I think I am done. In the past 1.5 years, I have received the American Airlines card from Citi (now canceled), Capital One Venture, SPG Amex (now Marriott), Barclay Arrival, and Chase Sapphire Preferred. Toward the end my credit score was going up (818 at last check) and the credit limits were going down (Barclay was only $12,900). Put this together with the two no annual fee cards that I have had for years, and I easily have more than $100,000 in available credit.

In getting these five cards (I say that I think I am done because I think issuers will cut me off not the other way around), I have received bonuses of 60,000 miles from AA, 70,000 from Cap One, 70,000 from Amex, and 75,000 from Chase (60,000 plus 15,000 from signing up a friend). In addition, Tanya has opened an AA account, Cap One and Chase and is getting the same bonuses. So far our points/miles have got one of us to Prague and the other to Hawaii and us both to SF. We have also booked my flight to Astana and my return flight from Lisbon and Tanya’s r/t to Istanbul and eight nights in a hotel. Roughly, we have about 300,000 miles/points left in our cache.

So, at some point I will start cancelling these cards to prepare for the next round of sign-up bonuses. I don’t see how this is sustainable for the companies, but I am willing to take advantage of it until the get onto me. These are the companies that caused the financial crisis after all.

A little story about Chase: when I signed up I got an email saying they needed to do a closer review. They called a day later and asked four questions: (1) where was our mortgage, (2) where was our car loan; (3) how long did I work for Coffee Projects; (4) how long did I live on Liverpool Dr. I got all four wrong, but still got the card.