You are just a wealth of knowledge! Thank you so much!
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Created a better look for the 5/24 Status info at lunch, going to try to make the rest use the same style when I have time.
(Built those calendar images from scratch using basic shapes, didn’t like how doing it other ways looked. Although Excel LURVES to resize or move items within a group of shapes randomly, so will have to see how long before I get annoyed with that.)
Very pretty!
So the 5/24 status just means that you can’t open more than 5 cards in 24 months, right? And your months to next drop section is how much time until one of your existing cards rolls out of the 24 month timeframe?
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Exactly!
Looking at my numbers above, I’m at 4/24 - I could keep hitting business cards all year and stay under.
In 2 months I’ll be down to 3/24.
(Caveats: 5/24 only applies to Chase card applications, plus there are some odd business cards that do get reported to personal credit reports, but I always forget which ones. Barclays and Cap One maybe?
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I wish I could come up with a way to take advantage of the business card angle!
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For business cards, it can be as simple as selling things on Etsy, FB marketplace, Craiglist etc.
Anything with the intent to earn a profit can be a sole proprietor business and you just use your own name and social security to apply.
There’s a whole chapter in the 10Travel course on it and tactics.
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Another tip for those who are Southwest Rapid Rewards members: Sign up for Southwest Rapid Rewards shopping. You can use ANY credit card and whenever you use the link through their site (or the button extension that can be added to your browser) for online shopping you will earn Rapid Rewards points. The browser extension will even provide a shortcut to link through RR Shopping when you shop at a participating site.
Many popular shopping sites are included (Walmart, Safeway, Kohl’s, Home Depot, Lowe’s, shopDisney, Chewy, Shutterfly, Old Navy, Woot, Apple, and Zappo’s to name a few.) Some sites give you a one-time chunk of points for signing up for a subscription (Disney+, Verizon, etc.), and you can often get special deals where they give you extra points per dollar spent at various times of the year.
I earn an average of about 5000 points per year doing this, which isn’t too bad considering how easy it is, and it’s on top of the points I’m earning through my credit cards.
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Great tip! After all this time I still have to remind myself to jump through portals for regular shopping.
Another nice Southwest points thing worth considering I found was the possibility of extra rewards for booking hotels through their portal, especially in the Orlando area with so many hotels.
After noticing the bonus points when playing with the SW portal, I wanted to see how good the deals might get so last year I recorded all the UOR resorts by price, number of days and how many bonus points you’d earn for various dates.
If you hit it right and stuck to UOR resorts, I found a 6 night Endless Summer Surfside booking could get you over 16 SW rewards per dollar spend. In the example circled below, that 20,000 SW rewards could have easily been an additional free round trip flight for something you were booking anyway.
If you didn’t mind booking something like Caribe Orlando you could get over 24 SW rewards per dollar!
How do the prices/discounts compare when buying through the portal to the discounts you can get directly from UOR? Could you get an APH rate through the Southwest portal?
Holy cow this would be awesome! Got more heavily into the points game in the past year and having a hard time keeping track of it all. P2 isn’t really playing but more allowing me to apply for cards on his behalf so I’m on the hook for all the planning.
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Just a general note here - for those staying on site at WDW. If you use your MB to charge to your room, it will be considered travel/resort by your CC.
For me - I have a Chase Sapphire Preferred. I would sometimes charge food to my MB, which meant 2x points back. If I would have swiped the physical card (or tapped), it would have been considered a restaurant at 3x back.
Genie+ was considered a ticket add on at 1x point back.
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I’m trying to get my sheet to the point where it is just geeky enough to be useful while also not making it hard to use and confusing to everyone else. Right now I think it might break a few brains as it is in the chaos stage. 
In the meantime, a nice free tool to try out if you haven’t already is the Travel Freely app - it is a nice interface on both the browser and in app.
Warning: technically that is a referral link above, but really only kind of thing he is giving out is stickers and phone cases, so I don’t think I’m breaking any TP forum rules? Just curious if the app is really tracking that stuff and I don’t have any referrals. 
But, I do think it lacks a few things - which is why I’m beefing up my spreadsheetz.
- Doesn’t track referral points earned (weird)
- Not really counting days between card applications as well as it should
(i.e. it doesn’t differentiate between a biz app and personal and provide a counter so you can track the your velocity more accurately.)
Even so, I still check Travel Freely app regularly, nice to have on my phone and provides reminders on annual fees and spend due dates etc. I sent the developer one suggestion and he was super responsive too. I’m betting he comes up with some better stuff over time.
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I should have mentioned that, good question! When I crunched those numbers I did compare the prices on those resorts and for those specific dates that were either the same or within some small difference on either side of the direct price. But, I didn’t do an exhaustive comparison for many dates, so YMMV.
I also tried looking at a few other locations that have many hotels competing in a small area and there always seemed to be a few hotels that had a sizeable SW rewards bonus.
