Hi! My husband and I are attempting to get free business class flights to Paris next year using sign up bonus miles. Just wanted to get some extra eyes on my plan before we take the plunge. My husband is also concerned about his credit score, so if anyone knows how big of an effect the below plan would have, that would be great to help me convince him to do this
. We both have credit scores around 790.
My credit cards:
01/16 - Wells Fargo Platinum $1.5k limit
02/16 - Discover IT - $16k limit
09/18 - Chase Sapphire Preferred - $17k limit
My husband:
01/16 - Discover IT
01/15 - First Bankcard Sheetz Visa
We really only use the two Discovers and the CSP, the other two are only open because they're our oldest accounts. Currently put about $1,000 a month across all the cards. All cards are paid off every month. We're looking to take a trip Aug 2021 from PIT-CDG (as long as COVID cooperates). American seems to be our best/easiest bet to earn the miles we need to get business seats.
The plan: my husband and I will each sign up for two cards - Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select and Barclays Aviator Red Mastercard. One of us will sign up for the Citi card first and hit the minimum spend ($2,500). We should be able to hit that in 3 months, could easily do it in 1 if we use Plastiq for rent. After we get that minimum spend, we'll sign up the other person for the Citi card (potentially refer one another?) and hit the minimum spend. After that we'll both sign up for the Barclays card. It does not have a minimum spend, we just need to make one purchase so that will be an easy one to hit.
We don't fly American often (we mostly do domestic travel on SWA), so we'll likely downgrade the Citi cards to no-fee cards. The fee is waived for the first year, so we'll make sure to do it before the fee hits. We'll likely cancel the 2 Barclays cards before the second year fee hits, since we won't really use it
and the downgraded version gets pretty horrid returns.
Is this a solid plan? We don't plan on taking out any loans for at least 2 years, so I figured the small hit from applying and canceling would be fine and our scores would bounce back in that time period.