimated time it takes to complete can vary pretty wildly. I’ve gotten 1000SB's ($10) for a 5 minute survey before but this is extremely rare. There are a few things you can do to make your survey payouts higher:

1.     First and foremost, you’ll want to always answer your surveys truthfully. I’ve read stories of people who pretended to be an elderly Latino woman because certain demographics get better survey opportunities. But this means you would have to answer every survey you take as if you were an elderly Latino woman because Swagbucks and their partners will track the consistency of the answers you fill in on these surveys. If in Survey-A you claimed that your profession was a police officer but in Survey-B you said you’re actually a nurse practitioner, they are going to see these inconsistencies and eventually ban your account. So always be honest with your answers. Or at the very least, always be consistent (but seriously I recommend honesty).

2.     You also get a few extra Swagbucks for meeting a daily minimum goal (which changes each day but is usually between 100-200 SB). If you reach your daily goal, you are rewarded with a few extra SB. If you hit your daily goal seven days in a row you are rewarded a streak bonus. There are four streaks you can hit in a month and the reward is higher for hitting each one. So you’ll want to hit the daily goal each day of each month in order to get all the streak bonuses and maximize your earnings. This shouldn’t be too difficult if you complete 3 surveys each day. By the end of the month, the daily and streak bonuses will end up being around 800-1100SB’s (~$8-11) assuming you hit the daily goal each day.

3.     Third, there are some surveys that will qualify you for special studies or in-home product tests. Sometimes this can mean a half-hour phone call. Sometimes it will take place in an online forum. It might also take place in person (if it’s a medical study this is pretty likely). If you receive an opportunity like this, the payout is usually quite high. For instance, I qualified for an online study about gaming. I had to login each day for five days and answer a handful of questions about my gaming habits. I ended up with $150 for maybe two hours of work. If you factor in these opportunities, surveys can actually be pretty lucrative. Though I would like to mention that you won’t see these very often. I receive an invitation to a study very rarely, maybe 1 out of every 100 surveys. In-home product tests are more frequent but less lucrative. You might end up with a 12-pack of some new flavor of soda or a new hair-care product.

Earn Method 2: The second way of earning is to watch videos. I never do this because the payouts are insanely low and the videos they make you watch buffer slowly and are littered with advertisements. They also slow down my browser. From what I’ve read, there are people who pretty much only watch videos and think surveys are a waste of time so to each their own. The only effective way of earning through videos that I know of is to setup a “device-farm”, a.k.a buy a dozen of the cheapest cell phones you can find and have them each set to play the Swagbucks (and similar sites’) videos all day and night. Best case, each device would earn you 10 SB/hr. The main issue with this is you often have to interact with the video playlist (click on the screen and hit next) to keep it going so it’s not a passive way of earning. I don’t see this being a realistic option for people with a 9-5 job, but if you work at home and don’t mind maintaining 10+ mobile devices this can earn you about $1/hr.

Like I said before, I don’t think watching videos is worth my time but if you can figure out a way to make the videos run 24/7, completely passively, then I don’t see why you shouldn’t.

Earn Method 3: The third way of earning we’ll talk about is by completing the “Discover” offers. Swagbucks has many partners who will pay you to complete all sorts of offers. We can probably break the offers down into a few different categories:

1.     Offers that require basic info such as email address, name, address, birthdate, etc: These are usually pretty quick and the payouts range from 5-40 SB. There aren’t a ton of these and they can be very hit or miss in that they don’t always credit the promised payout. One partner in particular that I would recommend staying away from is Lifescript. I have completed maybe 10+ offers from Lifescript and never received a single payout.

2.     Offers that require a download (usually a smartphone app): I generally stay away from offers that want me to download something. It’s tough to justify a payout that equates to less than $0.50 in exchange for the off-chance the download is malicious. That said, downloads are usually one of two types.

a.    The first are apps that are simply trying to build a user base. More often than not these are mobile games. These have low payouts (usually single digit SB’s) and some will even require you to reach a certain in-game threshold (level 5 for instance) which can be quite time-consuming. The time required to earn these small amounts makes app downloads usually not worth it for me.

b.    The second are apps that want to track your data. Things like what websites you visit and how you use your phone, possibly even your text messages. I vehemently recommend against downloading such apps. They often try to lure you in with payouts in the 300-500 SB per month range. But, you will be foregoing your privacy. If I could put a dollar amount on selling my privacy it is much, much higher than $3-5 per month. Even if you don’t value your privacy now, you might someday down the road. So again, I would advise against these.

