December 31, 2024

My Credit Card Roadmap for 2025

 

Being that it is the end of 2024, I thought it would be fitting to talk about what is on the credit card roadmap  for 2025. This is my second post on this blog what I am doing with credit cards points and miles. To read my previous blog post on how I win with credit card points and miles see the post here.

I am exactly at 5/24 currently. For those that do not know, Chase has a 5/24 rule where if someone has opened five personal credit cards in twenty-four months, they would be automatically denied for credit cards (unless under certain circumstances). The denial of credit cards goes beyond personal credit cards and extends to business credit cards as well.

With that said, in April of 2025 I will once again be under 5/24 as I will be be at 4/24. Here is what I have on the roadmap as of the writing of this post:



  1. Chase Business Ink Cash: Currently there is a signup promotion on the spend for the card where it is tiered. $350 of rewards can be earned for $3,000.00 spend in the first three months and $400 of the rewards can be earned for $3,000.00 in spend for the first six months. Assuming the promotion is still available in April. This will be the next card. Make no mistake, the $750.00 in rewards is not cash back and it is in the form of Chase Ultimate rewards points (which can be cashed out as cash back). It is a marketing play to put the rewards in dollars to make it resonate with more folks.


  2. Chase Marriott Boundless: I aspire to ultimately end up with five or six free night certificates each year from cards. Currently I am spending through the signup bonus for my third American Express Hilton Aspire card. My plan is to start collecting luxury Marriott free night reward certificates and it starts with this card which will eventually be product changed to the Ritz Carlton card after holding this card for a year (which no longer can be applied for anymore).This is going to be a multi year approach which also could lead to me getting lifetime Platinum Status with Marriott as well.


  3. American Express Business Gold: Just like in 2024, with the need to pay taxes. This card would be obtained with a no lifetime language link as well and elevated offers are typically 150,000-200,000 membership reward points range. The current Business Gold card I have would be cancelled when the annual fee is up and swapped out with this one for a year.


  4. American Express Business Platinum: Just link above, with taxes, there should be room to charge across two cards as it would allow for me to collect signup bonus on multiple cards. This card would be obtained with a no lifetime language link as well and elevated offers are typically 175,000-250,000 membership reward points range. The current Business Platinum card I have would be cancelled when the annual fee is up and swapped out with this one for a year.


  5. Chase Business Ink Preferred: The Ink Preferred would allow for the Sapphire Preferred to be cancelled. This card offers basically all of the same perks as the Preferred but on the business side. Folks may ask, "well are you not over 5/24 again and cannot get any more Chase cards after the Chase Marriott Boundless?" In June and July of 2025 I will have two more cards fall off of 5/24 status and it is anticipated that by then I will be at 3/24 after the approval of the Chase Marriott Boundless card.


  6. American Express Blue Business Plus: This card will finally round out the Amex trifecta. This card is much overdue but was never obtainable because of the Amex five card limit. Will try for it and potentially cancel one of my really old Amex cards if necessary. This card is a 2x multiplier on everything and fits the need for a catch all.


  7. America Express Business Delta Gold: Extra in case there is the bandwidth as this would potentially be my seventh card for the year. The main draw here is the Delta Stays credit, free first checked bag and priority boarding. I do fly Delta back from Salt Lake City to be able to go to the Delta Sky Club in SLC airport so on those trips I do not have any status or priority boarding. Once again, would potentially be subject to the Amex five card limit and how much the limit can be pushed.


  8. American Express Hilton Buiness: As of the time of wrting this the bonus is 175,000 Hilton Honors points. This card has a 5x multiplier for everything up to $100,000 spend on the card per year. Once again, would potentially be subject to the Amex five card limit and how much the limit can be pushed.

Let me know thoughts in the comments below and more importantly what is on your roadmap? I do offer credit card road mapping as a service and am more then happy to map out what make sense for you as well. Interested in coming a credit card roadmap of your own? Reach out to me here to book 1:1 time

Johnny @mrjohnnyma

December 18, 2024

Winning with Credit Card Points and Miles (A Road Warrior Perspective). 2024 Edition



This is not a typical blog I would write on this forum. Depending on the reception of this, there could potentially be more to come going forward. One of the biggest things of being a road warrior over the last four years is brought me is insight. It is not insight into the job, it is insight into how deep the rabbit hole can go in the realm of credit card points and miles. At my previous job as a traveling Consulting Architect, I did travel some, but I never spent too much time looking into how I maximize what I get back from all of that spend. To be fair, for my first year at this current job; I did not do too much of that as I put everything on one card and did not apply for an get new cards at the velocity as I do today. For my job, I am a staff Sr. Solutions Architect that travels for onsite customer visits/events and community events/trade shows. On a normal year I can travel fifteen/twenty five times. When I travel for work, all expenses are charged to my cards and I get things submitted for reimbursement.
 
