Start to churn?

[anelson524]

Hi everyone!

So I've been in the garden for sometime as my wife and I just closed on our first home. I've now opened up a CSR and a Bassett account for some new furniture to take advantage of their no interest financing. I'm just wondering if now I should just go ahead and bite the bullet and open a couple more accounts over the next couple months. I don't anticipate any problems with doing this and having high inquiries. The only thing I may do is look to purchase a new vehicle in the upcoming months. I figure with the couple of inq's I've already taken I may as well bundle it with a few more to have more fall off over a short time in the future. Just curious for other's opinions. I can't think of any real reason not do take advantage of churning. The goal is for my wife and I to take a trip to europe for two weeks flight/hotel paid for by doing so. Shouldn't be too difficult with the both of us building points across the board.  

Any opinions on which cards to look for next would be great. I've pretty much exhausted my options with Chase, I declined an approval for additional credit limit with them to open my CSR and had them move limit from another card. I'm at over $100k exposure with them and didn't want to go through the long process for approval on any additional credit I really didn't need.

Thanks!

My Current Card Profile

CSR

Marriott Rewards

Freedom Unlimited

Freedom 5%(recently CSP)

United Club

Citi Prestige

Best Buy
Bassett Furniture (Wells Fargo)
Wayfair

Wife's
CSP

Freedom Unlimited

United Mileage Plus
Pottery Barn

Mattress Firm(Wells Fargo)

[iced]

Maybe I'm completely missing the point of churning, but if the goal is to take a vacation,  I would imagine the best route is to earn points that can be combined against one airline and one or two hotel chains (more if you plan on hotel hopping). You have the CSR and the Club already, which basically makes United a great choice for getting to Europe. There's no non-Chase branded cards out there that can help your United situation much. If you're gunning for sign-up bonuses, AmEx's Gold/Platinum and Citi's AAdvantage may be your best bet (since you have Citi Prestige already), though be aware that DL's SkyPeso redemption value is crap compared to United. You already have the Citi Prestige so that door's closed. This also means the Chase benefits you're getting (like club access) are also useless since United now requires a same-day boading pass on United or a *A carrier to use their lounge.

Also mind your AF accumulation. You're already around $1600/year in AF (incidentally, that's the cost of two coach tickets to Europe). The Platnum would put you over $2000/year. That's fine if you're generating enough spend annually that the points you're receiving offset the cost of AF, which at a conservative 1 cent a point means $200,000 run through your cards annually. I'm not weighing benefits like club access because in terms of getting you free tickets to Europe (which is your goal right now), they're effectively worth $0.