Credit Card Travel Hacking 102: Two-Player Mode, Card Sequencing, and the Rules You Have to Play By

Here’s everything that we couldn’t fit in our credit card travel hacking 101 guide. This article is going to focus on some of the more advanced concepts: two-player mode (aka a great credit card strategy for couples), which card to get after your first one, and the issuer rules you have to play by. Using both articles together should give you a solid foundation for credit card travel hacking.

Two-Player Mode: Why Traveling as a Couple Is a Cheat Code

One of the advantages we have as a traveling couple is that we can double up on sign-up bonuses. Like we mentioned in our first article, both Amelia and I got the United Quest card, instead of just me signing up and earning 80,000 miles, we each signed up and earned 160,000 miles combined. Those miles covered two business class flights from the US to Africa. Stacking sign up bonuses is a great credit card strategy for couples.

We’ve found that both of us opening the same card is one of the fastest ways to stack up a large pile of points. One thing we haven’t taken advantage of yet: referrals. Many cards will pay the person who sends a referral bonus points on top of whatever the new cardholder earns, something we’re planning to start using between the two of us.

So once you and your significant other are both earning sign-up bonuses, what’s next?

What to Look for in Your Next Card

The answer is: it depends on what you want the card to do for you once the bonus is gone. A few questions worth asking before you apply:

Will you actually use the card’s earning categories after the bonus? If a card offers elevated earning on flights and you spend a lot there, it might be worth keeping open long-term instead of shelving it once the bonus posts. A great credit card strategy for couples here is for one of you to keep a card open for flights and one for hotels, or to split the best bonus categories between your two cards to really optimize things.

One way to check this is to look at what you spend on flights for the year or what you can expect to spend going forward and seeing what the card would earn on that. For example, if I was planning on spending $5k on flights this year, and my Amex card gives me 5x points on flights (like the Amex Platinum) , then I could expect 25,000 Amex points, which I could transfer to one of Amex’s 16 airline partners or 3 hotel partners. This Amex points flexibility means the points are worth about 2 cents each, according to ThePointsGuy. 

25,000 points * $0.02 points value is $500 of value, which covers more than half of the Amex platinum’s $895 annual fee, however this specific card has some more valuable perks outside of just point earning that we’ll talk more about below.

Does the card have perks beyond the points that make it worth keeping? Our Amex Platinum is a good example: the airport lounge access alone makes the steep annual fee worth it for us, without taking the value of the points earned into consideration. The card gives us access to over 1500 airport lounges across the world, which has been incredibly helpful for food and drinks before flights. There is also $600 in hotel credits, $200 in Uber credits, $200 in airline credits, and $300 in Lululemon credits, all of these credits more than offset the cost of the $895 annual fee.

Will keeping this card open block you from other bonuses down the road? Some issuers restrict bonus eligibility across an entire card family, and some of those restrictions get stricter if you still have another card in that family open. The credit card strategy for couples here can be to have the person facing less restrictions to signup for a card if the other is unable to.

The Rules You Have to Play By

Chase’s 5/24 Rule

Chase will flat-out deny your application if you’ve opened five or more credit cards, from any issuer, in the past 24 months. If you’re planning to open multiple cards across different banks, work through Chase first, then move on to other issuers. Once you’re over 5/24, you’re locked out of new Chase cards until some of those openings age off. It’s important to track when you get cards and when you earn the bonuses. I used to track everything manually in Excel until I found Travel Freely, a great online tool that helps keep track of all of your cards and what your 5/24 status is. You still have to enter the date you got the card and whether or not you earned the bonus but it helps keep track of everything else.

Citi’s 48-Month Rule

Citi limits you to one bonus per card every 48 months. I’ve been playing this game long enough that I’ve earned a few bonuses on the same Citi card, I just tracked exactly when I got the first bonus, waited the full 48 months, and reapplied. Completely within the rules, which, like we said in our first article, you have to follow to actually win this game long-term.

Amex’s Once-Per-Lifetime Rule

Officially, once you’ve earned the welcome bonus on a specific Amex card, you’re not eligible to earn it again. In practice, this has gotten murkier lately. Amex has started approving some people for bonuses on cards they’d previously had and closed years earlier, and they occasionally send out targeted offers (sometimes called “No Lifetime Language,” or NLL) that ignore the rule entirely. We wouldn’t plan around getting a second bonus, but if you find yourself unexpectedly eligible, take it. I’ve actually gotten multiple bonuses on my Amex Platinum, which was a nice surprise. A credit card strategy for couples tip here is to check if your partner is eligible for a bonus if you aren’t.

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If you have any questions about specific cards or want to learn more about credit card travel hacking, reach out to us on social media @CheckedOutToCheckIn and we’ll be happy to answer them!

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