What Credit Cards Do I Currently Have Open?

I was doing some review the other day trying to figure out how many credit cards I currently have open right now. I have 13 open rewards credit cards. I have had many others, but I have since closed those credit cards. From these credit cards, I earned 645,000 points. These are not necessarily the top credit cards. There are many great credit card offers. Remember, before applying for any new credit cards, ensure that you are getting the best offer available.

They are:

Chase Ink Bold - 50,000 Ultimate Rewards Points. Rumor of a 70,000 points offer

Chase IHG Rewards Club Select - 80,000 points, currently only 60,000. may be better offer available

Chase British Airways Visa - 50,000 points

Barclays Arrival Plus World Elite - 40,000 points

US Bank Club Carlson Premier Rewards - 85,000 points

US Bank Club Carlson Business Rewards - 85,000 points

US Bank LANPASS Visa Signature - 30,000 points, currently only 20,000 points

Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature - 25,000 points

Bank of America Alaska Airlines Business - 30,000 points, currently only 25,000

Citi Platinum Select Aadvantage World MasterCard - 50,000 points

Citi Business Aadvantage World MasterCard - 50,000 points

Citi Executive Aadvantage World Elite Mastercard - 100,000 points currently only 50,000. May be better offer available.

How to Earn the Most Miles and Points

The fastest way to earn free travel is through generous credit card sign up bonuses. This is the primary tool for earning travel rewards. Rewards credit cards offer generous bonus for spending certain amount of money in a limited period of time often 90 days for account opening.

Credit card bonuses are not the only way to earn bunches of reward points. Manufactured spending is another way. Manufactured spending is when you artificially create credit card spending that you would not normally make. Usually this means turning credit card purchases back into cash through the use of prepaid debit cards for example. If you are able to do this with bonus categories for example 5x points for purchases at office supply stores with the Chase Ink Bold and Chase Ink Plus credit cards than you can quickly rack up a substantial number of points. I will discuss in detail methods of manufactured spending in future posts.

One of the more obvious methods for earning miles is actually paying for airline tickets and receiving miles for the distance flown. I earn virtually 0 miles using this approach because it is my goal and mile habit to never actually pay for an airline ticket with money. My goal is to earn enough miles to pay for all my airline tickets with miles that I acquired for almost free.