Cell Phone & Cable

This one is obvious, but autopay your phone and cable bills from your Ink card.

Office Supply Stores

This is less obvious, but office supply stores such as Staples and Office Depot sell gift cards to many other stores, both in-store and online. Staples, for example, sells gift cards to Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Shell, and Southwest Airlines, among many, many others. I can’t list them all here, so visit their stores and websites to see what is available.

Keep in mind that if you are buying gift cards, you might also consider purchasing them secondhand from a reseller. When I do this, I check Gift Card Wiki for the best prices. Depending on the retailer, you can often get a higher discount than 5%. You might prefer this to 5x points, though purchasing gift cards secondhand comes with some risks that buying them directly yourself does not.

Ebay (Gift cards)

For some reason, when you purchase gift cards from the seller PayPal Digital Gifts on ebay and pay with PayPal using your Ink card, you earn 5x points. This is the same play as buying gift cards from office supply stores, but this method provides many more options. Last I checked, PPDG sells over 500 types of gift cards.

Occasionally, PPDG will also sell select gift cards at significant discounts. When this happens, instead of buying gift cards to spend, you can buy them to turn around and sell to a gift card reseller. You might even walk away with a small profit on top the points you earn. When good deals for reselling present themselves, I’ll post them on the blog.

Verizon (Gift cards)

If you are a Verizon subscriber, the Verizon Message+ app has an option to purchase and send eGift cards. The trick is that you can charge them to your Verizon bill, allowing you to earn 5x UR per dollar spent. This is a small play, however, because you are limited to charging $100 per month to your bill.

Some merchants of note are Amazon, Best Buy, ebay, Home Depot, Sears, and Whole Foods. You can find the others listed in the app after you click Send an eGift Card Now!

For those of you who aren’t new to this game, I’ve also included a reference toward the bottom called Which Miles Should I Use? to show you the best miles to use for different regions of the world in economy, business, and first class.

And, lastly, a new page I’ve added today is called How To Save Miles By Knowing Your Geography. Many mileage programs just don’t agree what part of the world certain countries are in. American places the Canary Islands in their Europe region, even though they’re off the coast of Africa, where United considers them to be. This makes awards there considerably cheaper with American than with United. On that page, I list the discrepancies I’ve found so far, and I’ll continue to update it as I add more mileage programs to this website.

And although some banks do not require it, I prefer canceling my old cards and waiting a few months before reapplying. I also don’t like to cancel new cards immediately after getting my bonus and normally hold them for a total of 6 to 11 months. Remember that just because a card is churnable does not mean that you’ll get approved again. Try to stay somewhat on the bank’s good side.

American Express

American Express credit cards cannot be churned.

In practice, some people have had luck reapplying for a card after ~7 years. You can check if you are eligible to receive the bonus on a particular card by asking a representative via online chat.

Bank of America

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: Yes if Alaska Airlines (personal) or Premium Rewards cards; otherwise no.
Waiting Period: See below

Bank of America will approve you for at most 2 cards per rolling 2 months, 3 cards per rolling 12 months, and 4 cards per rolling 24 months. It is unconfirmed whether this rule applies to only personal cards or both personal and business cards.

Additionally, there is a waiting period of 24 months for the Alaska Airlines (personal) and Premium Rewards cards. There is also a waiting period of 24 months on the Cash and Travel Rewards cards, but only if you currently hold them. Oddly, there is no waiting period if they have been canceled.

Bank of America will often deny applications for their personal credit cards if you have opened three or more credit cards (with any bank) in the past 12 months.

If you are a current Bank of America deposit customer, the threshold at which you may be denied is increased to seven or more credit cards (with any bank) in the past 12 months.

Barclaycard

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: Yes
Waiting Period: None

Barclaycard has been enforcing some restrictions for the Arrival+ card recently, though the specific details are not known.

