I don't like traveling.

My question to the group is what does opening all these cards do to your credit score?

I have a contratian view -- if you are truly FI, then you shouldn't have to spend all that time and mental energy to chase after a few hundred dollars.

I used to play these credit card bonus/rebate game but it got riduculous. My wallet looked like George Constanza's (you should get the reference if you are a fan of Seinfeld), and I found it ridiculous that I had to refer to my Outlook calendar on my phone to remember which card to use for gas vs grocery because it changes each month. Not worth it.

I now carry a max of 3 cc -- one for general purpose, one for travel, one for backup. I use PenFed CC as it gives me 2% cash rebate on every purchase as long as I have a $500 checking account balance with them. I use Chase Sapphire Preferred for travel, but I am questioning the worth of the $100 annual fee as I also have Chase Freedom that gives me most of the same benefits but is free.

The goal for FI is so that I don't have to sweat the money stuff. So why are we spending so much time sweating the money stuff, just because it's "free"? Obviously if you truly enjoy the "game" aspect of it, more power to you. I would rather sit down with a real book and a cup of tea, or spend a few hours hiking through the woods or walking on the beach.

I definitely like my free travel on points and stuff, but I will choose cash back when it's more worthwhile. And that is better found in shopping portals, specifically Capital One Shopping. Install it in your shopping browser. Visit a site you want to buy from but don't complete the purchase. Chances are, unless it's Amazon, Target or Kohl's, you'll get a heavily boosted offer. The browser extension will show the standard 0.5-2% for, say, Best Buy or Macy's or Walmart, but you'll get a personalized offer for 7-25% back. Accumulate and cash out for gift cards. The GC options change and disappear and return, but I'm a fan of eBay, Etsy, Lowe's, Chewy, Kohl's, Best Buy, Expedia/Hotels.com, Lululemon (my niece is obsessed!). Hack: Even if you're buying excluded items, often you just need one qualifying item to make the whole purchase qualify. So a $50 grocery order at Walmart also gets a can of 57¢ cat food thrown in for exactly that reason, because I don't even have a cat.

Just so you can see how this adds up, here's a screenshot of the next 4 cashback rewards about to hit my account. Note the following: My Best Buy purchase was for an $85 discounted gift card and a $6.50 extension cord that I paid for with a $5 Best Buy reward. That Office Depot one sucks because I was spending rewards and didn't click through from a good offer...didn't think rewards as payment would qualify, doh! Walgreens was $74 before coupons, I only spent half that.

If you're not using Capital One Shopping yet, get a referral code from a friend (or DM me) - there's currently a boosted offer of $80 for both the referrer and the new customer. It's usually $40.

We optimized for cash back. Cashfreely.net helps us do sign up bonuses. 2 people start a new card every 45 days, every 90 days per individual. We enjoy traveling but cash is more valuable for how we do it. Frankly it's be better for more people, who forget that points have cash value. It's alot less work doing cash back.

I think it's very much situational. You can see everyone has an angle based on lifestyle. For me I have an Amazon card where I typically get 5 to 8% back where if you are patient in delivery dates you can get closer to 8%. I use Amex cash preferred for groceries and gas at 6% credit for each category. And when I know we'll have large upcoming purchases I'll open a card with a high initial bonus then cancel within a year. This all might change whenever I get to FI and travel more with flexibility.

Maybe I'm missing something but the truth is I never understood credit card optimization. The delta is about 3% between most cards offering 2% and some on select items offering 5% and while that can lead to long term savings and I do not mean to discount saving 3% on everything i have found that credit card churning/bonus harvesting (opening new cards to harvest the initial bonuses) can yield 15% to as much as 60% per card and thats not even including the referral bonuses although that does help and is always a nice treat.

So I've just been doing that. I have 22 cards. Never paid interest and make thousands per year the past 2 years I've been doing this (a bit over 10k in total/averaging 500 per card)

Lmk if you have any questions

edit: additionally I've been really working on developing a system for earning bank bonuses on a monthly basis. They average around 300 a month so doing 2 a month lessens my fi number by about 180,000.

I have to admit I took a different route with this. We like to travel, but with our jobs (not currently FI), we don't have the flexibility to travel when sweet spot redemptions pop up (and don't have the mental bandwidth to be constantly searching for sweet spots). After listening to an interview with Katie from The Money with Katie Show (it might have been on the Choose FI podcast, but I can't remember), I started to listen to her podcast as well. She really sold me on the AMEX Platinum. I decided to take it one step further and get the AMEX Platinum co-branded with Schwab....and then I pair it with the Apple Card.

Yes, I know the AMEX Platinum comes with a high fee (and YES, I did a spreadsheet before applying for it to see if the fee would make sense), but at this point in my FI path, my focus isn't solely on cutting expenses. I did that for so long that I essentially became a miserable financial hermit. I was able to pull myself out of that downward spiral with help from my husband and some quality time with Ramit Sethi's book and podcast. Now, I not only value saving and investing, but also spending money on things that improve my quality of life and get me out in the world a bit.

SO: pairing the Schwab AMEX Platinum and the Apple Card. The Apple card gets 3% cash back at certain retailers (Apple, Uber, Walgreens, etc.), and 2% everywhere else when you are using it with Apple Pay (only 1% if you are just using the physical metal card, which I never do). There are no hoops to jump through, and the cash is deposited on a daily basis into an Apple Cash account that I can transfer to savings, use to purchase things or send to family, or apply to my card. It is frankly the easiest cash back program I have tried. This card is also handy when I am somewhere that doesn't take AMEX.