3.     Offers for free trials/samples of a product or service: There are lots of offers for free trials and free samples on Swagbucks. The free samples are extremely unreliable. Often they will ask you to provide basic info which includes an address so that they can send you a free sample of whatever it is they are marketing (most often it seems to be haircare and beauty products). I’d guesstimate that 95% of the time you are not going to receive the free sample and instead will be victim to a barrage of spam emails (looking at you, Lifescript). For this reason I now completely ignore “free sample” offers.

I’ve had much better luck with free trial offers. So far I’ve received a free month of Hulu, free Uber ride credits, and a free credit monitoring app that alerts me any time there are changes on my credit report. None of these cost me anything so it was nice to receive some Swagbucks for products and services I wanted to try out anyways (Hulu and Uber). But I would also like to caution that there are definitely some sketchy free trials. I’ve seen offers that claimed to be free but they wanted me to provide a credit card. If it’s truly a free offer, then they wouldn’t ask for a credit card. I just close the page anytime I come across these.

I also participated in an offer to become a driver for Uber. I ended up with 750 SB’s (~$7.50) just for providing them with valid information and applying to be a driver. Then I received 8,000 SB’s (~$80.00) for completing my first drive (plus I got the normal Uber rate for driving). And now I actually drive for Uber on the weekends to supplement my income from my day-to-day job so it ended up being the best “free” deal I’ve come across. Offers like this are extremely rare but definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

4.     Paid offers and trials: There are quite a bit of these on Swagbucks. Some of them are worth taking advantage of but I would say most are not. They usually go something like this: You sign up for a product/service and in return you receive a certain amount of SB’s. I tend not to participate in these offers unless the SB’s I will receive outweighs the amount I’ll pay for the product or service. Occasionally I’ll see an offer for something I wanted to buy anyways such as an offer for Hefty trash bags I recently participated in. The deal was you buy Hefty trash bags at Target (something I needed to buy anyways) and you get 500 SB’s back. So offers like these can end up saving you a fair bit of money but they are only redeemable once.

Subscription offers can be a bit dangerous because they will automatically renew themselves. So if you aren’t diligent about cancelling them then they will cost you more than the SB’s you earned for signing up. One way to combat this is to complete the sign up process with prepaid Visa gift cards. Conveniently, you can redeem your Swagbucks points for a prepaid Visa gift card. So the basic workflow would go like this:

                                          I.         You see an offer that pays 10,000 SB’s (~$10) if you sign up for a recurring subscription product that costs $5 per month.

                                        II.         You redeem 5,000 SB’s (that you already earned) for a $5 prepaid Visa gift card

                                      III.         When you are prompted to fill in your credit card information on the offer page, you simply fill in the number on the prepaid Visa gift card instead of using your credit card.

                                      IV.         You collect 10,000 SB’s for a net profit of 5,000 SB’s (~$5).

There are risks to doing this though. For one thing, some of the offers will deny your sign-up if they detect you are using a prepaid Visa gift card. A bigger but less likely risk is that they revoke the 10,000 SB’s they gave you (and possibly keep the $5 from your prepaid Visa).

In summary there are definitely ways to make a few extra bucks if you take advantage of these offers properly, but it is not without risk. The best thing you can do is read up on the Disclaimer attached to each offer and look for any fine print on the offer’s webpage in order to be sure you aren’t violating any of the terms.

5.     Cashback portals and churning: The last thing we’ll talk about is Swagbucks’ cashback and churning opportunities. Swagbucks is one of the major “Cashback Portals” in that if you visit a website directly from their site and buy something, you’ll earn cashback. The cashback opportunities can be quite high. For instance, at the time of this writing, Swagbucks is offering 8% cashback on purchase made through Hotels.com and 11% at Expedia.com.

Not only does this mean Swagbucks is a great place to visit before you plan on doing any shopping, but its also a decent portal to churn your credit cards through. If you haven’t read our posts on Churning yet, I highly recommend you do so. 

