Choosing a Credit Card: Step 3—Bonus and Rotation Cards
TL;DR: Got the essentials covered? Now it’s time to scoop up short-term bonuses and long-term point boosters. Not essential—but often worth it.
You’ve got your core cards. You’ve picked up a few long-term keepers with elevated bonuses. Now what? If you’re still looking to fund more travel—or just want to keep the points flowing without complicating your life—there are two types of cards worth considering: bonus cards and rotation cards.
Bonus cards
Bonus cards are those that aren’t worth keeping long-term—but become valuable when paired with a big welcome offer in year one. Anything could fit that bill for you, but for me that is primarily middling travel cards, airline cards, hotel cards, and ultra-premium cards.
Travel cards
These are cards with flexible transferable currencies that might be solid, but won’t provide much value in a wallet full of core and keeper cards. These could include the Citi Strata Premier, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Wells Fargo Autograph Journey, and similar cards. They may not be stars of your wallet, but when their bonuses are at their peak, they could be good enough for a flight to Europe or two, which could easily justify holding it for a year or two.
Airline cards
These can be keeper cards if you fly the airline enough that the card benefits justify the annual fee. But even if you never fly a given airline, its co-branded credit card could easily cover a flight to a far-flung destination with a great bonus. It’s not just US airlines–bonuses on cards from foreign airlines like TAP Air Portugal or British Airways could potentially get you across an ocean and back for way less than buying a ticket in cash.
Hotel cards
There are many great hotel keeper cards, but even the less-great or overpriced options could present an opportunity to quickly acquire some free travel. Because hotel points tend to be extremely inflated (with some exceptions like Hyatt and Accor), even seemingly-massive offers might only amount to a few nights, even at cheaper properties. But a well-timed offer can often be stretched, especially abroad. For example, if you catch the Choice Privileges Select with an 80k point offer, that could cover 10 nights in Japan, where most Choice hotels cost just 8k points per night.
Ultra-premium cards
Ultra-premium cards typically combine massive fees with a massive coupon book full of discounts and credits–just mostly on luxury products that you might not spend your own money on. That value proposition might not be sustainable long-term—especially if you wouldn’t normally pay for perks like lounge access or elite status. But huge welcome offers on these cards could easily net you an international flight or two, making a year or two holding the card (and enjoying the luxury benefits) well worthwhile. Plus you can often downgrade these cards to a more affordable option later.
Of course, some bonus cards are better than others. You might actually find a use for the Citi Strata Premier’s awkward hotel credit and decide to keep it around. But Citi’s AA Executive card will likely cost you a few hundred bucks a year and won’t earn many points beyond the initial bonus. Others have no real use case beyond the welcome offer. Even at this stage, it’s worth cherry-picking the cards that offer the best bang for your buck.
Rotation cards
These aren’t about big bonuses. They’re about better everyday earning—if you’re organized enough to use them. They’re optional, but useful if you’re trying to max out a few specific spending categories.
Some of my favorite rotation cards are:
Citi Custom Cash. This card earns 5% cash back (or 5x Thank You points, if you have a Strata card) on your highest spending category for the month, allowing you to use it flexibly to max returns on things like gas, groceries, or live entertainment if you don’t have another card that gets strong earning on those categories.
Chase Freedom Flex/Discover It: These cards earn 5% cash back (or 5x Chase points, if you also have a Chase Ultimate-Rewards-earning card) on a set of rotating categories each quarter, allowing points nerds to shift some spending each quarter to snag some extra rewards.
Amazon Prime Visa. If you spend heavily at Amazon or Whole Foods, the 5% cash back on those purchases could add up over time.
At LazyPoints, we love the potential of these cards, but don’t prioritize them. Why?
They may require more organization or memory to use optimally–and might not be lazy-friendly.
The marginal gains will usually be dwarfed by snagging a huge bonus from a bonus or keeper card.
Picking up these cards can make it harder to qualify for more lucrative cards or offers in the future (e.g. by filling up 5/24 slots).
If you’ve already tackled the big bonuses and want to improve everyday earning, a few of these can help you quietly stack more value over time.
When to get–and ditch–bonus cards
The problem with bonus cards is that, because they don’t make sense to hold long-term, you’ll probably want to cancel after a year. This can have a variety of implications for your credit and ability to get/keep bonuses.
Cancel carefully. There’s usually an ideal one-month window to cancel the card. Cancel before you’ve had the card for a full year, and the bank could rescind your points. Cancel more than a month after the bonus is due, and you could be on the hook for another year’s annual fee. Check the terms carefully.
Mind your points. If you earned transferable points, you might lose them if you don’t redeem them before closing your account. If you earned hotel or airline points, your card might have provided you a more generous points-expiration policy–canceling might start the expiration clock.
Protect your credit. Each new credit inquiry and account can adversely impact your credit score. Closing an account can affect your length of credit and available credit. Although many people have a dozen credits and have cycled through many, you should think through the possible implications for your credit.
Track issuer rules. Cycling credit cards could affect future bonuses. Grabbing bonuses and then ditching cards is called “churning,” and the banks aren’t big fans. Many include language indicating that they will take your past history of card sign-ups into account when deciding whether to approve you for a card or allow you to earn a bonus. My rule of thumb: keep each card for at least a year, and be able to explain why you canceled if you ever end up having to speak to a real person on a reconsideration line.
Lazy Take
You could spend years adding the best cards on the market to your wallet–I have, and I’m nowhere close to Step 3 yet. But once you’ve built around your core cards with some great keeper options, Step 3 is about scooping up the extras—cards that may not be long-term keepers, but can still deliver big rewards. Bonus and rotation cards aren’t essential, but if you time them right, they can fund an extra trip or two each year.
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