Why I’ll Apply For A Club Carlson Card

  • Like many of you, I do a round of credit card applications every 3 months. I pick one card per bank and apply at the same time. I love seeing new offerings like this one from the little guys. The Club Carlson cards are issued from US Bank here. I’ve got a drawer full of cards from the big boys (Chase and Citibank), but this will be my first experience with US Bank. 
  • Also, I was going to post about the 1,000 free United miles here, but it seems like a weird website. Up to you, but I’m not sure about this one.

Tuesday Hustle

  • 500 American Airlines miles for a short Facebook survey here.
  • More American Express Membership Rewards transfer bonuses. 30% to British Air or 33% to Hilton. Neither is great, but British is better. The Virgin bonus is still available too.
  • 10,000 bonus American Airlines miles if you book a vacation from AAvacations.
  • Another 3 days for a 100% bonus buying US Airways miles.
  • The best deal of the bunch. BigCrumbs has a 2.25% cash back bonus on American Express gift cards. Just don’t buy with Citibank cards, since they view it as a cash advance. 

Guys, the response to yesterday’s post was HUGE. I had no idea it would be like that. So many of you have incredible ideas I would have never conceived of on my own. The combined brainpower of this new venture will be something special. As long as we all give a little, we’re going to get a lot. To those who were denied, I really am sorry. To be totally honest, there was something shady about you and I’m not taking any chances.

Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t be so honest.

I Have An Idea

In our world of miles, deals spread quickly. Between Flyertalk, blogs, and Twitter…there’s just not a good way of keeping anything quiet. Why would MileNerd need to keep anything quiet, you may ask? Isn’t that the point of this blog? To release all the information?

Well, yeah it is. But, to be honest, not all of it. Some deals (maybe 1% of  them) aren’t supposed to be out there. Translation: A loophole or mistake that gets closed if big brother finds out. And you better believe big brother is watching and closing loopholes all the time.

Now, this is a huge dilemma for me. All I want to do here is share every bit of information I can. But occasionally I just can’t do it. Here’s an example. There are certain online banks you can fund with credit cards and earn miles for every dollar deposited. Open multiple accounts and get big chunks of miles. Now, if those banks learned about the loophole, they’d close it in 10 seconds. So I can’t post about it here, because that kills the deal. See my dilemma? Yeah, it sucks.

But I have an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while. The plan is to start my own private message board in January. It’s going to be made up of my readers and it’s going to stay small. This is my way of sharing the deals that can’t be posted here. Again, it’s not going to be a public message board. And once it starts, there won’t be any new members added.

I’ll spend the next few weeks putting this together. If you’re a friend or someone who emails me all the time, you’re in. I know you’re trustworthy and won’t leak information. Anyone else, I need you to email me at some point in December. In your email, you’ll tell me about a loophole deal that doesn’t show up in the blogs. That’s your ticket for admission and proof that you don’t work for big brother. By January, I’ll have a nice-sized list of deals to start the message board with. If there are ever any leaks, the message board will be shut down, and I’ll start it again with an even smaller group of people.

(This message will be reposted December 10th and 17th. Click Contact Me in the right sidebar and send me those emails. And, no, I’m not sharing any of these loophole deals until January on the message board).


Please Pay Attention

Guys, this week has got me a little stressed. My friend and 2 readers received an Amex Financial Review. My mom got denied for a couple cards. Another reader took a big hit to his credit score. So please pay attention because it seems like I need to review some old lessons:

  • Don’t lie about income on your credit card applications. Especially to American Express. 
  • If you can’t pay cards off every month, you’re not ready for this game.
  • If you’re late with payments because you’re disorganized, you’re not ready for this game.
  • Closing cards is fine. It’s actually smart, because you don’t want to be stuck paying a bunch of annual fees. But for the love of God, stop closing those no-fee cards you’ve had for years and years. Length of credit history is very important, so it’s newer cards that should be closed.
  • I keep the majority of my cards open for at least 6 months and close them before the 1-year mark. But my no-fee cards from 1998 will NEVER be closed.
If you’re not tracking your application dates in a spreadsheet, you’re getting yourself into trouble. You people who apply for Chase and Citibank cards every month aren’t being smart. Again, I do a round of applications every 3 months. In each round, I apply for a maximum of 1 card from each issuer (1 from Chase, 1 from Citibank, 1 from Bank of America, etc). I apply for all the cards on the same day. The only exception is the occasional Business version of a card. 
If you’re coming up with your own strange way of doing things, making up income, and applying for different cards every week…don’t say I didn’t warn you. 
MileNerd out.