Credit Card Advantage Play

Hello Forum,

I was recently sent an offer from CapitalOne to open a new credit card. I have been getting them for years and never open them, but I only recently learned how your credit score really works and realized it would be better to open more open accounts/lines of credit. Not that it will even matter since my credit score is 795 but I still want to get more lines of credit.

For this card I will get 20,000 bonus miles if I spend 1,000 dollars in the first three months of the card, which will be easy to do. This seems pretty generous so I have been researching on the internet if it is actually worth it to sign up and it would seem that it is. Apparently there are credit card APs who do the same bonus exploitation with credit cards that I already do with casinos. It is actually quite complicated to come up with a fair valuation of what a point is worth (the wizard would love it), but it seems to vary to 1-2 cents per point, and there can be blackout dates etc. Some forum members I found said on some airline cards only 5% of seats are actually available so you have to take that into consideration when coming up with a fair valuation of the card. But using that rough estimate of 1-2 cents per mile, this would mean that 20,000 bonus miles will be worth about 200 to 400 dollars for spending 1,000 dollars in the first three months and getting the bonus.

This seems unsustainable (much like poorly thought-out casino promotions) but from what I've read not only do the credit cards plan on making that money back from the ploppies who won't pay off their balance, but they also collect money from the vendor every time you use your credit card. So at no cost to me, they are making money every time I use the card so they can afford to offer these generous bonuses.

This website below does a lot of the research and stuff for you. It seems like between my wife and both parents I could effectively receive the bonus 4 times for each card. I am excited, it seems like a fun new way to AP! With that said, how many credit card APs do we have on the forum and do you have any advice to a new credit card AP? :)

www.thepointsguy.com
https://thepointsguy.com/2014/03/can-you-play-the-credit-card-game-forever/

I like cash-back cards myself.

I also like to stagger two cards with closing dates 2 weeks apart. If you pay the cards off every month, you get up to 6 weeks to pay with no interest. To do it you always switch to the card that just closed. You could use 3 cards with closing dates 10 days apart, but that seems a little nuts.