A lot of people refer to this hobby of collecting points and miles as credit card churning, but what does that actually mean? People define churning differently. For some, it’s making butter. For others, churning means opening a bunch of different credit cards for the sign-up bonus. For the purposes of this blog, credit card churning refers to opening and closing the SAME card to get the sign-up bonus more than once. I hate misnomers so I was hesitant to call myself a credit card churner until I got the sign-up bonus on the same card twice.
Unfortunately, it’s getting more and more difficult to churn credit cards thanks to rules imposed by the banks. This includes more recent rules like Bank of America’s 2/3/4 rule and restrictions on churning Barclaycard Arrival Plus. While churning credit cards is still possible, I’ve only managed to churn two cards so far: the Barclaycard Arrival Plus and Alaska Airlines card from Bank of America. My fiancé spent the past year or so waiting to get under 5/24 so we could get the Companion Pass again. As a result, he was able to churn the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus credit card from Chase.
Final Thoughts
While we may not have churned many credit cards yet, it does feel good getting those sign-up bonuses more than once! There are still so many sign-up bonuses I haven’t gotten yet that I’m not quite at the point where I need to get more serious about repeating cards. I was planning on churning the Hyatt credit card next, but after hearing about Chase shutdowns, I think it’s safer to skip it for now given how many cards I’ve opened in the past 24 months.
What credit cards have you churned?