So how do we use Swagbucks to help us Churn credit cards? Well it just so happens that one of the websites Swagbucks provides a cashback bonus for is Giftcards.com. Currently the rate is 1% on all purchases made at Giftcards.com if you visited the site through the Swagbucks portal. While this isn’t much, it does help to offset the fees that are tacked on when purchasing Visa Gift cards. Assuming you’ve already read up on our Churning posts, the workflow goes like this:

                                          I.         You sign up for a credit card with a $625 signup bonus after you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months (Such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred)

                                        II.         In order to meet the minimum spend, you plan on purchasing Visa Gift Cards and using those to load cash onto your American Express Serve ONE VIP card.

                                      III.         We will use giftcards.com to make the purchases because they offer $500 Visa Gift Cards for only $500 + $6.95 fee.

                                      IV.         Instead of visiting the website directly, we visit it through the Swagbucks.com portal which will give us 1% cashback on our purchases. This means we get 507 SB’s (~$5.07) in cashback for our purchase, partially offsetting the $6.95 fee.

                                        V.         We could do this 8 times to meet the minimum spend of the card and the total net costs to us would only be 8 * ($6.95 - $5.07) = $15.04. To me this is pretty acceptable because then we unlock the $625 in rewards. Thought I would never recommend meeting a minimum spend solely by purchasing gift cards (you are likely to have your credit card account cancelled) but that’s a topic for another day).

So I hope you’ve learned a thing or two about Swagbucks and the various ways to make money on the site. Like I said earlier, I personally collect about $100 from the site in an average month and I think that’s very attainable for most people.

If you haven’t signed up already,

Here is a link to my referral page: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/rybosome

And here is a non-referral link: http://www.swagbucks.com/

Thanks for reading,

Rybos

Meeting Minimum Spends Quicker with Manufactured Spending

I'm going to assume you've read the getting started guide on churning. In that post, we discussed which cards you should open first. If you go through the steps outlined in that post, and open five chase cards (for simplicity's sake we'll assume you went with Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Chase Ink+, Chase IHG, and Chase Marriot Rewards) then you would have accumulated enough points for a 5-7 day vacation anywhere within the Continental United States. You would probably have to fly economy class but the entire trip would more or less be free (minus miscellaneous spending on restaurants and activities).

Most people would agree this is a really good deal. But some people are more ambitious than others. There are many churners, myself included, who dream of a vacation where the flights are first class and the hotels are the cream of the crop. I'm talking a $25,000 trip for two in the finest resort in the Maldives. For the majority of people this is out of reach. And it will take time if you plan to do it through churning alone. But, for the ambitious churner, this is legitimately attainable. And it can be done by regularly opening multiple credit cards with large sign-up bonuses all at once. This might mean you'll have to meet a combined minimum spend of $20,000-30,000 in a three month period. In addition, anytime an exciting new credit card offer comes along, (Chase Sapphire Reserve comes to mind) you'll want to be in a position to immediately take advantage of it. The vast majority of people can't do this through day-to-day spending alone. In comes Manufactured Spending.

The most famous example of Manufactured Spending I can think of is when Brad Wilson earned over 4,000,000 frequent flyer miles buying $1 coins from the U.S. Mint. The U.S. Mint had a special promotion in 2005 where they were selling newly minted $1 coins for face value. Shipping was free and the website accepted credit cards. Brad managed to buy around $3,000,000 worth of $1 coins before they shut the deal down. It worked like this: He'd max out his credit cards by buying the $1 coins for face value. So for simplicity's sake lets say his credit card limit was $10,000 (it was probably a lot more but I can't find any numbers). Brad would then buy 10,000 $1 coins for exactly $10,000. Once they were delivered, he would deposit them in his bank account and then pay off his credit card bill with the deposit. Each purchase would earn credit card rewards (in this case it was frequent flyer miles) and the whole process cost him nothing (other than some time). Essentially all he was doing was moving money in a circle and collecting points in the process. Unfortunately the U.S. Mint caught on and shut this down and today's methods for Manufactured Spending are not as straight forward.

