Can I gain something by strategically opening credit cards?

April 2, 2014 7:26 PM

In January, I got my business successfully running, paid off and closed a bunch of personal credit cards, and began making a decent amount of money. Now I'm in a place to start opening credit cards and rebuilding my credit. Last time I looked (10 years ago), there were ways to open new credit card accounts, and as long as you were responsible about always paying off all of your balances at the end of every month, you could get bunches of free flights and bonuses and things. I recall people who played with new account bonuses as a relatively lucrative game. Is this still a thing? Is it worth the time?
posted by sirion to Work & Money (7 answers total)

It's still a thing. There's a 'subreddit' devoted to the topic.
posted by kmennie at 7:47 PM on April 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

Google "credit card arbitrage".
posted by pompomtom at 8:09 PM on April 2, 2014

You actually shouldn't have closed a bunch of credit cards (unless they had annual fees) since part of your overall score is the average age of your accounts. The churning subreddit is a great place to learn all the tricks, as kmennie mentioned.
posted by dcjd at 8:43 PM on April 2, 2014

One key word to look for is Stoozing, which refers to exploiting 0% offers on credit cards and then investing the money, then paying back in full when the offer finishes and pocketing the interest gained in the meantime.
posted by Jabberwocky at 2:28 AM on April 3, 2014

My $40,000 honeymoon is about $2,000 because of points accrued from signing up for credit cards and spending on them.

Check this out: http://thepointsguy.com/beginners-guide/
posted by sandmanwv at 3:51 AM on April 3, 2014

It is a thing. And you do need to rebuild your credit (FYI- the utilization and amount of credit you have, and the age of your accounts, affect your score), and might as well do so by earning some rewards.

But.

Time is money. Maybe by spending a ton of time researching to game the system hardcore, you can earn an extra $1,500 by opening several cards at the right strategic time (if your credit will allow), instead of taking the points you get with an Amex Blue Sky and Chase Sapphire (or whatever) and being done with chasing sign-up bonuses. But I think, almost certainly, that time could have been more profitably spent on your business.

I don't think it's worth the time to do more than get a rewards card or two and leave it at that, no.
posted by J. Wilson at 5:43 AM on April 3, 2014

I asked a similar question a while back and got some decent answers.
posted by bondcliff at 5:59 AM on April 3, 2014