Update
I wanted to update everyone on our progress toward the great credit card trip of 2014. Thanks to many of you me and my wife are on our way to our goals. My wife was recently aapproved for the CSP and we currently have nearly 160K points. If you remember we started with less than 60K. like I said I couldn't do it without you. So here's how things stand so far
What we have
158K United points160K priority club points (8 hotel nights)
2 free nights at the Hilton
2 free nights at the Hyatt
What we need
2 more free nights at the Hilton
2 more free nights at the Hyatt
162K more United points
How we plan to get there
I still need to apply for three cards. Citi Hilton, Chase Hyatt and The united explorer
She needs the united explorer.
Final notes
We both have the United explorer 50K targeted offer. So we plan on apping before the year is over. That will get us 100K UA miles.So hopefully we'll have 285K miles before New years!
Seoul and Singapore are just really long layovers (12hrs+) that's why we don't need hotels there.
We will be traveling overland in China, Australia and from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur so we will actually be in those countries longer but will use the train/bus as sleepers.
All the long flights are Business class. the rest are economy.
For fun I tried to book the same iteneries at cost and the price was over 50K.
We haven't bought the tickets yet so if you guys have any suggestions, critiques or helpful hints I'd be happy to hear them. Thanks again everybody.
@unc0mm0n1 wrote:This is long so I'll try to condense it as much as possible. I'm graduating from law school next year. Me and the wife had a mini honeymoon but we want to do a huge trip after I take the Bar exam. We will go From Chicago with stops in Toronto, Japan, Bangkok, Shanghai, Sydney and San Fran before heading back to Chicago. We won't require a hotel in Toronto, SF, or China (family and friends in those places). So basically we have to pay for about 12 days of hotels and flights. We plan to fly for free and stay at awesome hotels through some new CC's. The only thing I'm worried about is whether we can get approved for all of these cards in time.
What I have currently, that will be useful for the trip:
1. 60k Priority club points (my priority club visa bonus). Good for three nights in the Crowne Plaza Bangkok.
2. 60K Delta miles (enough to get us to Toronto).
3. 57K United miles (from my CSP bonus).
What we need.
9 more hotel nights.
178k more United miles.
How I plan to get the 9 hotel nights:
My wife needs to get the , Priority Club Card (60K points worth 2-3 nights), Citi Hilton Card (2 free weekend nights, at almost any Hilton world wide), Chase Hyatt (two free nights at any Hyatt) and
I need to get a Citi Hilton Card (2 free weekend nights, at almost any Hilton world wide), Chase Hyatt (two free nights at any Hyatt)
This will cover the hotel stays.
How I plan on getting the miles:
I need to get the United Miles Explorer Card (55K miles)
My wife needs to get the United Miles Explorer Card (55K miles), CSP (45K miles).
That's 155k miles. Still leaving us about 23K short. But we pay most things including rent, with our CSP or freedom so we are spending about 3K a month on our chase accounts that can be turned into United miles. That spend should easily get us to 23K miles in a year.
What I need help with:
How should we go about getting these cards?
My profile: CS 675 Tu 670 EQ (because of last months app spree), No missed payments on any CC, Stated Income 75K, one baddie that will fall off TU in October, EX in December. 7 Inqs on TU, 10 on EX, 8 on EQ. I have a chase Checking account, the freedom and CSP among other cards TL available Credit 40K. 20K in the Chase account. Oldest account 3yrs ago AAoA 10 months.
My wife's profile: CU 734 TU 708 EQ. Opened two CCs in January but is AU on some of my bigger TLs. Stated income 50K, no baddies has a joint chase checking account with me. Available credit is 32K. Oldest account is 2 years AAoA is 8 months.
Is it even possible to do this before say June. SO I can meet the minimum spend and have it post to the account? I recently had an app spree so I'm gardening for about 6 months but I just want to make sure I don't lose out on the explorer offer. It's already reduced to 30k for some. I checked today I still have a targeted 50K offer and so does my wife? She we go for the Explorer now? What order would you app?
Thanks for reading.
@Anonymous wrote:
Hopefully UA's devaluation won't hit you too hard. Look into the new award chart, particularly for partner airlines. You might need to adjust.