On a similar note, I found last year that UOR Portofino resort shows up on Amex’s Fine Hotels & Resorts (FHR) Portal.
The Amex Platinum card has an annual $200 credit when using FHR for 1 or more nights, plus you get a bunch of other perks: for each booking you get $100 resort credit, possible early check in and room upgrade, guaranteed late check out, free breakfast.
So, I compared the Portofino price on FHR to UOR’s own price on several dates and most of the time it was exactly the same - so could be a nice play if anyone has the Amex Plat:
Bunch of perks
Cash money credits
A resort where you get free Express Passes
But in either case, portal pricing with a points bonus vs direct deals always has to be a number-crunching activity, you never know whether it is worth it until you compare.
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My spreadsheet skills are sorely lacking so it would take very little to break my brain in this case.
Thanks for this tip! I’ve seen people mention it on a few Frequent Milers posts but I haven’t checked it out yet. Sounds like it may be a good starting point for me. I prefer to work from my laptop but obviously need the portability of an app for the card offers to be very useful. At least until someone’s beefed up spreadsheet is ready for stealing 
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I’m not sure, but I think there might be a problem with my points to $ valuation formulas.
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Nah. That looks totally legit. Also, can I come on your next vacation?
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@JJT - I’ve got a question for you, but I don’t know if you’ll know the answer.
I’ve got the basic Disney visa now. I applied in June 2022. I think I will probably upgrade to the premier at some point.
Two questions:
- if I upgrade in July 2024, does that make me eligible for whatever bonuses are out there (24 months since opening the card)
- do you know if this counts against the chase 5/24 rule?
Only a new card will count for 5/24, so upgrades/downgrades don’t add to the number.
You can’t get a regular sign up bonus (SUB) on an upgrade. (Although Amex cards once in awhile will offer targeted upgrade bonuses, some good, some bad.)
So, the next time you can get a sign up bonus on this card will be from the date you earned the last SUB, NOT the application date. If you for example earned the bonus on the August 2022 Statement, you could get it again in August 2024 - although I’d add a few weeks or a month for a buffer just in case.
(You have to cancel the card first of course, so might want to do that at least a few weeks before you plan to reapply.)
A few things:
- I wouldn’t upgrade to the Premier unless you know you are going to spend enough on the card to earn well more than the annual fee by doing so. Sure, you’ll get 2x points on some spend, but that’s still only 1x more than you’d get now. So I think you’d need to spend something like $5K on 2x categories over the course of the year just to make up the $49 annual fee and break even. (You get 2% at gas, grocery, dining so I know those add up quickly in most houses.)
I only get the Premier Visa when getting the bonus because you get $300 statement credit vs $150 for the regular card. After the Premier annual fee that’s an extra $101 bonus. Then I downgrade to regular Disney Visa after next year’s fee hits. (They’ll refund the fee within 30 days of when it hits the card.)
- If you’re playing the bigger points game and earning Chase and Amex points etc and are concerned with 5/24 I’d just keep the regular Disney Visa and spend the money on other cards with better returns. Getting these cards over and over are not worth a 5/24 slot if you are playing the bigger game.
Before I started hitting the points game hard last year, I just churned these Disney Visas, with my wife and I referring each other for extra bonuses each year. I made a choice to ignore 5/24 then and got the easy Disney money knowing I’d stop once I tried for other points. So, my wife and I are just holding our Disney Visa cards now and use them once in awhile to keep them active.
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Thank you for your insight! You reinforced a lot of what I was thinking. I hit the points game pretty hard this year - we had practically free flights to Orlando - hello Chase Sapphire!
It doesn’t make sense to upgrade - I do like having dedicated Disney dollars because it makes it easier to convince my husband to spend it at Disney. Now…DH doesn’t love my points game…but I think what I’ll do is refer him when we are ready for the card before our next trip, and then we will get an extra bonus plus some dedicated Disney $$$.
I’m holding out for my next card for either a great SW deal or a great cash back offer. I’ve got room for 2 more cards within the next 12 months or so.
And thanks for clarifying the sign up bonus date! Good to know it’s not the application date. Daycare helps us hit those goals quickly 
And - it never occurred to me to ask for a downgrade!! 
Appreciate the help @JJT
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The Chase Ink Cash and Ink Unlimited still have their terrific high bonuses going - $900 cash back (really 90,000 Chase UR) for $6k spend. (Before was $750 for $7,500 spend.)
They don’t eat up a 5/24 spot because they are business cards (although you have to be under 5/24 to be approved.)
My wife and I have been working through them now. 4 cards = 425K Chase UR when we finish the last card. (Including referral bonuses and earnings from spend.)
The Ink Cash is particularly useful since it gets you 5x at office supply - so you can load up on gift cards at Staples and get a ton of points.
(And word on the street lately is you can get multiple of the Ink Cash and Unlimited without even closing the ones you have.)
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