340,000 points earned. 660,000 left to go.
Background: Million Mile Madness is the fun and foolish quest to earn a million points in one month. Throughout March, I’ll do everything I can to earn as many points as I can while keeping within my ethical boundaries. I don’t expect that a million points will have been credited to my account by March 31st: points often take quite a while to get credited. Instead, I’ll track all of the points that I expect, and I’ll declare victory if the expected total is over a million. To keep things challenging, I will try to keep my net costs below $1,000. In case you’re interested, all points earned and expenses incurred will be tracked via this Google Docs spreadsheet. See all Million Mile Madness posts (in reverse order), by clicking here.
Churn results so far
Today I signed up for 11 different credit cards. I was approved for 7 (after calling about 5 of them). Three are still pending. One was denied. Here are the detailed results:
|
Card |
Bonus |
Spend Req |
First Yr Fee (ongoing) |
Results |
| Barclaycard US Airways | 35K | First Use | Free ($89) | Approved instantly. |
| Barclaycard US Airways business | 25K | First Use | $79 | Denied. Initially pending. I called twice and spoke to supervisor. No luck. Too many recent inquiries. |
| US Bank Club Carlson Personal | 85K | $2500 | $75 | Pending. I called US Bank but was told that it was a fully automated process and that I would just have to wait 24 to 48 hours for a decision. |
| US Bank Club Carlson Business | 85K | $2500 | $60 | Pending. See above. |
| American Express Platinum Mercedes | 50K | $1000 | $475 | Approved after calling (initially pending). Will recoup $400 in airline fees in 2013 and early 2014, so net cost is $75. |
| American Express Premier Rewards Gold | 50K | $1K | Free ($175) | Approved instantly |
| Citi AA business | 50K | $3K | Free ($85) | Approved after calling (initially pending). Card include $150 statement credit after first use with AA. |
| Citi ThankYou Preferred | 6K | $300 | Free | Pending. Was told that after approving the AA card, they had to wait 24 hours to approve the second. |
| Chase Ink Plus | 50K | $5K | Free ($95) | Approved after calling. Had to move some credit from another card. |
| Chase Ink Plus | 50K | $5K | Free ($95) | Approved after calling. Initally this was denied as a duplicate application. Told agent that I have 2 different businesses (which is true). |
| Chase United MileagePlus | 55K | $1K | Free ($95) | Approved after calling. Had to move some credit from another card. |
Here are the totals by application status:
|
Status |
Bonus Total |
Required Spend Total |
First Year fees |
Notes |
| Approved (7) | 340K | $16000 | $475 | I expect to get $550 in statement credits to more than offset first year fees |
| Pending (3) | 176K | $5300 | $135 | |
| Denied (1) | 25K | $0 | $79 |
My Thoughts
340,000 points is not an impressive churn. In January, my wife earned 305,000 points from only 4 cards. That said, the points I will earn are fantastically valuable. The collection of 55K United miles, 85K AA / US Airways miles, 100K Membership Rewards, and 100K Ultimate Rewards is awesome! I’m psyched about the 100K Membership Rewards alone because they are more than enough for another flight on Singapore Airlines Suites class!
And, of course, there is still hope with the pending applications. This churn could end up with as many as 516,000 points, but I think its unlikely. I’m hoping to get at least one of the Club Carlson cards approved. If not, I have a big job ahead to earn 660,000 points through the rest of the month! That’s 33,000 points per business day! Luckily, Chase and Amex promised to have their cards here by Monday or Tuesday so I will be able to get started on those minimum spend requirements right away. If you’re curious about how I intend to meet those spend requirements and earn many more points, please see “Million Mile Madness: Preparing to buy & sell.”
On Monday, I’ll give an update regarding the pending apps, and some lessons learned from this huge churn. In the meantime, I’ll be planning more ways to earn miles!
Learn about Million Mile Madness:
- A crazy million mile idea. Should I do it?
- Million Mile Madness, it’s on
- Million Mile Madness: Strategy
- Million Mile Madness: Preparing to buy & sell
- Million Mile Madness: Tracking points and expenses
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Thank you for your quick response. That clears my doubts. I am also relatively new to the whole points game and I find myself enjoying it.
That’s a great start!
My question is when I applied about a month ago for the United 50k offer they told me since I earned the mileage bonus from United in 2011 I am not eligible for the bonus anymore because it is one time deal. I am just curious if you have ever earned the United bonus before via the Chase United card(or Continental card before) and how did you get the bonus again this time around? Any tips?
Jonathan: No, I never had a United or Continental card before. With Chase, I recommend looking for different products rather than trying the same card again. For example, the Sapphire Preferred Visa, and Sapphire Preferred Mastercard are different products so you should be able to get the bonus on each. Same with Ink Bold, Ink Plus, Ink Cash, and Ink Classic if you have a valid business.
jada135: That stinks regarding your Hawaiian cards, and the Chase thing!
Blue: MR has a poor transfer ratio to Starwood. I would lose points doing that.
Have you considered transferring your new Amex Premier MR points to Starwood, and take advantage of Starwood bonus points when transferring in increment of 20k pts to an airline?
This will get you closer to the million mile mark
I had to settle for amex,citi,boa,barclays since im blacklisted at chase.Chase has the best cards but i havent been able to get cards from them in 3 years.It sucks even more because that was before i joined the miles game and had no clue about traveling.I got blacklisted and no excuse was given.So i hope you guys take your relationship with chase seriously.
I just found out that in my last churn of 11 cards two of them where boa hawaii and bank of hawaii they gave me the bait and switch and i got the lesser product which is 10k instead of 35k so my switch to hilton will only yield me 40k instead of 140k which sucks.
Dave p. the whole point is to do all of it in March.
What is the time requirement to meet all of the minimum spend? You’ve got $16,000 to spen on current approvals, and another $5300 pending. $21,300 is a ton of money to spend over a 3 month period.
So how did your wife get 300k miles with 4 cards? What cards??
Siso: See this post: https://frequentmiler.com/2013/01/10/my-wifes-305k-churn/
Dave P: I need to meet all min spend this month in order to meet my goal of 1 million miles in a month
More than a third of the way there. Impressive! Looking forward to how the rest of the madness pans out.
freeze ARS* (drinking and posting do not go well)
And dang 13/13 would have meant 740k!!!
The right strategy for getting approved for Club Carlson is free ARS(not the body part), apply for it. If instant approval app others. If not wait 2-3 business days for recon, then app others on same day the usual way.
So jada time to open a blog. LOL
Congrats though and please list out the cards/details if you can for others. TIA.
@jada135; I also recently was declined when I applied for the Citi AA Business CC. When I called the reconsideration line, I was told the “system” declined me because I had too many open Citi CC accounts(4). I offered to close one of my accounts and was told that was not necessary. The application was approved on the spot. Don’t give up without at least one (or two) calls to the reconsideration department), and if all else fails, a letter to the CitiBank Executive Review Department.
I joined frequent miler in this million mile quest my results were i applied for 13 cards and got accepted for 11 bringing my totals to 605k and 20k spend.I got denied for citi business card and club carlson.I might get to that million myself.