Real quick, I thought I’d share these credit card sign up bonuses that are temporarily up. As I’ll explain, now’s definitely a good time to jump on bonuses.
Simply put, why apply for the same card when the bonus is lower? Why get a card that has a bonus of 40,000 points later, when it’s 50,000 points now? Why get the BA card later when the bonus is 50,000, when right now you at least have the option of getting the 100,000 bonus.
This may be miles & points 101, but everyone should at least be aware of the bonuses.
1) Chase Sapphire Preferred now 50,000 points (plus 5,000)
The CSP is now probably one of the favorite cards of all miles collectors.
It allows you to transfer Chase points 1 to 1 to United miles, British Airways, Southwest, Singapore miles, Hyatt points and others.
The card has raised its bonus to 50,000 points, instead of 40,000 points. You get the 50k when you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months, and you get another 5,000 for adding an authorized user in the first 3 months as well.
Again, the card is widely known as one of the favorites, if not the favorite for most in this hobby.
Why is it a favorite?
- Allows you to transfer Chase UR points to favorite programs (otherwise cards like the Freedom card don’t transfer to miles, but just reimburse travel).
- Earns 2x on travel and dining.
- The annual fee is waived the first year, and if you don’t fall in love with it and decide to keep it, you can downgrade to the freedom card.
- Other perks like primary car insurance, no foreign transaction fee, and the fact it’s metal is kinda cool.
But not only is it an awesome card all around, you can now get 55,000 bonus points in the first 3 months.
2) 100,000 British Airways
This is also a Chase card with a raised bonus. One thing unique about this card, is that it used to give the 100,000 bonus at least yearly… and then it didn’t show up for a long time.
It’s back, but like last time it has a very high spend requirement to get the last 50,000 points.
Here’s my take.
First, I have a post on Making The Most Of The British Airways 100,000 Bonus. In it I go over the details and talk about if it’s worth it.
I should explain the details again:
-
50,000 bonus Avios after you spend $2,000 on purchases within the first 3 months of account opening.
-
Plus earn an additional 25,000 bonus Avios when you spend $10,000 on purchases for a total of 75,000 bonus Avios.
-
Plus earn another 25,000 bonus Avios when you spend a total of $20,000 on purchases within your first year for a total of 100,000 bonus Avios.
It’s important to understand that you get 50,000 after spending $2,000, which is the same bonus as the normal version.
In other words, if you’re not sure you can spend $20,000 in a year and get the full 100,000 points, at least you’ll have gotten the 50,000 points.
However, if you surely aren’t going to spend that much on your card, you might as well get the Chase Sapphire Preferred, since that 50,000 bonus is temporary and flexible. It could give you 55,000 British Airways Avios, or 55,000 United miles.
If you can spend $20,000 in a year, you basically earn 3.5 Avios per dollar spent, at least that’s another way of looking at it. It’s a great daily spender, especially if you have great uses for Avios… which I definitely could use.
3) SPG spend requirement is down to $3,000
I wrote previously that I didn’t really want to deal with SPG’s $5,000 spend requirement, not on top of everything else. Well, I’ll be back in the US to do more MS and the bonus went down to $3,000.
While it’s not my favorite hotel card, it’s a good time to get it.
- The card got new/better perks (like no foreign transaction fee, and internet).
- I didn’t have any other Amex options
- SPG announced a merger with Marriott, and I lean towards burning.
Also, the annual fee is waived for the first year.
The merger with Marriott isn’t something that will change over night, but then again, earning and burning points doesn’t exactly happen over night. If I have some use for SPG points, now’s the time to use it.
Even if I’m transferring my 25,000 SPG points to 30,000 AA miles… I’m sure that feature will go away with Marriott.
Conclusion
I’m actually pleased to see the Chase Sapphire Preferred and British Airways bonuses up. Actually, across the board, bonuses are at least decent. The AA 50,000 bonus is still here, the Barclay World Arrival is still at 40,000, and many others are still high. In other words, I don’t see that bonuses are over all going down, but are remaining strong. In fact, this round of AOR will be one of the most rewarding I’ve had in a while.
So… enjoy a few holiday season bonuses.
![Nick of FM on #40kFarAway [TIF Podcast]](https://travelisfree.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/travel-is-free-podcast-nick-40K-120x86.jpg)
Wait you got approved for CSP? Is this a counterexample disapproving 5/24 rules?
Why is it assumed he got approved after the rule too effect?
maybe he’s …. naw…a blogger wouldn’t do that? would they?
It says “We jumped on it”…..
I have the same question as pstravels. You can’t drop info that important and not explain .
I want to know as well how you got approved for the CSP. I assume you are churning cards, and so have run up against Chase’s new rules on new CC applications.
Same question from me as well. Have you managed to get around the 5 cards in 24 month rule in order to be approved for the CSP?
I have CSP card for over a year. I got enough points for a trip Im using in spring. If I cancel my card, how long can I wait to apply again to get the bonus?
2 years from the date you got the last bonus.