The AMEX is the lever I pulled to start living a better life. From a cash back perspective, the card earns AMEX Membership Rewards points, which convert to real $ going into my Schwab investment account at a $0.011 redemption value. Not great on a continual-spend basis, but excellent when you have the initial welcome bonus chunk. After converting my initial 100,000 bonus points (and 15,000 points from my business card that I just opened - yep if you have other cards earning AMEX points AND this Schwab Platinum card, all points earned across cards can be sent to Schwab) to my Schwab account, the real value (to me, at least) comes with the "perks" of the card. I think the sign-up bonus is 80k points right now, though. And you get an annual statement credit based on the value of your qualifying Schwab holdings, which is at least $100 if you have at least $250k there, which should be easily attainable for most people pursuing FI.

They recently increased the annual fee, but at the same time, added a lot of value (from my perspective) for things that I was either already spending money on, or things that I, as a recently liberated financial hermit, really benefited from. Some of them ARE travel-related (sorry OP), but others are quality-of-life improvements. Here is a summary of the perks of the card I have used (edited some for length b/c of character limit):

• Monthly Uber credit - we use this exclusively for Uber Eats to try out new-to-us restaurants in the area. Our most recent find is a Middle Eastern restaurant that has THE BEST spiced chicken bowl. I keep going back for it (but only once a month as a special treat and to use my credit, and I ALWAYS do pick-up, since pick-up is more economical and is located where I run my errands).
• $400 Resy credit - we use it for take-out at a local brewery.
• $300 digital entertainment credit: Disney+, New York Times, Peacock, YouTube Premium (no annoying ads inside videos!!), etc.
• $100/year Saks credit (got some high-quality baking dishes and very nice vases for our new house, then some perfume I first tried at my sister's house). If you shop the sale items, there are great items at a pretty good price.
• $300/year Lululemon credit (they recently opened up their sizing to be more inclusive, and I like their pants for walking)
• $600 Fine Hotels & Resorts credit: We recently stayed at a very nice hotel for a quick getaway before the holidays, and this credit made it VERY affordable.
• Walmart+ credit: monthly membership credit, includes Paramount+
• Global Lounge Access - I have traveled a little for work (and a little for personal) in the past few years, and since getting access to Priority Pass and Centurion lounges, being in an airport is now an entirely enjoyable experience. Now, I make sure I have at least a 2 hour layover (or if I am departing from an airport with a lounge, I arrive 3 hours before the flight), to make sure I am not rushed, but also to use the lounges (VERY clean bathrooms, pretty good food, and sometimes a glass of wine before the next flight really hits the spot). When the lounges are busy, if the airport has a Minute Suites, the Priority Pass gets you an hour in a private room to relax (total game-changer in a crazy busy airport!!!).
• Clear Plus, Global Entry, and TSA Pre-Check: I signed up for all of these, but had only ever used TSA Pre-Check. I haven't used Clear Plus yet, but recently returned from an overseas trip, and Global Entry was amazing. The easiest breeziest trip through immigration/customs I have ever had. EVER.
• Hilton and Marriott status bumps (got upgraded rooms a few times because of this, which was nice).
• $200 airline fee credit (but you have to pick the airline each year).

I think I've had every travel card, but have slowed my travel game as well. I'm enjoying earning a flat 2% on everything on our Capital One Venture and Venture X (X has a higher annual, but we utilize that in rental cars etc). I also do Freedom Flex's rotating 5%. Rakuten has been a go to for me as well to double up points back (either cash back or Amex points).

I'm currently using a grandfathered US Bank Smartly card, which gives me 4% cash back on almost everything. It requires $100k in securities in its checking, savings, or investment platform. I fulfill that by moving $100k worth of VTI to their self-service platform. The new iteration of the card is now much less attractive, as it no longer counts investments.

My fallback is BofA Unlimited Cash rewards, which gives you 1.5% cash back on everything (2% on the first year). If you have Preferred Rewards Platinum Honors tier ($100k of security in all your accounts, which can be fulfilled by moving some of your VTI to Merrill Edge), you will get a 75% bonus, which means you will get a minimum of 2.625% cash back on all your spending.

I use a robinhood gold card which is 3% Cashback on everything, only annual fee is the $50 yearly membership. I don’t really use robinhood but 3% cashback on everything was the most competitive I found aside from coinbase which has a 4% cashback on everything but requires a high balance held on their platform.

I'm into travelling, but I have found that for the way I prefer to travel it is hard to use points "efficiently". I opened a Chase Sapphire Preferred card during the height of COVID (at a point when the sign up bonus was bumped to 100k points) and accumulated points ever since. Over the years I did find some good redemption opportunities. I was able to transfer points over to my Marriott Rewards account at a time when there was a 40% bonus on the transfer, which coincided with a trip to England I was taking where I was able to score the equivalent of something like 3-4¢ per point on a couple of hotel reservations. At other times I've used the points at the standard 1.25¢ per point for one night at a hotel on a long road trip, for instance. But I never managed to find a good deal on airfare redemption. For instance, when a round trip to Madrid, London, Amsterdam, or Paris can be had for around $500, it's difficult to find even mediocre points redepmptions on those same routes. In my case, I generally find that I'm comparing something like 0.5¢-0.75¢ per point (trying to use the airline's program) versus a cash fare that is comparatively much "lower" (and which I can just book through Chase with their points for 1.25¢ per point).

I ended up concluding that with the recent point devaluation by Chase (as of late October 2025 new Ultimate Rewards points are valued at 1¢ per point, rather than the previous 1.25¢ per point, for a default redemption, and old/existing points that haven't been used by late October 2027 will be devalued at that time) I need to just use up the points that I have and consider whether a good cash back card might be more suited to my lifestyle.

Following! (Even though I love traveling 😂) I'm also interested in hearing more about cash back cards- I tried doing the points/miles thing and it's too much. I'm not into it. @Westie , which cash back cards do you have/recommend?