You’ve come to the right place! Reddit and DoC are fantastic resources, but you can read them and lurk in this thread only so much. You need to ask questions and decide which cards work best for your situation. We all want to help!
First, send
@SouthFayetteFan or
@Albort a PM about getting set up on reddit and join us over in the /r/DISchurners subreddit.
Then, you need to take a look at your credit report to figure out how many credit cards have been reported as opened in the past 24 months. Credit Karma or Chase’s Credit Journey can give you a free, good enough count based on your credit activity. If you’ve read along, you know that store cards may or may not count, and authorized user cards likely count. This will affect your 5/24 status with regards to what and how many cards you can apply for with Chase, and therefore impact your whole strategy. Once we know what cards you have in your wallet, when you opened them, and what your 5/24 count is, we can help you formulate a more definite plan of attack. And because earning these credit card bonuses means meeting minimum spending requirements, usually within three months’ time, it would help if we get an idea of your expenses and whether you have any big bills coming up (e.g., can you plan to pay DS’s college tuition by credit card in the fall?)
@speedyfishy already gave you some solid advice. We generally always recommend you try to start with Chase cards that earn Ultimate Rewards points first because of Chase’s 5/24 rule that bars you from getting many of their cards after you’ve gotten 5 credit cards from any issuer in the past 24 months, so get Chase’s first; and UR points are relatively easy to earn, very easy to understand, and are flexible to use for redemption through Chase’s travel portal or transfer to partner airlines and hotel rewards programs.
It also sounds like you need to save some room for two Southwest cards at some point to get a Companion Pass. It would really help if your DH was onboard with this, but I understand having a reluctant spouse. I think if your husband saw the tangible benefit of credit card rewards, he might be more open to joining in as a second player. The SW CP could be an amazing perk that shows DH, look, free travel!
I know you said you’re not interested in business cards right now, but you should really consider applying for the
Amex SPG Business credit card this month. Like I said above, we generally like to recommend applying for Chase cards first because of the 5/24 rule, but the SPG Biz is offering an all time high bonus right now — 35k Starpoints for $7k of spend in 3 months — but
this offer ends 3/28/18. And getting approved for the SPG Biz will not count against your 5/24 with Chase. If you’ve followed along with this thread, you know a lot of us highly value Starpoints because of all the airlines you can transfer the points to, its ability to transfer back and forth with Marriott, and extra bonuses for transferring 20k miles or booking 5 reward nights. But because of the Marriott/Starwood merger, Marriott and SPG rewards programs will be combined sometime later this year or next year, and Chase and Amex will be issuing new Marriott card products soon, so no one knows if we’ll see another offer this good for the SPG Biz. You mentioned that there’s a Starwood hotel near DS’s college and you plan to stay at other Starwood properties for DS’s lacrosse games. The SPG Biz would earn you 4x Starpoints on paid stays, and you could use those points toward reward stays when visiting DS or at the Swan/Dolphin.
At some point, you may need to be more open to business cards. If you’ve ever sold anything on eBay, Craigslist, Facebook, Letgo, etc., you’re a business! If you do any side gigs, have an Etsy shop, you’re a business! Business cards from Amex and Chase come with very generous signup bonuses and don’t appear on your personal credit report and therefore don’t count against your 5/24. A side benefit of that is, if you find yourself shifting a lot of spend to your business credit cards, that credit utilization won’t count against you personally (even though you’re still responsible for paying it off) or show up on your personal credit report, so you should see an uptick in your credit score.
As for a card to add DS to as an AU, I’m kind of thinking maybe the Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) if you decide to get that card as part of a double dip with the Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR).
@speedyfishy touched on this strategy above, but I think you could probably wait on these two cards until after you’ve gotten and met the minimum spend on the SPG Biz. The reason being, because the SPG Biz won’t add to your 5/24 count, presumably you have enough open slots to get both the CSP and CSR. And if you’ve followed along with this thread, you know that the only way to get both the CSP and CSR together, and earn both of their signup bonuses, is to apply and get approved for both on the same day (double dip) as a way around the One Sapphire rule. The signup bonus recently went up on the CSP to 60k UR points, with a $4k minimum spend in 3 months. A lot of people think there’s hope that the CSR’s signup bonus of 50k UR will also go up in the coming months based on the strength of this product to Chase’s bottom line and how this more premium product has a smaller signup bonus compared to the CSP. Anyway, if you do get the CSP (preferably as part of a double dip with the CSR), you could add DS as an AU for free and earn 5k UR for adding an AU card.
Again, please join us on DISchurners! Take a look at your credit report and let us know how your wallet and accounts history for the past 24 months looks. Let us know what your budget looks like, and we’ll get you set! If you do find any of our advice helpful, we do hope you’ll show some thanks in return by applying through one of our members’ links.
Hope to see more of you in here now that you’ve presented yourself!