So before we dive into Manufactured Spending theres just a handful of things you need to consider. First of all you'll want to have a very good idea of where you want to travel and roughly how much it'll cost. And maybe even more importantly, you'll want to figure out which hotels and airlines operate in that location. It doesn't make much sense to churn a card that offers points for Alaska Airlines if you're planning on going to Africa (a continent they don't service). With this information, you'll have a handle on which cards it makes sense for you to open. You might not think it's possible, but there are churners out there that end up having hundreds of thousands of points they don't end up using simply because they didn't plan this part out very well. I won't talk about which cards it makes sense to open because I won't know what your goals are (first class or economy flights) or where you want to go. So that part does require some research on your end.

Now lets get to the exciting part: Manufactured Spending. The basic idea of Manufactured Spending is that you "fake" your spending. It is definitely frowned upon, and most businesses have put in place measures to make manufactured spending difficult if not impossible. But there are a few simple methods still out there.

AMEX Serve One VIP Card: By far the easiest method for manufactured spending is with the AMEX Serve One VIP card. You can load this card with money at a select few retailers by telling the cashier you'd like to load money on your card. What makes this card special is that you can load it with Visa Gift Cards. The workflow is as follows:

Purchase a Visa Gift Card with your credit card -> Load the AMEX Serve with your Visa Gift Card -> pay off your credit card bill. 

The reason this works is because certain Visa Gift Cards are coded as debit cards at the register. Depending on the retailer (looking at you Walmart) you'll want to avoid using the Vanilla Visa Gift Cards because the cash register is coded to cancel the transaction for these cards. If you don't see the word Vanilla, then you should be good. You can find Visa Gift Cards at many different retailers but you'll want to order from a store that meshes the best with the credit card you're going to use. For instance, the Chase INK earns 5x points at office stores such as Staples so you'll want to buy your Visa Gift Cards either in-store or on Staples.com to maximize your rewards. Once you have your gift cards, you'll want to be absolutely positive that they are activated (depending on where you buy from they'll already be activated) and that you know the pin number. For many VGC's, this will be the last 4 digits of the card number but this is not always the case (Read the packaging on the gift card for details!). You can load your AMEX Serve ONE VIP at Family Dollar, Krogers, Walmart, and a few other retailers. Just tell the cashier you want to load money using a debit card. Some cashiers don't care but others might tell you they can't take gift cards (they aren't telling the truth but don't argue with them). It is most definitely a good idea to do a trial run of this whole process with a small amount, say a $25 gift card in case something goes wrong. And again, absolutely do not argue with the cashier if they tell you they can't load your card - this is not the type of activity you want to bring unnecessary attention too. Once the money is loaded to your AMEX Serve, you can go online to their website and use their bill-pay option to pay off your credit card. A few additional notes about Serve cards:

• There is a $2500 daily limit for offline loads and a $500 limit for a single transaction. This means you'll need to perform at least five transactions to hit the offline daily load (though I do not recommend you ever hit this limit). 
• There is a $200 daily limit for online loading from a debit card. But do not under any circumstances use a Visa Gift Card to load your Serve card online. The Serve website will recognize you are trying to load from a gift card and shut down your account.
• There is a $7,000 combined monthly limit to loads. 
• AMEX is very proactive about shutting down Serve accounts if they think you are manufactured spending. And since you are, it is a good idea to not hit the daily and monthly limits.

Money Orders: The second, and in my opinion less desirable method is to use Money Orders. The workflow is the same as above:

Purchase a VGC with your credit card -> Purchase a Money Order with the VGC -> Use the Money Order to pay off the credit card bill.

Money Orders are likely to be scrutinized more heavily than loading your Serve card. This means you will likely find the person at the register asking you more questions than you would if you were simply loading a Serve card (not always the case but be prepared anyways). Remember: you aren't doing anything illegal, but you are doing something that can look sketchy and is generally frowned upon. So if you find yourself being interrogated by a cashier, there is no harm in being honest (other than that they might not process the order for you). Money Orders can be bought at many different places: Walmarts, Grocery Stores, and Post Offices are the most common. I personally go to the Post Office but thats a convenience thing for me more than anything. Like with loading a Serve card, you'll want to do a small scale test run - say a $25 gift card. And you'll want to be sure to tell the person at the register that you are loading from a debit card (this is technically not inaccurate). The biggest thing you'll want to consider with the Money Order method is that there will be a small fee and it will vary depending on where you are getting the Money Order from. So if you have a $500 Visa Gift Card and the Money Order fee is $0.70, you'll want to ask for a $499.30 Money Order.