I wanted to share some of the insight of what I have found, debunk a lot of the bad information and notions that folks have in the credit card space. 
  • The most common thing that folks ask when I tell them I get five-eight new cards a year and I cancel/downgrade cards that no longer work for me that carry an annual fee is that “does that not hurt your credit score?”. Not much. As of this writing my score across all three credit bureaus is ~800. Most lenders consider anything over 720 as very good/exceptional. There are folks out there that preach how people should have a perfect 850 credit score. I have yet to ever be denied a new loan or for a refinance of a loan for as long as I have done this with cards. Since I am already an American Express customer, all new cards are soft credit inquiries after the hard credit inquiry for my first card. Yes, applying for and getting five-eight cards a year elsewhere dings my credit score five/ten points at a time, but the score generally recover in a short period of time. If we examine the breakdown from the three credit bureaus, new credit/inquiries only count for 10% of your credit score. 
  • The second most common thing asked is "how do you get business cards and use them for personal spending?" For issuers, the term business can be used very loosely. If folks periodically sell things on eBay, it can count as a business. There is no formal need to establish things such as LLCs, articles of incorporation, etc... When applying for business credit cards, simply apply as a sole proprietorship and use an SSN/EIN for the tax IDs. "Did you just not say that there is no need to establish business documents? Why would I get an EIN?" An EIN can be obtained from the IRS for the sole proprietorship for free and the process is a few minutes on the IRS website. This can be potentially useful in certain circumstances as some banks want this as opposed to just using an SSN. Be aware that some banks may require establishing a banking relationshitp in order to get business cards (typically easily enough to open a checking account, putting in funds and then apploying for the card).
 
The big question here is why do I get five-eight cards a year? In my world, getting new card and collecting the signup bonus is the quickest way to ingest large sums of points. An example calculation of this is if we were to take a card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, the signup bonus that typically is always there is 60,000 points for $4,000 in spend in three months. One of the big multipliers on that card is 3x multiplier on dining. To organically earn 60,000 points with the 3x multiplier on dining, one would need to spend $20,000 in dining. Now we see that there can be a significant shortcut to get to points. As that $4,000 in spend can be whatever (aka flights, hotels, dining, gift cards, etc..).

What is my card formula? Some folks cannot stomach the high annual fees on cards but living in the credit card space means we must be comfortable playing the game of arbitrage.

As shown in the picture above. I am more then happy to pay X if it means I can get back X + Y in value. In the example it would be something like the Chase World of Hyatt card. It is a $95 annual fee but in return it is a category one-four free night certificate. Also with a card such as the American Express Hilton Aspire; I pay a $550 annual fee and as long as I can get a free night certificate that is over $550, it is considered a win. This also does not include the other perks such as the resort credit, the airline incidental credit, Clear credit etc... Once I found this formula, it became a no brainer for me and my pursuit of points and miles. 

Here are some general rules/guidlines I use for aquiring credit cards:
  • Do not get credit cards without defining the goal outcome from getting credit cards. 
  • Only get credit cards where the signup bonus fits your spending pattern (aka do not get cards and spend like wild and then not have the means to pay them off).
  • Do not get cards with annual fees unless you can stomach paying the annual fee. Typically annual fees post for new cards a month after opening and then post again every twelve months when a new statement for that month posts.
  • I do not recomended to get cards unless you can pay the statement balance in full each month (similar to the above rule).
In my setup I always have new cards rolling in, but I also have a core setup that provides me the various statuses that I use when I am traveling for both personal and business. 
I have even taken cards far enough to go to a credit card meetup that was organized by a few credit card content creators on YouTube, This meetup was held in the French Quarter in New Orleans back in September.



Here is my core setup or what folks potentially call a “What’s in My Wallet” at this time review.
  1. American Express Personal Platinum Card
  2. American Express Hilton Aspire Card x3 (three cards)
  3. American Express Personal Gold Card
  4. American Express Business Gold Card
  5. American Express Business Platinum Card
  6. Wells Fargo Business Signify Card
  7. Chase Sapphire Preferred
  8. Chase Freedom Unlimited Card 
Folks in the know, will tell me that is a lot of money that I am paying in annual fees. They would be correct as that is $3,835.00 in annual fees to be exact.

Here is the annual fee breakdown:
  1. American Express Personal Platinum Card - $695 annual fee
  2. American Express Hilton Aspire Card x3 - $550 annual fee (per card)
  3. American Express Personal Gold Card - $325 annual fee
  4. American Express Business Gold Card - $375 annual fee
  5. American Express Business Platinum Card - $695 annual fee
  6. Wells Fargo Business Signify Card - $0 annual fee
  7. Chase Sapphire Preferred - $95 annual fee
  8. Chase Freedom Unlimited Card - $0 annual fee

Lets breakdown why the cards are in my wallet. 

