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canyonwalkerToday I closed another one of my credit cards. This one was the Citi® / AAdvantage Business™ World Elite Mastercard®. Yeah, that's a whole lot of marketing-speak right there.
Unlike the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card I closed three days ago I've only owned this card for just over a year. Also unlike that Southwest Airlines affinity card I literally haven't used this one since earning the sign-up bonus 10 months ago.
The sign-up offer was a bonus of 75,000 American Airlines AAdvantage points for spending $6,000 in 6 months. I hit that target in 3 months then tossed the card in a desk drawer for the next 10 months.
This is the purest form of credit card churning. You 1) sign up for a card with a great bonus offer, 2) charge enough to earn the bonus within the initial period, then 3) sock-drawer the card until 4) you cancel it when its annual fee posts after one year.
Why not cancel it sooner? That's because banks look unfavorably upon customers closing cards closed in less than a year. Part of playing the credit card churning game is staying enough in the banks' good graces that they let you keep playing.
Why did I make this card a pure-play on churning while I kept that Southwest card for 3 years and charged $40,000+ a year on it? Ah, that comes down to the benefits of the card and how much they matter to me. The Southwest card had more fringe benefits than this AA card, and those benefits mattered to me because I've been engaged with Southwest as a frequent customer for several years. As I've explained before, points cards are most worth it when you travel with the airline/hotel regularly.
With AA the 81,000 points I earned on this card in pursuing the lucrative sign-up bonus just added to a pile of AA points I've barely been using for years. That pile, BTW, is now nearly 900,000 points. Holding onto AA credit cards for the long term doesn't make sense for me. I'll just keep churning them to build that balance higher... while looking for opportunities to redeem that huge pile of points for great value.
Unlike the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card I closed three days ago I've only owned this card for just over a year. Also unlike that Southwest Airlines affinity card I literally haven't used this one since earning the sign-up bonus 10 months ago.
The sign-up offer was a bonus of 75,000 American Airlines AAdvantage points for spending $6,000 in 6 months. I hit that target in 3 months then tossed the card in a desk drawer for the next 10 months.This is the purest form of credit card churning. You 1) sign up for a card with a great bonus offer, 2) charge enough to earn the bonus within the initial period, then 3) sock-drawer the card until 4) you cancel it when its annual fee posts after one year.
Why not cancel it sooner? That's because banks look unfavorably upon customers closing cards closed in less than a year. Part of playing the credit card churning game is staying enough in the banks' good graces that they let you keep playing.
Why did I make this card a pure-play on churning while I kept that Southwest card for 3 years and charged $40,000+ a year on it? Ah, that comes down to the benefits of the card and how much they matter to me. The Southwest card had more fringe benefits than this AA card, and those benefits mattered to me because I've been engaged with Southwest as a frequent customer for several years. As I've explained before, points cards are most worth it when you travel with the airline/hotel regularly.
With AA the 81,000 points I earned on this card in pursuing the lucrative sign-up bonus just added to a pile of AA points I've barely been using for years. That pile, BTW, is now nearly 900,000 points. Holding onto AA credit cards for the long term doesn't make sense for me. I'll just keep churning them to build that balance higher... while looking for opportunities to redeem that huge pile of points for great value.