There are certainly more methods for Manufactured Spending out there but most churners don't like to talk about them. Currently, these are the two least expensive methods I know of but I am always on the lookout for more. At the end of the day, the best thing you can do is keep your eyes peeled for any potential opportunities. Anytime you can buy something that can be easily converted into cash, there is a manufactured spending opportunity. Thats partially why I threw in the story of Brad Wilson at the beginning of this post - I hope that it inspires you to always be on the lookout. And since these opportunities tend to not last long once they become widely known, it is beneficial for you to get in on a new method as early as possible.

Thanks for reading,
Rybos

Churning Starter Guide: How to Churn Your Way to an (Almost) Free Vacation

If you're reading this I'm going to assume you've gone through the introduction to churning post already which is mostly just a warning about the dangers of churning and some reasons why it may or may not be for you. So now I'd like to talk about how to actually get you started churning credit cards and which cards you should open first.

Theres a few prerequisites for churning. For one thing you need to have a solid credit score. In my opinion that means anything 720 or above. If your score is lower than this then there is a solid chance you will get denied for some of the cards you apply for. There are quite a few ways to find out your score, some of them free and some of them paid. I got lucky and opened a card (Discover) before I found out about churning and they include my FICO score on each monthly bill. So if you don't know your credit score then you need to find that out before you proceed any further. Below are two possible scenarios:

Your credit score is 720 or greater:
Great! You're ready to start churning!

Your credit score is less than 720:
The good news is that you can still give churning a shot.
The bad news is that there is a chance you will be denied when applying for some of the best credit cards. To remedy this, you can work on building up your credit score. You can do this by opening a credit card that is geared towards people with less than stellar credit. If your score is really low (i.e. 500's or below) then your only option might be a Secured Credit Card. These usually require a deposit. I recommend the Discover It Secured Credit Card. This card will allow you to build credit and Discover also throws in a monthly FICO score that allows you to monitor your progress.
If your score is less than 720 but greater than 550 you can probably qualify for cards that don't require a cash deposit.
To build your credit score up, simply make purchases on your new card AND pay off the balance in full each and every month. There is no better way to destroy your credit score than by missing payments. Its also very expensive in the long run because you will incur late payment fees as well as interest on the balance. So I cannot emphasize this enough: PAY OFF YOUR BALANCES IN FULL EACH AND EVERY MONTH.

