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My Journey credit card churning

Follow my credit card churning journey, where l discuss my experiences as I try and earn 500k or more points per year using credit card signup bonuses and other point hacking methods.

I will discuss the credit cards I apply for to earn signup bonuses. What my favorite tips and tricks are and how I collect more points faster so my family and I can travel for almost free.

Access free resources and referrals and learn how I started. Read the step by step guide and my blog to follow my credit card churning journey.

8

Years credit card churning

41

Credit cards churned

3.72 million

Points earned

$2700

Cashback earned

48

Lounge passes received

909

Credit score

$42510

Total rewards value AUD

What is credit card churning?

Credit card churning, also known as credit card hacking, credit card flipping or credit card recycling is a process where someone will use credit cards for credit card joining bonuses or signup bonuses to accumulate as many frequent flyer points and other rewards as fast as possible.

 

It is a way of using credit cards to make money. This is a very popular but little discussed technique in the travel hacking community, also known as point hacking.

 

You apply for a credit card, make the minimum spend to get the credit card bonus offer, and then cancel it.

 

Credit cards with big bonus points offers also often feature a discounted first year annual fee, so you avoid the full annual fee you'd pay in the second and subsequent years as well.

 

Although I will show you how to avoid this annual fee in the step by step guide. This is done on a rinse and repeat basis.

Credit card companies will try to encourage new users to signup for new credit cards by offering large signup bonuses.

The trap here is that these credit cards have hefty annual fees, as well as large minimum spending requirements. Credit card companies are hoping you will overspend and then not pay off your credit card in time and they will make money off the interest they charge you.

 

Credit card churning tries to avoid these scenarios to collect points and profit from the value of the rewards. In this guide, I will document the methods I have been using over the last 8 years to point hack and travel hack my way to earning millions of Qantas frequent flyer points and thousands of dollars in rewards.

Flow chart of what credit card churning looks like
Example o credit card churning

Example of credit card churning

Lady holding a credit card to credit card churn

Let's for the sake of this example say the credit card you are planning to apply for has a signup bonus of 100k Qantas points, a $295 annual fee, and a $3000 minimum spend. This is a general example and does not talk about any credit card specifically as this process may differ outside of this example.


I apply for a credit card, the process will take about 10 minutes online. If successful my credit card will arrive within 5 or so business days. When I have the credit card activated, I try to reach the minimum spend within the first month of owning the card or by the time the first statement arrives.

 

If I am successful, I will be charged the annual fee of $295 and receive 100k Qantas points a couple of days after my statement arrives. As soon as my points are in my account, I pay off my credit card in full and call the bank to cancel my credit card. When I am canceling the credit card, I ask for a pro-rata refund of my annual fee. The banks may return the annual fee via cheque within 5 business days. After I am sure my credit card has been closed, I will repeat this process. Rinse and Repeat.

By not changing my spending habits, I just earned myself 100,000 Qantas points for about 1 hour of the time it took to apply for the card, activate the card, pay it off, and cancel over the phone.

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