Credit Card Hacking – Part 2

Yesterday we started to discuss credit card hacking and how to get the most cash back from your purchases.  Today I would like to discuss sign up bonuses and referrals and the importance of spacing them out.

As mentioned yesterday I want to remind you of the following:

• Stop reading this now if you follow Dave Ramsey, this goes against everything he teaches and I would hate to derail you.        
• I do not promote getting or using credit cards if you are not financially responsible. 
• You need to keep organized to be successful 
• Don’t apply for cards with annual fees, although some would disagree with me on this.  However I believe active Military gets these fees waived.
• Finally and the most important note, this will only work if you do not carry a balance on your credit card.  So make sure you pay off your balance in full at the end of each billing cycle.  Otherwise the interest charges will eat up all your profit.

Often when searching for a new credit card, you will see signup bonuses.  You can receive x amount of dollars in cash back for spending x amount of dollars.  This usually has to be done within the first 90 days of opening your account.  My favorite is receiving a $200 signup bonus when you spend $500.  Who doesn’t love getting a 40% return?  You could easily take care of that with your monthly expenses, such as phone, tv and internet.

Here is what we have been doing the last 2 months:

I signed up for my Chase Freedom Flex in May of 2021.  It worked out great for us, during that quarter they were giving 5% cash back on all home improvement store purchases.  We are also in the middle of doing some upgrades to our home so it is easy to hit the spending requirement.  After I hit my spending requirement I then sent my wife a referral link.  I would then get a bonus of $100 (for a total of $300 of free money), and she could also take advantage of the free $200 signup bonus.  So all purchases over the next 90 days that match or are better then our other credit card offers will be going on her Chase Freedom Flex, while mine sits on the back burner.  Once she reaches $500 then we can go back to using our individual flex cards.

I also signed up for a Discover It card in June.  It also offers a referral bonus of $50 which is great.  However, instead of the typical signup bonus.  Discover will automatically match all the cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year! There’s no minimum spending or maximum rewards. Just a dollar-for-dollar match.  So I will be waiting to refer my wife to Discover until my first year is up.  That way we can get our cash back matched for 2 full years instead of 1.  For a reminder of the cash back categories visit here

So as mentioned before there are a few other credit cards that offer signup bonuses and up to 5% cash back.  However it’s important that you space them out.  There are a few reasons for this:

• I want to make sure that we are responsible with our spending and not just spending money to get our signup bonus.  So I want to wait till my wife reaches her $500 spending requirement, before signing up for our next card.
• Too many hard inquiries, although they only make up for 10% of your credit score can have a negative impact on your score if too many top close to each other.  Some banks, no matter what your credit score, will automatically decline you if you have too many inquiries within a short period of time.

If interested in signing up for these credit cards please use my referral links below…

• Discover It
• Chase Freedom Flex

But most importantly please be responsible!