Which Cards First?
So you're ready to start churning and you're wondering which cards to open first? Well unlike many things, the answer to this is pretty much universal: you'll want to open up Chase credit cards first. There are two reasons for this: For one thing, Chase happens to offer some of the best rewards of any credit card company. But secondly, and more importantly, Chase has a rule that they will only accept your credit applications if you have less than 5 credit cards opened in the last 24 months. This is known as the 5/24 rule. So if you've opened zero credit cards in the last two years, you should have no issue opening five new Chase cards. If you've opened three cards in the last two years, Chase will likely only allow you to open two credit cards.
With this in mind, you also need to figure out how much you normally spend in a three month period. I say this because, in order to earn the signup bonuses for your Chase credit cards (and any other credit cards), it is absolutely imperative that you meet the minimum spend within the allotted time period. This will vary from card to card (usually, but not always 90 days). Missing the minimum spend by even a single dollar will disqualify you for the signup bonus.
So at this stage, there are two cards I recommend. And the one that you choose first should be entirely based upon your ability to meet the minimum spend:
Chase Freedom: This is a good starter card for people who don't have very high spending habits. You only have to spend $500 in the first three months to earn $150 cash back. Most people can probably spend $500 on gas and groceries alone. This card also offers 5% cash back on rotating categories. So depending on the time of the year, you can earn 5% cash back on whatever the category is at the time. Sometimes its restaurants, sometimes its gas, sometimes its wholesale clubs like Costco. All other purchases are 1% cash back. So all told its a decent starter credit card. The signup bonus isn't huge but it's $150 you wouldn't have had otherwise.
Chase Sapphire Preferred: This is my favorite credit card at the moment and you'll probably hear that same sentiment echoed by many churners. However, the minimum spend can be quite intimidating: Spend $4,000 in the first three months and get 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points (redeemable for $625 because the points are valued 1.25x). Again, if you don't think you can meet the minimum spend then don't apply for this card. If you can though, this card has a whole host of benefits, most of which are travel related (and as someone who churns to pay for traveling I haven't yet found a better card). You'll earn 2% cash back on travel and restaurant purchases so the cash back isn't crazy high but its decent. It includes zero foreign transaction fees (this is very rare) and travel interruption insurance (also very rare). It does however carry a $95 yearly fee starting in the second year. So if you decide you don't like the card you can cancel it before the fee kicks in (though I don't recommend doing this). One more thing is that you'll receive 5,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points if you add an Authorized User (this costs you nothing). So after meeting the minimum spend you'd walk away with at least 59,000 Ultimate Rewards points.
If you have the means to meet the minimum spend on the Chase Sapphire then you should elect to open this card instead of the Chase Freedom. From here on out, most of the Chase Cards I will recommend have similarly high minimum spends as the Chase Sapphire.
Chase Sapphire Reserve: This is one of Chase's newest credit cards and has churners everywhere going wild including myself. Why? Well for starters it has a 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards bonus for spending $4,000 in the first three months. With this card, the value of all points you earn is multiplied by 1.5x so the points can be redeemed for $1,500 in travel rewards. Transfer your points from your Chase Sapphire Preferred and you're sitting on at least $2,250 worth of travel rewards. There's also a $300 yearly travel credit applied automatically on travel-related purchases. Chase has a broad definition of travel compared to other card companies so this can be used on anything from flights to Uber rides to subway passes. You'll get 3x points on travel and dining which makes this the go-to card for those types of purchases. There is a $450 annual fee, but if you subtract the $300 travel credit, its more like a $150 annual fee. This is arguably the best publicly available credit card offer available. If you're just getting into the churning game, make absolutely sure that you can get this as one of your first five credit cards.

What Next?
Where you go from here depends on your priorities. I recommend your next cards all be from Chase (assuming you can get approval) because of the 5/24 rule. The best ones and the order I recommend are as follows:
Chase Ink+: This is a business card but you'd be surprised about what qualifies as a business. If you're making money outside of your full-time employer, you could file it as income The minimum spend is $5,000 and the current signup bonus is 60,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points. If you got this card following the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve, you are looking at 65,000 + 59,000 + 104,000 = 228,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. That's worth about $3,420 when redeemed through the Sapphire Reserve Portal. The Ink Plus also has a year-round 5% cash back on Office Stores such as Staples and Office Depot. So if you find yourself shopping at either of those stores often you'll want to use your Ink Plus to maximize your cash back. (This also makes the card extremely useful for manufactured spending which is a more advanced topic we will discuss later). This card does carry a $95 annual fee but its more than covered by the signup bonus.

Following the Chase Ink, I recommend you pick 2 of the following 5 cards:
Chase IHG Rewards Club Select Card: I would argue this card is a no brainer. If you check the Chase website, the current offer is for 60,000 IHG points after spending $1,000, but they have an 80,000 point bonus offer every once in a while. This is usually good for two nights in IHG hotels. The card also carry's an annual free night. All this for only a $49 yearly fee. The free night alone is worth more than the fee so its a good idea to grab this card and hold onto it forever.
Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Card: Earn 50,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points (so these are not the Chase Ultimate Rewards) after spending $2,000 in three months. These points are worth at least $500 assuming you spend them responsibly and should be enough points for a roundtrip flight within the United States. This card does carry an annual fee of $99 so take that into consideration.
Chase Marriot Rewards Premier Card: Earn 80,000 Marriot Rewards points after spending $3,000 in three months. Marriot Rewards points have a slightly worse conversion rate than other cards but this should be enough points for roughly two nights in a decent hotel. This card does carry an $85 annual fee but it is offset by the annual free night.
Chase Ritz Carleton Premier Rewards Card: This card has an awesome signup bonus of three free nights in any Tier 1-4 Ritz-Carleton hotel after you meet the minimum spend of $5,000 in three months. The annual fee is quite high at $450, but if you have never stayed in a Ritz-Carleton, this is the cheapest way to do it.
Chase Hyatt Card: 2 free nights in a Hyatt hotel after spending $1,000 in the first three months. And the annual fee of $75 is waived for the first year. Like the IHG card, you'll earn a free night every year.