Isn’t the “regular” Chase BA 50K offer comes w/o annual fee? But the 100K offer doesn’t waive the $95 annual fee.
Also, Chase BA card might have better chance of getting approved than the CSP even if you never had this card and you had the BA card (>2 years).
Agreed. I applied for the 50K without the annual fee since I have little need for the extra 50K with $18K more spend.
If you apply for the 50k version and asked to be matched to the 100k you will not be assessed the fee. I wasn’t anyway. YMMV.
Thanks for this. Was looking for a quick list of the best current bonuses and this just saved me a ton of time!
I believe we all have the same CSP card inquiry into the 24/5 rule.
Who said he got approved after the rule took effect? Am I missing something?
Have you not applied for 5 cards in the last two years? Add me to the list of folks wondering how you got the CSP.
Re: CSP 5/24. It’s definitely not universal.
Having gotten 14 cards (including 4 Chase) in the last 2 years and having converted my CSP to Freedom last spring, I didn’t ever expect to apply for CSP again. But recently when I stopped into a branch to pay off my Ink card, the teller told me that I was preapproved for a CSP if I had 10 minutes to fill out the paperwork. I’m now waiting for my first statement to post to get the 50K UR. So it may be worth stopping into a branch. FWIW, I have no Chase products other than credit cards.
Regarding the question of beating Chase’s 5/24 rule:
He didn’t say he was APPROVED for the card and RECEIVED the bonus.
You’ll note, he just said he “jumped on it.” Read that as you see fit.
SPG is showing up as 30k sign up bonus for some folks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/3za6pq/30000_spg_amex_appears_when_opening_new_spg/
Drew can you clarify if you APPLIED or if you were APPROVED already for the CSP? Thx!!!!
There may be a BoA Wind of Changes: Just tried for AS and because my last one from August is still opened, I was rejected. The amazing AS miles may be becoming hard to earn. Hell, tried for Virgin 88k as well with the same result… For the record, I have only AS and Cash Rewards opened at the moment.
and the question on everyone’s mind today, what’s the new ms strategy going forward to meet all the spend requirements for the bonuses?
I of course recall that ms “isn’t your thing” — that is, not for writing about. Came across one focused post you wrote about it from nearly 2 years (3/17/14) ago — and winced a bit, as all the key strategies you mentioned then are now…. the stuff of nostalgia. (the way it used to be, from amazon to bluebird to vanilla).
So where will we move along to next? Alas, I suspect you’ll be gun-shy about posting, for fear of shutting down just how you’ve done 10’s of thousands of ms in recent rounds.
ps, I have tried giftcard churning — and surmise that realm is badly saturated now with ms and “5+2” seed-faith crowds. (with many of the most popular “discounted” gift cards essentially impossible to re-sell at any where close to break even — been that way for a month)
i’m kind of new to all of this – i recently got the CSP and the Chase Freedom and had my wife sign up for a CSP and i’ll have her add me as a user on hers to get the additional 5k points. I believe that we can then transfer all my points from both chase cards to hers when it comes time to plan a trip.
Question to everyone, how many cards do you open each year to get bonus points? how long do you keep the accounts open? Do you close them once the points are earned so you can apply again in 2 years? I’m trying to understand how people claim to have 500k – 1M points. If the ave MS is say 3k per card, then 10 cards would be 30k MS.
thanks for any insight.
In order to obtain a large balance of miles, you will need to take out a large number of credit cards over a period of time (and of course complete the requisite spend on each card to get the bonus). If building miles on USA airlines — Chase has several cards that transfer miles/bonuses to United and Southwest; Citicard has cards that transfer miles/bonuses to American Airlines; and Amex has cards that transfer bonuses to Delta (although the SPG Amex also can be used to transfer to several airlines).
You reference a 2 year period, so you seem to be aware of the practice of churning (the ability to take out a credit card, collect the bonus and then cancel it in order to take out the same card in the future for another bonus). However, it should be noted the 2 year rule you mention is only for Chase cards (and the 2 year period is from the date in which you collected the bonus, as opposed to 2 years from the date in which you applied for the card). Citi has an 18 month rule (but it applies to the later of either when the card was opened or when it was closed — Citi does not require you to close a card in order to get a new one, but there will be annual fees on cards you keep open unless you can get the bank to waive them via a phone call). Amex does not allow churning.
If you sign up for SPG, and then your spouse also signs up, wouldn’t that be 100k miles? Versus adding one as an authorized user for just an additional 5k points?
You can be the authorized user on your wife’s card and she can be the authorized user on your card. You will each be able to collect the bonus miles for the adding of an authorized user.
25 comments, 2 new posts, and Drew hasn’t answered yet….I feel Drew hides a lot of good “secrets”…or he just told a little white lie…
Perhaps he sees the end of the game too so is going the CC pushing route in order to keep his free travel alive? A comment from him would be nice…
End of Feb and have not heard his reply from all these posts/questions. Strange??
I love your site and that you are motivated by travel rather than earning a bunch of money. I like that your site isn’t littered with affiliate links, but I will try to support you if I apply. I agree with those cards, got’em all.