How to earn 1 million Chase points.

The wild west of credit card churning...

Author

Colin Stroud
September 27, 2024

Controversial topic alert: Credit card churning.

The practice of signing up for multiple credit cards every year for the sole purpose of earning large amounts of bonus points.

Note: I do not teach my clients to churn credit cards.

But if you want to learn how people do it, check this out.

(And earn 1 million Chase points).

0 —> 1 million Chase points.

First, you need to be aware of the most important rule in credit card land: the Chase 5/24 rule.

The Chase 5/24 rule is a policy that limits you to opening five or more personal credit cards (from any bank) in the last 24 months. If you exceed this limit, Chase will likely deny your application for new personal credit cards. Business cards generally don’t count toward this rule, but applying for too many personal cards in a short period can trigger rejections.

Also, you can only get a new sign-up bonus every 4 years.

So, be careful.

Assuming you have zero Chase cards & a spouse, here’s how I’d earn 1 million Chase points (over 4 years, so you can repeat this).

Here’s a great video that inspired this newsletter:

Year 1:

Month 1:

  • You & your spouse both get the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

  • 120,000 points earned.

Month 6:

  • You both get Chase Ink Business Cash

  • 180,000 points earned.

Year 1 total: 300,000

Year 2:

Month 1:

  • You both get Chase Ink Business Preferred

  • 200,000 points earned.

Month 6:

  • You both get Chase Freedom Unlimited.

  • 40,000 points earned.

Year 2 total: 240,000

Total earned: 540,000

Year 3:

Month 1:

  • You both get Chase Ink Unlimited

  • 180,000 points earned.

Month 6:

  • You both get Chase World of Hyatt Card

  • 120,000 points earned.

Year 3 total: 200,000

Total earned: 740,000

Year 4:

Month 1:

  • You both get Chase Ink Business Premier

  • 200,000 points earned.

    • ***Edit: you can’t actually combine these with other cards - this won’t work. SORRY!

Month 12:

  • Downgrade and re-apply for Chase Sapphire Preferred

  • 120,000 points earned.

Year 4 total: 320,000

Total earned: 1,080,000.

Now, repeat:)

All the disclaimers…

So, this could technically work. You (should) stay under 5/24 the whole time.

However, anything can happen. Chase could find out what you’re doing and stop you.

You might not be able to hit all the minimum spend for the cards. You might get unorganized and accidentally start paying interest.

There’s a lot of problems with doing this.

Which is why I don’t teach this method.

This can get painful, messy, and annoying.

But, people definitely do this - I just talked to a guy who did something very similar.

A better strategy:

Get 1-2 “keeper cards”, and put all of your daily spending on them. These should be great cards like this one that earn a lot of valuable points for you!

Then, get 1 new card a year every year.

You’ll earn points from the bonus, and you can take advantage of special elevated offers.

If you use my favorite card and spend $50k/year, you’ll earn 100k points/year. Add 20k in referral bonuses and one new card a year with an 80k bonus, you’re looking at 200k points/year.

That’s plenty to make a massive dent in the family vacation (if you know what you’re doing).

If you don’t, you should work with me.

That’s it for today, folks.

Godspeed & God Bless.

I hope you all get 1 million Chase points randomly today.