Chase

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: Yes
Waiting Period: 24 months after receiving the sign up bonus previously (48 months for Sapphire family cards)

For the purposes of signup bonus eligibility, all cards in the Sapphire family (Reserve, Premier, regular Sapphire) and the Southwest family (Premier, Plus) are treated as the same card. To earn the signup bonus on the Sapphire Reserve, for example, you must not have any Sapphire card open, and you must not have earned the signup bonus from any Sapphire card within the past 48 months.

Chase will deny applications for their credit cards if you have opened five or more credit cards (with any bank) in the past 24 months.

Citibank

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: No
Waiting Period: 24 months after opening or closing any similar card within the same brand (e.g. American Airlines, Citi ThankYou)

In practice, Citibank’s churn-worthy credit cards all have annual fees, so you’ll want to cancel them in

Example: SFO to MXP on Star Alliance

1. Download and install Airline Route Mapper (Optional: Download the updated routes.dat file and place it in the folder where you extracted the Airline Route Mapper zip file.)
2. Filter by airline or alliance (e.g. Star Alliance) and select your destination on the map.
3. Place your cursor over your origin and make note of which cities connect between your origin and destination. This will show you all possible itineraries with one stop.
   In the above example, the most obvious connection cities are EWR and YYZ; however, you will see that connecting in CPH, FRA, MUC, and ZRH are also possible.
4. Make note of which airlines fly the routes you are interested in. If you place your cursor over any of the routes, the mouseover tooltip will show you which airline flies that particular route. In this example:SFO-EWR (United) + EWR-MXP (United)
   SFO-YYZ (Air Canada) + YYZ-MXP (Air Canada)
   SFO-CPH (Scandinavian) + CPH-MXP (Scandinavian)
   SFO-FRA (United/Lufthansa) + FRA-MXP (Lufthansa)
   SFO-MUC (Lufthansa) + MUC-MXP (Lufthansa)
   SFO-ZRH (Swiss) + ZRH-MXP (Swiss)
5. If necessary, repeat steps #3 and #4 to find options with two stops or more.
6. Use this information to search for awards segment by segment. If you find availability, you can combine all the flights into a single award.

Plastiq (Codes as Travel for Chase Ultimate Rewards or Citi ThankYou Points)

Volume: Your rent or mortgage payment
Fees: 2.5%
Limits: Monthly, or however often you pay your rent or mortgage

Plastiq is a billpay service that allows you to pay virtually any business with a credit card. There is a 2.5% fee, though, which means that in most cases, the service is too expensive. An exception to this is using a credit card that earns greater than 2.5% cash back or its equivalent in points (BankAmericard Travel Rewards Card w/ Platinum Honors, Alliant Visa Signature Credit Card – first year only, Discover it Miles Credit Card – first year only).

Another exception, which is the main point of this section, is that rent and mortgage payments have been triggering category bonus points for many cards, usually due to being coded as travel. While not quite manufactured spending due to the need for legitimate billers to send payments to, this is still a useful strategy for racking up Ultimate Rewards or ThankYou Points if you use one of the cards below:

3x: Chase Sapphire Reserve (Ultimate Rewards) 3x: Chase Ink Preferred (Ultimate Rewards) 3x: Citi AT&T Access More (ThankYou Points)

2x: Chase Sapphire Preferred (Ultimate Rewards)

“Reminder: You must enroll and select your airline before making your reimbursable purchase.”

Link to select your airline for the Platinum Card
Link to select your airline for the Premier Rewards Gold Card

Buy Airline Gift Cards

“Although gift cards are specifically excluded by the terms and conditions, many people have had success buying gift cards and being reimbursed. Because things can change at any time, I recommend checking the Wiki and any recent posts in the following Flyertalk threads before proceeding:”

Platinum Airline Fee Reimbursements – American Airlines
Platinum Airline Fee Reimbursements – Southwest Airlines
Platinum Airline Fee Reimbursements – United Airlines

“Pay special attention to that last one if you’re using United – you can’t buy gift cards from them directly but rather have to create a gift registry that you contribute money to.”