Avoiding big purchases and unnecessary upgrades—like luxury cars or oversized houses—makes it easier to choose your work or retire early. But some big costs are hard to avoid. What if you could travel for free using credit card sign-up bonuses?
Travel is one of our biggest yearly expenses. We love getting out of Minnesota’s cold at least once each winter. Can sign-up bonuses cover roundtrip flights for our family of four? In short: yes, they can go a long way.
If you have solid credit (700+ FICO) and a decent household income, you can usually get approved for multiple cards over time. I keep a stack of cards that proves it. Last year we avoided roughly $3,000 in airfare, rental cars, and hotels just by hitting new-card bonus offers. It’s straightforward: find cards with big welcome bonuses, make sure you can meet the 3-month spending requirement, then cancel before the annual fee comes due if you don’t want to keep the card.
Two resources I use often are TravelSort (Hilary Stockton’s blog) and The Points Guy. They give great advice on which cards are best and how to get the most from points. It’s important to track every card—open and closed—in a spreadsheet. Usually you can reapply for the same card and be eligible for another bonus about 24 months after closing it.
First tip: keep a detailed spreadsheet to manage sign-up bonuses and frequent-flyer accounts in one place. Second tip, and just as important: don’t use points as an excuse to live like a rock star. Even if airfare is covered, you still pay for meals, ground transport, park tickets, and hotels. We visit grandparents in opposite time zones each year; those costs add up. Save your points and use them wisely.
The best value usually comes from transferring credit card points to airline miles, especially for international trips. Some cards let you book directly or take cash back, but converting points to miles often gives more value. Points have kept our travel costs very low year after year. If you get really good at this, you can travel in comfort around the world. Hilary and her husband combine points and sometimes collect over a million a year—if I get a quarter of that, I’m happy.
To earn the bonuses you must meet a minimum spend on the new card within 90 days of approval. We put as many regular expenses as possible on new cards to hit that target on time. My spreadsheet helps track progress during the 90-day window. Big bills—like income or property taxes—can often be paid by card (sometimes for a fee). If you run a business, business cards can handle maintenance and other costs.
My go-to recommendation is the Chase Sapphire Preferred, or better, the Chase Ink Business Preferred. Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to domestic airlines like United or Southwest for good value. Another useful card is the Barclaycard Arrival Plus, which gives $400 in travel statement credits after spending $3,000 on travel in the first 90 days. Not bad for following the rules and paying your balance in full each month.
You can often combine Chase Ultimate Rewards across personal and business accounts. We pool points between my wife’s and my business cards and our personal cards. Using bonuses effectively saves us nearly $3,000 a year on travel. Invested over 20 years, that adds up to about $130,000.
For years we kept the Chase Sapphire Preferred and paid the $95 annual fee because it’s the hub of our Ultimate Rewards system. My wife and I also have Chase Ink Business cards from our Airbnb business that generate lots of points. We recently canceled Sapphire but found a downgrade option first—the Chase Freedom Unlimited—so we could still aggregate Ultimate Rewards. Card issuers are often willing to let you downgrade to a no-fee product rather than lose you as a customer.
Closing too many cards can hurt your credit score enough to affect loan terms, so keep as much available credit as possible and tuck unused cards away. I generally leave no-fee cards open forever. For cards with annual fees, I cancel them just before the fee renews, unless the card’s value justifies the cost. Some fee cards I keep include our Costco Visa, Chase Business Ink, and Chase Sapphire, because we can pool their Ultimate Rewards for better travel options.
My approach is to reapply for cards about two years after closing the original account—by then you’re usually eligible for the sign-up bonus again. I don’t overdo it, since each bonus requires meeting a spend threshold. But typical household and business expenses—groceries, utilities, childcare, charity—usually cover that.
Remember: these same companies make huge profits from customers who carry balances and pay interest. Card churners who pay in full are a minority. Surprisingly, my credit score hasn’t suffered from opening and closing cards; I might open three or four a year and close about the same number, and I still sit in the high 700s. The key is to be a responsible customer: use the cards and pay the statements in full. Card companies still earn a lot from transaction fees, not only interest.