Once you get your budget organized, I think the best place to start is with a Chase Ultimate Rewards Card that can be transferred to partners. To begin, I would take a look at what cards you already have and determine 5/24 Status of you and your player 2, if you have one. Your player 2 is either a spouse, partner, family member, or friend with whom you plan to earn points. Just look at your credit reports and the dates of anything that is a credit card. You can find this for free on sites like Credit Karma. This is what Melissa and I looked like before we started pursuing travel cards (dates have been adjusted to pretend we are starting now rather than back in 2021).
5/24 Status
So, Tom is 3/24 and Melissa is 2/24 in the Chase computer approval algorithm. Currently, authorized user cards may not count with Chase, but I would have to call the reconsideration line and depending on the agent and what Chase happens to be caring about in underwriting, they may not count the authorized user account. Currently if you are over 5/24 and call in they are excluding AU accounts. Melissa and I ran into this in 2022, but they were not excluding AU accounts and we lost out on bonuses that we had hoped to get. Another thing that I noticed when I looked at our credit reports is that the loan we took out with WF for no fee financing when our AC unit broke was not a loan but a credit card. If I were to finance a new AC today, I’d definitely open a points card with the same no-fee terms and get a bonus.
Tracking data is important, especially when you pay an annual fee for a card (or 7), or when you are pursuing a bonus. It would be really disappointing to miss a bonus deadline by a couple of days or dollars and miss out on your precious points. I have attached a spreadsheet that I use to track data Credit Card Tracking I track every month when I get a card statement how many points I got, any extra credits(like with Uber Eats or other extra credits that certain cards come with), any annual fees that came due, and how much I spend on the card in each month. I want to be able to track the earnings for the year so I can figure out if a card was worth it when the next fee comes around. This is the data from our 2022 points take.
2022 Points and Cash Back Totals
By tracking what we spend on each card each month I can determine if we could shift spend and meet a new bonus on a new card (some are as high as 15K). By doing this every month when I get a statement, the task does not build up terribly and is not as onerous and overwhelming. The other thing I track is when a card was opened and when the bonus was received. In the long game I want to be able to eventually get the same bonus again, and this info is important to know for eligibility purposes. Now that we have some order, I am ready to go after my first card!
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