  • The American Express Personal Platinum card is in my wallet for lounge access. My home airport is in Denver, so I go to the Centurion lounge on a frequent basis. I carry the card in case for whatever reason it needs to be shown at the lounge. 
  • The American Express Hilton Aspire card is in my wallet for the Hilton Diamond status and in a pinch can be used as a catch all as it offer 3x multiplier per dollar in the form of Hilton Honors points. I have three of these as I collect the three annual free night certificates each year and I have used no lifetime language links (American Express signup bonuses are once in a lifetime) to get the second and third cards.
  • The American Express Personal Gold card is in my wallet for the 4x multiplier on dining and grocery store purchases. This is considered by Amex enthusiasts as the workhorse card of Amex and is used to earn the majority of their membership rewards points.
  • The American Express Business Gold card is in my wallet as I originally got the card to pay taxes (there potentailly will be another blog on using credit cards to pay taxes) to collect the bonus but since then have been using it monthly at office supply stores for the $20 credit back to offset the annual fee. This card will be cancelled after twelve months/one year mark as it does not align with the long-term goal. In all liklihood, by the time it comes to tax time in 2025, there will be a different no lifetime language link that I will use to get the card again to pay taxes and once again collect another signup bonus.
  • The American Express Business Platinum card is in my wallet for a lot of the same benefits of the Personal Platinum card. It does offer the same lounge access, and I originally got the card to pay taxes. This card will be cancelled after twelve months/one year mark as it does not align with the long-term goal. In all liklihood, by the time it comes to tax time in 2025, there will be a different no lifetime language link that I will use to get the card again to pay taxes and once again collect another signup bonus.
  • The Wells Fargo Business Signify card is in my wallet as I just recently hit the threshold for the minimum spend and until the actual signup bonus hits my card it will stay there in case a return or credit happens pushing me below the threshold. This card will go into my folio wallet long term and once a year I will buy a $5.00 amazon giftcard on it to keep the credit alive.
  • The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is in my wallet if an establishment does not take American Express. It does have some perks such as 3x multiplier on dining, 3x multiplier on online grocery stores. On an annual basis, I will book a hotel through Chase Travel annually to use the $50 credit making the effective annual fee $45. It also offers Primary Collision Damage Waiver coverage on rental cars book throuhg traditional rental car companies such as Hertz, National, etc... and not something like Turo as it is considered peer to peer car rentals. The plan for this is to hold the card for two more years, downgrade the card to something no annual fee and then reapply for the card again or apply for the Sapphire Reserve card to collect a new signup bonus as bonuses for Sapphire cards are available once every four years. By the time that comes, I will be evaluating the usefulness of the Sapphire Reserve as one of the cards I will be looking to have by then is the Ritz Carlton card and the Ritz Carlton card will give me access to the Chase Sapphire airport lounges.
  • The Chase Freedom Unlimited card is in my wallet as it serves as a second form of ID as that is one of the very few cards, I have signed the signature line on the back. One habit I also have along with credit card points and miles is I collect bank account bonuses as well and some banks require a second form of ID and this card works for that purpose (potentially another blog on bank account bonuses as well).
With these current cards and continuing to apply for new cards to collecting the signup bonuses. Over the course of this year, I have accumulated 425,000 American Express Membership rewards points, 350,000 Hilton Honors points and $1,800.00 in cash back from signup bonuses this year. I not only have spent through the one of my Hilton Aspire cards, Wells Fargo Business Signify card, but prior to that it was the Huntington Business Voice card and U.S. Bank Triple Cash card. If we take the typical valuation of the American Express Membership Reward points at its lowest value of $1.0 cent per point, converting points to dollars they are valued at $4,750. With the valuation of Hilton Honors points at $0.6 cents per point it is worth $2,100.00. This covers the annual fees and some for the cards acquired this year as $6,850.00 is more then the the $3,835.00 that is paid in annual fees. This does not account for the points earned on the spend and things such as free food and beverage credits at Hilton properties, Hilton resort credits, annual airline incidental credits, American Express annual Fine Hotel and Resorts credit, annual Clear Plus membership, free night reward certificates, Amex cash back on offers from various merchants, etc… that come with the cards.

Overall, for me credit cards are easily a big win in 2024. I highly recomend everyone look at their setup and see what can potentially make sense of them, even if they do not travel a substantial amount there is potential justification for some of these cards. The setup does not need to be as extensive as mine. Onwards and upwards in 2025. Let me know thoughts in the comments below and more importantly how are you making credit cards work for you. I do offer credit card road mapping as a service and am more then happy to map out what make sense for you as well. If interested let me know in the comments.

Johnny @mrjohnnyma