470,000 points after $48K spend

UPDATE 10/1/2015: Please note that the 30K SPG offers described in this post have expired.

In the post, “319,000 points after $33K spend” I wrote about my wife’s latest round of credit card aplications.  Unbeknownst to her, she applied for 8 cards in total and was approved (at that time) for 5 of them.  For review, here were the 5 that were immediately approved:

• Bank of America Virgin Atlantic: 75K bonus after $12K spend (at 1.5 miles per dollar) results in 93K miles
• Citi ThankYou Premier: 50K after $3K spend (at 1 point per dollar) results in 53K points
• CitiBusiness AA: 50K after $3K spend (at 1 mile per dollar) results in 53K miles
• Amex Business Gold: 75K after $10K spend (at 1 point per dollar) results in 85K
• Amex SPG Business 30K after $5K spend (at 1 point per dollar) results in 35K

And here were the applications that were still under review:

• Bank of America Virgin Atlantic: 75K bonus after $12K spend (2nd application)
• Bank of America Alaska Business: 25K bonus after first purchase
• Amex SPG Personal: 30K after $3K spend

I can now happily report that all three of the pending apps have been approved!

Caution

I do not recommend signing up for this many cards at once.  Only sign up for cards if you know that you’ll be able to pay off the balances in full each month, and that you can meet the minimum spend requirements.

Virgin Atlantic second application

This one required a call to BOA’s customer acquisition team (phone number found here).  The application had been closed as a duplicate.  After confirming over the phone that a second card was really wanted, the application was reviewed and approved!

Alaska Business

The application for this card never showed up on BOA’s online application status checker (maybe that page doesn’t show business apps?).  Anyway, the approval letter and the new card appeared in our mailbox a week later.

Starwood Personal

This one was held up by my poor counting skills.  Of course I knew that Amex has a strict 4 credit card per person limit (plus any number of charge cards).  The place I failed was in counting my wife’s current credit cards.  It turns out that 1+1+1 = 3.  That’s how many credit cards she had before this round of applications.  Then, she applied for two more (SPG personal and SPG business).  So, Amex approved the business card immediately, but held onto the personal card until they could find out if my wife wanted to give up an existing credit card to get this new one.  She sacrificed her EveryDay card.  Luckily her new Business Gold card will keep her Membership Rewards points alive.

Subtotal

Here are the newly approved cards and the expected rewards from each:

• Bank of America Virgin Atlantic: 75K bonus after $12K spend (at 1.5 miles per dollar) results in 93K miles
• Bank of America Alaska Business: 25K bonus after first purchase results in 25K miles
• Amex SPG Personal: 30K after $3K spend (at 1 point per dollar) results in 33K points

Total points/miles from newly approved cards: 151,000

Total spend required from newly approved cards: $15K

Final tally

With the cards that were initially approved, I reported the following totals:

• Total points/miles: 319,000
• Total spend required: $33,000

Now, with the above subtotals added in, the final total comes to:

• Total points/miles: 470,000
• Total spend required: $48,000

Was this a good haul?

470,000 points & miles is pretty awesome, but $48,000 spend is ridiculously high.  As I explained in the prior post, I can handle this level of spend because I’ve built up my manufactured spend techniques over time.  Those less comfortable with big spend would be better off signing up for fewer cards and by limiting to cards with smaller spend requirements.

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