The Credit Cards I Keep Getting Over And Over

When you’ve been in the credit card game long enough, you start to notice that certain cards always seem to come back into your wallet.

I’m not someone who focuses on spending categories too much – most of the time, I find my time is better served opening new cards to get signup bonuses. Since I’m focusing on signup bonuses, it means I’m opening a lot of new cards each year. And while the cards do change as different cards hit the market, in recent years, a lot of my cards seem to repeat themselves.

Here’s a look at some of the credit cards I seem to get all the time and why I keep getting them.

Chase Sapphire Reserve Every 48 Months

The Chase Sapphire branded cards include the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Chase Sapphire Preferred, both of which are personal credit cards subject to the Chase 5/24 Rule. These cards each have their specific perks – the Chase Sapphire Reserve has the higher annual fee, but comes with some more benefits, while the Chase Sapphire Preferred has a lower annual fee, but fewer benefits. They both earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which are points that I highly value because of their flexibility. In general, the signup bonuses on these two cards are usually similar, although, in recent years, the Chase Sapphire Preferred has occasionally had the better signup bonus.

Of these two cards, the Chase Sapphire Reserve is generally the card I prefer. While the value of this card has dipped in recent years, I still think it’s a good card for most people. The card comes with a hefty $550 annual fee, but it also comes with a $300 travel credit, effectively making the annual fee $250. The Chase Sapphire Reserve also gives you access to the Chase Travel Portal, where you can redeem your Chase points at 1.5 cents per point. I find this benefit useful in certain situations.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve also gives you the opportunity to double-dip the travel credit, allowing you to use the travel credit twice while only paying the annual fee once. This effectively makes it so that in the first year, you can get $600 of travel credits while paying only $550 in annual fees, giving you a net gain of $50.

There are two big limitations with the Chase Sapphire branded cards. The first is that you cannot have both Sapphire cards open at the same time – Chase limits people to holding either the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Chase Sapphire Reserve, so you’ll need to decide which card you want in your wallet. Second, you are limited to earning the signup bonus on this card once every 48 months

The 48-month rule is a big limitation that limits how often you’re going to be able to earn a signup bonus on one of these cards. Because of how valuable this card is, whenever I’m eligible to earn the bonus on this card, I’ll always get it. So, this card is almost always in my wallet and is regularly being reopened.

American Express No Lifetime Language Offers

American Express has some interesting signup bonus rules that make it a little different from other banks. According to their terms, you’re limited to earning a signup bonus on each card once per lifetime. This rule would seemingly make it difficult to earn a lot of American Express signup bonuses.

However, American Express regularly sends out targeted offers to people that do not contain this once-in-a-lifetime bonus language. These offers are called “No Lifetime Language” offers (NLL) and it makes it so you can earn a bonus on a card multiple times, even if you already had the card before, and even if you have the card currently open.

NLL offers are targeted offers, which means they aren’t going to be available to everyone. These offers seem to get sent out randomly. The most common way I get these offers is in the mail – I’ll often get a mailer inviting me to open a card that I’ve already had before and when I check the terms and conditions, I’ll see that it’s an NLL offer.

Another way you can get these offers is via a popup when you log into your American Express account. Again, this is random and there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason as to why you get these NLL popup offers.

Finally, people will sometimes post links to NLL offers where you can see if you’re targeted by logging into your American Express account and clicking the link. Once again, whether you’re targeted with these links seems random.

I’ve found that NLL offers are fairly common for me and getting all of these offers has allowed me to earn bonuses on the same cards over and over. My most common NLL offers seem to be from the American Express Business Gold and the American Express Business Platinum cards. Both of these cards have large annual fees and a variety of credits that help offset the fees, but for me, what makes them worthwhile is the chance to earn more Membership Rewards points. There are times when I’ll have several of these cards open at once and still receive more NLL offers.

I’ve also received NLL offers for the Delta Business cards. These are good because I no longer qualify for the signup bonuses on the Delta credit cards and Delta miles have value for me since I live in a Delta hub. I also get NLL offers for the American Express Blue Business Plus cards. These cards are worthwhile because they’re no-annual-fee cards and they keep your Membership Rewards points active. They also earn 2x Membership Rewards points on your first $50,000 of spend each year, and since I often have large tax payments to make, they’re a good card for me to have just in case I don’t have other cards to use when I’m making these tax payments.

Generally, if I receive an NLL offer, I’ll almost always go for it because they are good opportunities to rack up more points.