Just to update. We have offically purchased the tickets! Although I always thought we'd get there to actually purchase the tickets feels good. The UA devaluation would have killed us so we had to adjust the trip. We didn't have enough points to include Australia so we just made the trip about Northern Asia. We will be flying Royal Laurel class on an EVA airlines 777-300. Hotels will be:
Tokyo: Park Hyatt (2 free Hyatt nights Hyatt Visa CC)
Beijing: Park Hyatt Points + cash (Diamond suite upgrade)
Seoul: Park Hyatt P + C (Diamond suite upgrade)
Shanghi: Waldorf Astoria (3 free weekend nights Citi Credit card)
Hong Kong: Grand Hyatt (2 free Hyatt nights Hyatt Visa CC)
Macau: Conrad (40000 points AMEX PRG sign-up bonus)
Bangkok: Intercontenintal (60000 points Chase IHG Bonus)
Bali: Grand Hyatt P + C (Diamond suite upgrade)
Entire price of trip including manufactured spend ~ 1100 USD
Estimated cost of trip if paid with cash ~ 30K USD
I love credit cards 
@unc0mm0n1 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@unc0mm0n1 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:Honestly.... I wouldn't even waste points on hotels in places like Thailand, you can find plenty of very nice local hotels for fraction of the costs. Save them for Europe and Japan/Korea expensive areas imo. In Thailand very clean and nice hotel with rooms that can rival Crown Plaza (without all the amenities) should run about $40 a night at max. $100 should get you a penthouse room in some nicer small places with Jacuzzi in your room with a nice balcony.
You are right. A sweet at the merridian is going for 134 a night and that includes breakfast. Places like the four season and the Conrad are also sub 200. Good catch.
That's good, remember the best part of being a points chaser/churner is getting the most out of your points/miles. In cheaper countries opt for cash! Honestly there's a trick you can use, in some hotels where you bring out cash, then act like you're changing your mind and put it on credit instead. I would say half of the time when they notice you had the cash, they'll offer you cash discounts. I regularly get 10% off when I go out with my friends to go eat at a local restaurant when I pool all the cash, then offer to pay on my card.
That is awesome. I noticed that in Argentina as well you can get anything cheap if you use cash. I will be using this trick.
Not sure if your talking about paying in cash with the local currency or in US dollars. The one caution I would have is if in a foreign country its not always a great idea to be paying in US dollars, unless you really know what you are doing. A lot of people pay in US dollars and lose money in the transactions given the exchange rates. Also factor in loss in miles on credit card transactions etc. There is a reason merchants want to be paid in US currency and will offer discounts.
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@unc0mm0n1 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Hopefully UA's devaluation won't hit you too hard. Look into the new award chart, particularly for partner airlines. You might need to adjust.Just to update. We have offically purchased the tickets! Although I always thought we'd get there to actually purchase the tickets feels good. The UA devaluation would have killed us so we had to adjust the trip. We didn't have enough points to include Australia so we just made the trip about Northern Asia. We will be flying Royal Laurel class on an EVA airlines 777-300. Hotels will be:
Tokyo: Park Hyatt (2 free Hyatt nights Hyatt Visa CC)
Beijing: Park Hyatt Points + cash (Diamond suite upgrade)
Seoul: Park Hyatt P + C (Diamond suite upgrade)
Shanghi: Waldorf Astoria (3 free weekend nights Citi Credit card)
Hong Kong: Grand Hyatt (2 free Hyatt nights Hyatt Visa CC)
Macau: Conrad (40000 points AMEX PRG sign-up bonus)
Bangkok: Intercontenintal (60000 points Chase IHG Bonus)
Bali: Grand Hyatt P + C (Diamond suite upgrade)
Entire price of trip including manufactured spend ~ 1100 USD
Estimated cost of trip if paid with cash ~ 30K USD
I love credit cards
How long are you going for? I feel tired just reading that Itinery and this is from somebody who has been to 35+ countries!
Haha, a little more than three weeks. We'll be spending between 2 and 4 days in each place. I know it's a lot but me and my wife are fairly young (28 and 32) and very active (I was in the Army and she competed on a national level in volleyball). We've also traveled extensively, I've actually lived in Asia and Europe. We had similar trip around the mediterrean Island hopping between 7 different islands in 16 days and it was a great experience. We figured we are almost ready to have kids and I'll be working at a big law firm soon so we won't have as much time to do things like this.
@Anonymous wrote:This is pretty impressive and inspiring man. Make sure to stop back by after the trip to say how it went!
For sure, I'm going to do a full trip report with pics and everything. If it weren't for people on this board I wouldn't have been able to get half the CCs I have. When I first found Myfico about a year ago I had three crappy USAA cards and about 3000 dollars worth of credit. My wife had two cards, one secured. My Fico score was in the low six hundreds and my wife didn't even have a score. Fast forward to today. We have100K+ in credit and both have Fico scores north of 750. The people on this site really helped me and saved me a ton of cash, not only on this trip but our interest rates are going to be considerably lower when we get a mortage next year.