{"id":12109,"date":"2025-07-16T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=12109"},"modified":"2025-07-15T23:11:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T05:11:27","slug":"wednesday-wisdom-the-opportunity-cost-of-new-credit-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/16\/wednesday-wisdom-the-opportunity-cost-of-new-credit-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Wisdom: The Opportunity Cost of New Credit Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week for Prime Day (which spans multiple days obviously), the American Express Amazon Business Prime card had a $200 sign-up bonus. That shouldn&#8217;t have been news unless there were referral or resurrection shenanigans afoot, but somehow it still was. The Chase Amazon Prime Visa had a sign up bonus of $250 too, but shouldn\u2019t have been news either. Given that context, what sign-up bonus is news? Or, even better, when is it worthwhile signing up for a card?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Factors<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The calculus of a new card for a churner are mainly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A hard pull on your credit report (cost)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A new credit line on your credit report (cost)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Taking up a credit card slot at a bank (cost)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sign-up bonus (benefit)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ongoing card benefits (I mean, it\u2019s in the name)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Good bonus category multipliers for manufactured spenders<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Impressing your friends and waitstaff when you pay for dinner with a Toys R Us cobranded credit card (benefit)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Turning that into the Value Equation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The best bonuses at AmEx, Capital One, and Chase will be worth ~$2,000-$3,000 after annual fees with hand waivey math. For Citi, Bank of America, US Bank, and your average credit union $750 &#8211; $1,250 are typical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The best unlimited category bonus cards give a cash out value of ~3% &#8211; 6%+, and much more with category capped or spend limited bonuses.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The type of game you play makes one of these two factors matter a lot more than the other, but both provide a basis for when you should get a card:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If sign up bonuses are the bigger part of your earn, make sure you\u2019re getting a value of at least\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li> $750+ for US Bank, Citi, Bank of America, or a random credit union personal card<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>$1,250+ for AmEx, Chase, or Capital One<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If manufactured spend is the bigger part, shoot for\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>3x or 3% minimum return<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to these Amazon cards that led the story &#8211; it\u2019s really not hard for most people to get Amazon gift cards at a discount of at least 5%, even more so if you have easy access to a Kroger. So, I\u2019m not sure the earn argument is valid either. But you do you, I\u2019m sure there are angles out there that I don\u2019t see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"794\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/image-8.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12165\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/image-8.png 700w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/image-8-264x300.png 264w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">&#8220;Shouldn&#8217;t have been but still was&#8221; news isn&#8217;t new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction Last week for Prime Day (which spans multiple days obviously), the American Express Amazon Business Prime card had a $200 sign-up bonus. That shouldn&#8217;t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credit-cards","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12109"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12180,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12109\/revisions\/12180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}