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I got hooked on the idea of credit card churning a year ago from one of Graham Stephan’s videos. While I’d always used credit cards prior to this because of its cashback and other rewards features, they were your typical young-adult starter credit cards which didn’t have any fees but also gave mediocre benefits. It didn’t click for me until this video that I could actually get the benefits of the premium credit cards without paying the price! Today I’m going to share the lessons I learned from one year of credit card churning.
So one year ago, I decided to try credit card churning. I told myself I would not open a new credit card more than once a year so that my credit wouldn’t be overly affected. The card I chose as my first test puppy was the CIBC Aerogold Visa Infinite.
It typically had a $120 annual fee, but they were doing a promotion where the first year’s fee was waived, as well as 15,000 miles at first purchase and an additional 5,000 miles after spending $3,000 in the first 4 months. And yeah, yeah, I know, what’s the point of getting air miles if we’re not going to be flying anywhere for the foreseeable future? If I’m honest, this was more me wanting to live out the satisfaction of going on vacation and paying for the flight with just my points… and since air miles don’t expire, I should be able to live out that dream eventually, no matter how long it is in the future.
Side perk of this particular card: it’s BLACK – the colour of premium. It felt really nice pretend I was a boss babe whipping out my black credit card to pay for things. It’s probably one of the things I’ll miss most about this card when I inevitably cancel or downgrade it in a month. But I’m also really excited to start researching what other perks and promotions are happening in credit card world. What card do you guys think I should get next?
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thanks, very interesting 🙂