Chase Ink Business Credit Cards

Chase Ink Business Credit Cards are some of my favorite cards for three reasons: (1) they earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points, (2) they don’t impact my Chase 5/24 status since they’re business cards, and (3) it’s possible to keep opening these cards and earning signup bonuses, even if you previously earned the bonuses before.

There are three main flavors of Chase Ink Business cards. These include the following:

• Chase Ink Cash
• Chase Ink Unlimited
• Chase Ink Preferred

The Chase Ink Cash and Chase Ink Unlimited are both no-annual fee cards with different earnings rates, while the Chase Ink Preferred comes with a $95 annual fee. Of the three, I typically go with whichever card offers the most points with a reasonable spend requirement. Usually, the signup bonus on the Chase Ink Preferred is high enough to offset the annual fee, so I’ll usually grab that one (as an advantage, the Chase Ink Preferred also makes it so you can transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to travel partners, so having this card can be important depending on whether or not you hold the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Chase Sapphire Reserve).

What makes these Chase Ink cards interesting (and why I’m always regularly opening these cards) is that you can continue to earn the signup bonuses on these cards even if you’ve already earned the signup bonus before. In contrast, most of the other Chase credit cards limit you to either one signup bonus every 24 months or in the case of the Chase Sapphire cards, every 48 months.

The ability to keep earning signup bonuses on the Chase Ink cards means that, in the past, I’ve typically opened a new Chase Ink card about every 3 months or so. My wife has also typically done the same, meaning that in most years, the two of us would open around 6-8 Chase Ink cards each year. We’ve done this for many years now and usually have multiple Chase Ink cards open at the same time. Being able to open so many of these cards means we’ve been able to keep our stash of Chase Ultimate Rewards points regularly topped up.

Unfortunately, it appears that Chase has started to tighten up on how often you can open these cards, so we might see the Chase Ink cards entering my wallet less often. You can still earn the bonus each time you open a new Chase Ink card, but it seems like Chase is starting to limit how easy it is to get approved if you recently got the card or if you have multiple Chase Ink cards already open. For most people, it seems like you’ll be able to get a new one every 6 months or so and likely will need to have 2 or fewer of these cards open at a time to have a good shot of approval.

Still, even with the restrictions, I’m hoping I’ll be able to get these cards once or twice per year at least (but the landscape is shifting, so maybe not).

Note that the Chase Ink cards are business credit cards, so you do need a business to qualify for these cards. However, most people have a business or can start something that would qualify them for these cards.

Southwest Companion Pass Every Two Years

The Southwest Companion Pass is a benefit that Southwest offers where you can fly a designated companion with you for free on every Southwest flight you pay for (that includes flights booked with points). To get this benefit, you have to earn a certain number of points in a calendar year. Importantly, it’s been possible to earn the Southwest Companion Pass from the signup bonuses you get from the Southwest credit cards. Typically, you’ll need to open two Southwest credit cards, and the signup bonuses from those two cards will be enough to earn you the Companion Pass.

For the past 8 years, my wife and I have alternated who gets this pass. Southwest cards limit you to one bonus every 24 months, so our strategy has been to have one of us get the Southwest cards every two years to earn the signup bonus and get the Companion Pass. Usually, we open one Southwest Business Credit Card and one Southwest Personal Credit Card, typically near the end of the calendar year. We then earn the bonus early in the next year. You keep the Southwest Companion Pass for the rest of the year that you earn it in, plus the next calendar year, so earning the Companion Pass early in the year gives you the most time with the Companion Pass.

That being said, Southwest has made some massive changes that will devalue it and put into question whether I’ll continue to spend time getting the Companion Pass. For me, the main issue is that Southwest is putting expiration dates on their travel credits. For the past several years, I’ve been using my American Express Business Platinum airline credits to buy Southwest flights, then cancel them and bank the credits for use at another time. Putting expiration dates on the credits will severely hinder my ability to do this since I don’t want to be in a position where I have to use hundreds of dollars worth of travel credits within 6-12 months.

So, there’s a good chance these Southwest cards start falling out of my wallet.

Final Thoughts

These groups of credit cards are the main ones that I find myself getting over and over. While there are many other cards out there, for me, the best reward points are transferable currencies like the ones from Chase and American Express. This is why I’m constantly opening cards that earn Chase or American Express points. The fact that I’ve been able to get a lot of these cards regularly has helped me a lot.