Newbie to churning - how many cards is reasonable to sign up for?

[winnieofpooh]

My husband and I are looking to take one big splurge vacation next summer (so long as COVID doesn't have other plans...) before we get pregnant. I'm looking at getting us business class seats to Paris for the trip, and using miles to book them for "free." In order to do that, we'd need to sign up for two cards each. Is that too many in a short period of time? I honestly have no idea how many cards people open in a short amount of time when churning so just trying to gauge it. Trying to assuage my husband's fears that this will majorly affect our credit scores (both of us have scores around 790).

 

[Starport Seven-Five]

Not too much but make sure you understand the terms of each program. 5/24 rule, length of time between bonuses, etc can drive strategy.

How it impacts your credit score really depends on credit history. If you have a pretty thin credit report you will see a bigger drop. Any impact will be erased in 6 months though so unless you have a major purchase upcoming I wouldn’t worry about it.

 

[winnieofpooh]

Not too much but make sure you understand the terms of each program. 5/24 rule, length of time between bonuses, etc can drive strategy.

How it impacts your credit score really depends on credit history. If you have a pretty thin credit report you will see a bigger drop. Any impact will be erased in 6 months though so unless you have a major purchase upcoming I wouldn’t worry about it.

Cool, thanks! Yeah luckily we're trying for AA miles, and the Barclay's card doesn't have a minimum spend to hit their bonus so it makes 2/4 cards easy. No plans for any big purchases for at least 2 years so we should be good on that front as well.

 

[hsmamato2]

go visit the we love credit cards thread.... wealth of info there.

 

[trenty]

I don't churn - I work off of 5 cards between DH and myself. There are many who do churn and accumulate way more points for travel. I just don't feel it is necessary for my travel needs and don't want to be bothered keeping track of everything.
I second @hsmamato2 - pose your question in the credit cards thread. Many will chime in and tell you where to start and what to do (like starting with chase cards because of the 5/24 rule)

 

[wishuponastar1984]

I think two cards a piece is no big deal, just make sure you can meet the spending requirements to get the sign up bonus. One thing to remember is that everybody loves to travel to Europe in the summer. Biz class saver seats with miles are hard to come by. Even harder to get two on the same flight. You either need to be really flexible with your dates or be prepared to pay the "anytime" award prices.

 

[happ]

My husband and I are looking to take one big splurge vacation next summer (so long as COVID doesn't have other plans...) before we get pregnant. I'm looking at getting us business class seats to Paris for the trip, and using miles to book them for "free." In order to do that, we'd need to sign up for two cards each. Is that too many in a short period of time? I honestly have no idea how many cards people open in a short amount of time when churning so just trying to gauge it. Trying to assuage my husband's fears that this will majorly affect our credit scores (both of us have scores around 790).

I agree with the others about posing your question in the cc thread. My score has gone up since I began churning. As long as you learn as much as possible about doing it, you should be fine. As others have mentioned, you want to be wary of 5/24 because you don't want to lock yourselves out of the possibility of getting chase cards in the future. They have lucrative bonuses.