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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have both Amex membership rewards and Chase.   Amex has historically been my go-to, but I'm branching out to Chase.

Posters have correctly advised that most of the points come from sign-up bonuses (not flying).  I used to fly regularly for work in business class long haul, and in my busiest year I've accumulated maybe 120,000 airlines miles.  While the same could have been had with a couple of credit cards.

The idea is to strategically acquire one card after another to collect reward bonuses.

In the last 9 months I've exhausted the rewards for Amex Platinum, and IHG Premier rewards.  Currently spending down Chase Business Cash, and plan to apply for another Chase and IHG in a month or so.  Read up on how often you should be doing this, I've made a couple of inexperienced mistakes.

This year's travel so far:

- going to Amsterdam with 2 kids for spring break (Air France saver awards, 34K round trip per person)

- going to Turkey with 2 kids in July (Air France saver awards, about 92K roundtrip for 3 )

- going to St. Augustine, FL in November for 5 days with the entire family (DH and I plus 3 kids)

- currently spending and saving points for a trip to London for all five of us next spring break.  This will come from IHG rewards and from either Chase or Amex spend.

It's more powerful if both spouses play this game. [/quote]

This is impressive. Where can I learn how to play the game? Anything I can read? We have sapphire and freedom, which I got many years ago. We have not cancelled them or gotten new cards. Are we supposed cancel the existing cards and apply for new ones to get the large sign in bonus miles? [/quote]

https://frequentmiler.com/start-here/[/quote]

Thank you. It looks like I will not be able to cancel sapphire reserve or downgrade it to become eligible for another round of sign up bonus. If I do that, I will keep the points, but lose the 1-1 transfer or 1.5 point conversion in the chase ultimate reward ecosystem until I get a new sapphire card, which is not guaranteed. [/quote]

You can get a Sapphire Preferred (or another Reserve) bonus if it's been more than 4 years since your previous bonus. Downgrade your current card to a Freedom Unlimited, then maybe 3 days later apply for the Preferred (if it's been more than 4 years). Or you can refer your spouse, and get their bonus and a referral. Make yourself an authorized user on their Sapphire card, and then you can pool points across both people into one account.

The other, more lucrative longer run play for Chase UR is to get their business cards, which have huge bonuses, huge referral bonuses, and 3 cards, of which you can get all of them. Just refer back and forth between spouses and you can get around 120k points per new card. [/quote]

Thanks for this. We don’t a business (no business tax ID or anything). Appreciate the tips about maximizing points via Sapphire. [/quote]

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