The Ultimate Beginner’s on How to Churn Credit Cards and Award Travel

Intro

In this guide, I will teach you about how to churn credit cards and award travel. There are a ton of acronyms that I use but it’ll be helpful to learn as you take a deeper dive into the churning / award travel world because everyone (especially on Reddit) uses these acronyms as well. I define the acronym the first time I use it so if you’re confused about an acronym, scroll up 🙂

There are two broad topics: churning and award travel. Churning is how you “churn” through various credit cards to get points. I will teach you how to churn credit cards and earn points to spend on award travel. Award travel is how you spend those points efficiently to book flights, hotels, etc. I won’t cover cash back because I’m not interested in it. 

The biggest thing is that you pay your cards on time and don’t spend money you wouldn’t otherwise spend just to reach the sign up bonus (SUB). The SUB is an important concept. If you can’t spend $4,000 in three months, I would not recommend doing this. There are ways to “manufacture” spend but they’re shenanigans and I don’t believe in it.

Make sure you turn on autopay to pay off the statement balance every month. I have a spreadsheet to help me keep track of different credit cards, their SUBs, what their perks are and when to reassess each card – I highly recommend you create one as well. Empower / Personal Capital (not sponsored, just a fan!) helps me keep track of our spending and how much each credit card has on it without having to open up separate banking apps. But if you’re all in Chase, that should be easier to keep track of.

Churning

How to churn credit cards starts with SUBs. SUBs are incredibly important to keep track of for churning. The SUB for Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP, referral link) is 60,0000 Ultimate Reward points (URs) for spending $4,000 in the first 3 months of having the card. All SUBs have that format of x points for spending $x,000 in the first x months of having the card. If you spend only $3,999 for the CSP you won’t get the SUB. I prefer switching to using only this card until I’ve met the SUB just so there’s plenty of wiggle room. The Chase app will show you how close you are to reaching the SUB. It really depends on your natural spend how quickly you get there.

Chase credit cards are the best and the CSP + Chase Freedom Unlimited (CFU, referral link) is the best combination. CSP allows you to transfer your points to travel partners like Hyatt, United, and Southwest (there are others but these are what I use most often). CSP gets you 3x the points at restaurants and 2x on travel and CFU gets you 1.5x points on everything. You can transfer the points from CFU to CSP and you can also transfer the points between you two. I recommend having one person with a CSP to transfer to. You can also be the authorized user (AU) to spend on these cards but it counts towards your 5/24 limit.

5/24 is a limit specific to Chase credit cards. This means you can only open 5 credit cards in 24 months. If you are an AU on a credit card that counts towards the limit but you can bypass that by calling Chase and explaining that you’re not truly at the limit, you’re just an AU. The recommended velocity is one credit card every three months.

Another Chase credit card tip is you can use the card on your phone as soon as you sign up. They allow cards to be added to digital wallets like Apple Pay as soon as the card is approved. This allows you to use the card before the physical card is received (usually 3-5 days after approval). This is important in learning how to churn credit cards in that you want to be able to start spending money on it as soon as possible.

CSP

Because CSP allows you to transfer and has great SUBs, I’d recommend getting a CSP if you don’t already have one. If you already have a CSP, make sure to generate and use a referral link for the other person! 

United

After CSP, I’d recommend getting a United Explorer card (referral link) with an annual fee (AF) $0 the first year, $95 after. Plus you could use CSP to book United flights. Looks like the United SUB right now is 50k points for spending $3,000 in the first 3 months. (Note that unlike Chase points, you can’t use United points for anything else.) One of the other benefits is $100 Global Entry credit. I highly recommend getting Global Entry vs TSA Precheck as Global Entry includes TSA Precheck and covers expedited reentry to the US after traveling internationally. There is also a way to get 2,500 points if you add an AU. I am not sure if the second person would get the $100 Global Entry credit as well but I’d assume so – we’d have to call Chase to verify.

There are two other United Cards, Quest and Infinite, but I don’t personally believe the benefits are worth the increased AF ($250 and $525, respectively).

Future Cards

After this, I’d consider what your goals are. Do you want to travel somewhere soon and want it to be covered by CCs? Domestically? Internationally? World of Hyatt is a good next card because you can transfer Chase points to Hyatt and you get Discoverist status (not that useful but sometimes you get upgraded). Plus you can go to Alila Ventana Big Sur like we did for 35k a night which is a steal!

Otherwise you can look into getting the Amex Platinum (AF $695, referral link) for 125k points for spending $6,000 in 3 months. Amex, like Chase, has amazing travel partners (Delta, Marriott, Air France) but the AF is so expensive. This can be offset by the $200 airline credit, $200 hotel credit, $15 a month Uber credit, $20 a month entertainment credit (NYTimes, Peacock, Audible, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN), and Centurion lounge access. (Check out my Amex Platinum Benefits Ranked post for more details.) This is personally my favorite card for travel because it’s 5x points for flights and the lounge is amazing but it is a little bit of a slog to remember to use the credits to make it worth it.

What to do when you reassess a card

You can either keep, downgrade a card to a no AF card, or cancel the card. I would not recommend canceling your older cards as that can have an impact on your credit score. When you downgrade to a no AF card, you call the bank and ask. For example, if you have a CSP you want to get rid of, you can call and downgrade to a CFU or Flex. You can have multiple CFUs or Flexes. That way you get to keep the credit history of the card without having to pay an AF.

Links

OMAAT has a really good list of credit card summaries like benefits, annual fees, SUBs.

The r/churning flowchart can be really helpful but is overwhelming when you’re just starting.

Award Travel

The (other) fun part of this hobby, actually spending the points! Let’s say you signed up for the CSP and United cards and have 60,000 URs and 50,000 United points and we want to go to San Francisco. We look at DEN <> SFO for a weekend in August and click Book with miles.

This first flight looks good. And because we’re fancy we actually want to do first class (not recommended in real life haha) so that would be 48k points + $5.60.

But because we want the other person to come too, we’ll need to transfer points from Chase to United. We’ll go to Ultimate Rewards Points and click Transfer to Travel Partners on the left bar.

From there you can click on United, click on Transfer Points, and transfer 48,000 points.

Then once you click through and confirm, you’ll have the points almost instantly (longest I’ve had to wait is 10 minutes).

Soon you’ll have the points in your United account and you can book both flights to SFO. Then you’d repeat this process to come back to DEN. Again, not recommended to do First Class for such a short flight but you get the idea 🙂

Google Flights can help you see which flights might be cheapest for a certain time period and that can help guide which flights to book with points. But there’s not always a correlation between cash price and points price.

Overall I’d say you can think about where you want to go and work backwards from there. Let me know if you need help doing that but I’ve become remarkably good at figuring this stuff out. Once you’ve got a handle on things, Reddit can become an amazing resource – the r/awardtravel subreddit especially can be really helpful.

Not sure which card to get first? Check out my list of the Amex Platinum benefits and how to make the $695 annual fee worth it.