My ideal scenario would be Chase Sapphire Preferred > Chase Sapphire Reserve > Chase Ink+ > Chase IHG Rewards Club Select > Chase Marriot Rewards Premier. Depending on where you want to travel, the last two cards are interchangeable with the others on the above list. For this reason, its worth it to figure out ahead of time what airlines and hotels are available in your desired destination.

So how long will this take you? Well if we assume you are opening a card every 3 months, then this process will take you just over a year. And you'll have earned enough rewards points and free hotel stays for two people to travel anywhere in the continental United States for five days or more. If you live on the west coast, you can probably make it down to Hawaii.

If you're even more ambitious, stay tuned for our later posts. We'll talk about ways you can meet minimum spends even quicker than you normally would through your day to day purchases alone. Its not uncommon for experienced churners to travel first class to Asia or Europe once a year on credit card rewards alone.

Thanks for reading,
Rybos

Intro to Credit Card Churning

I could talk about credit card churning for hours, literally. So I'm going to divide this topic into a few different posts. Consider this the introduction. Lets start with the What, Why and Who.

What is Credit Card Churning?:

Credit Card Churning is the process of repeatedly applying for credit cards to harvest the sign-up bonuses.

Why do people Churn?:

It depends on the individual but the main reason someone would churn credit cards is for the sign-up bonuses. For instance, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card offers (at the time of this post) $625 back after you spend $4,000 in 3 months. Depending upon your goals, you might churn for cash back, airline miles, or even just to build your credit score. 

Who?:

Okay so, realistically, it is not a good idea for just anyone to churn credit cards. For one thing, there is the inherent risk that you won't be able to pay off your bill each and every month. In some cases the interest and late payment fees can wipe out the sign-up bonus, or even cost you more than the sign-up bonus was worth. If there is one single golden rule to credit card churning it is this: PAY OFF YOUR ENTIRE BALANCE. EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.

Other reasons that credit card churning might not be for you:

1. You're credit score is too low: You can't get approved for the cards with the best bonuses if your credit score is too low. For anyone with a credit score below 720, getting consistently approved can be difficult.
2. You are planning on applying for a home loan within the next two years: If you are planning to buy a home soon and will need a mortgage, churning credit cards is not a good idea. This is because the banks will see that you have recently opened a large number of credit cards and deem you to be a risky borrower. This can possibly lead to two bad outcomes:
1. You get outright denied for your loan, or
2. You pay a higher interest rate on your loan.
3. You already have a lot of debt: If you have lots of debt already (student loans, car payments, etc.) then it is a good idea to focus on paying those off first. As mentioned before, even one missed payment can wipe out the benefits of churning and since you already have lots of debt, it may be even more likely you will miss a payment.

So if you've read this far and still think churning is for you, we'll briefly go over the basics. On the surface, there is a very simple formula to churning:

Step 1: Apply for a card with a large sign-up bonus.

Step 2: Meet the minimum spend within the time limit (usually 3 months) by buying things you normally would. (Think groceries, gas, eating out at restaurants, etc.)

Step 3: Once the minimum spend is met, repeat steps 1 & 2.

Step 2 is particularly important. If you find yourself spending more than you normally would then STOP, churning is not yet for you. You should be 100% certain that you can meet the minimum spend on a credit card by purchasing things you were already going to purchase anyways. You absolutely do not want to be in a position where you are frivolously spending on things you don't need or wouldn't normally purchase. 

So at this point, you probably fall into one of two buckets: 

In bucket A are those who are not ready to churn. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. When I first heard about churning, I too realized I was not ready. I had other expenses that needed to be taken care of first. Now that I am financially stable I can churn safely without having to worry about getting stuck in a credit card debt cycle. If it sounds like this describes you, I highly recommend starting out with one of the other money-making methods on this blog and eventually coming back to churning down the road.

In bucket B are those who are ready to churn. You are financially stable, have a good credit score, and aren't planning to apply for a home loan within the foreseeable future. If this describes you, then I extend an invitation to our more in-depth posts about churning. There we will discuss the strategies for maximizing your potential gains from churning. 

Thanks for reading,

Rybos