It’s been a couple of years since I last wrote a thorough update on my journey with credit card and bank account sign-up bonuses (check out that article here) and over 8 years since my first article on it (click here for that one).
Again, much has changed since I wrote those. I have continued to sign up for new credit cards and bank accounts for the bonuses, but at a much slower rate than when I first started 10 years ago. There are a couple of reasons for this: less travel and simplifying my finances.
We did take a couple more long international trips using points for flights and hotels since the last update in the summer of 2023 and at the beginning of 2024. In 2023, Whitney and I got married and then immediately left for a 10 week trip to Europe. This was by far our most fun trip to Europe, yet although it was much more expensive due to the destinations we chose. We thought that would probably be our last long international trip for a while, but soon after we got back we decided to do one more in order to visit our 7th continent! At the beginning of 2024, we went to Antartica and South America for 6 weeks.
The reason we knew that these would be our last long international trips for a while is because we wanted to start our family. Our daughter was born in October of 2024, and we’ve spent most of this past year at home enjoying our newest adventure as parents. With much less traveling this past year and for the foreseeable future, there has been less reason to a aggressively pursue accumulating more points and miles.
In addition to traveling less and needing less points, I’ve also been trying to simplify my finances after so many years of having tons of open accounts. But, I’m still getting at least one new credit card per quarter and getting bank bonuses when they make sense.
Even with slowing down the pace of opening new accounts recently, I’ve still able to continue to earn a significant amount of money and points each year from sign-up bonuses. I’ve averaged about $450/month from sign-up bonuses since 2015 and also gotten thousands of dollars worth of free travel each year using points for flights and hotels. Not bad for a side hustle that I put very little time and effort into in recent years.
New Account Sign-ups
Alright, let’s get into the spreadsheet and numbers. These are screenshots of a spreadsheet I made tracking all of my credit card, bank account, and brokerage account bonuses over the past 10 years:
In total this is:
- 64 new credit cards
- 53 new bank accounts
- 6 new brokerage accounts
in the past 10 years that I’ve opened to get sign-up bonuses!
If that sounds crazy to you, I completely understand. When I look at it and consider that more than half of those were in the first three years, it sounds pretty crazy to me too. The value that I’ve gotten from the bonuses has definitely made the hassle worth it though.
Rewards From Sign-Up Offers
From the numbers at the bottom of the spreadsheet above, you can see that I earned a total of:
- 2,635,000 miles/points
- 14 free hotel nights
- $24,688 in cash bonuses (this is with fees that I paid over the years already being subtracted out)
Using these rewards for free international and domestic flights has saved us a ton on travel over the years, but we’ve probably gotten even more value from free hotel nights all over the world.
We stayed 26 nights for free at hotels all over Europe in 2019 on just one of our international trips. In total we’ve stayed more than 165 nights for free at hotels all over the world since 2015 (Note: this includes both “free night” certificates and hotel points for each of us).
Many of our free nights have been at upscale hotels in places like London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, Amsterdam, Brussels, Santorini, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Sydney, Quebec, Montego Bay (all-inclusive), Denver, Dallas, Washington D.C., New York City, Boston, Chicago, and Miami! At an average price of $200/night (a very conservative estimate of the average cash price for these hotels) 165 free nights would be worth roughly $33,000 alone.
One thing that I didn’t include in the totals is credit card referral bonuses. When I wrote these updates early on, referral bonuses were pretty rare for me. Fortunately, they’re much less rare these days. I get referral bonuses often from friends and family asking for help with credit card rewards after writing so many articles about them, and also lots of referral bonuses from a credit card recommendation page that I keep updated on the Travel Therapy Mentor website. I don’t feel that including those referral bonuses, which aren’t reproducible for most people, in the numbers adds any value to readers who want to follow a similar path to me when it comes to sign-up bonuses.
Conservatively, I estimate that I’ve averaged about $7,500/year between cash and free travel over the past 10 years from these bonuses, with much of that value being TAX FREE!
This isn’t all of the benefits I’ve gotten from these bonuses though. I’ve also earned extra cash and points from things like:
- various promotional offers on cards I already have
- 0% purchase APR periods on some of the various new credit cards above
- AMEX offers on my American Express cards
- credit card funding of various bank accounts leading to extra cash back with no actual spending
- buy one get one free flights with the Southwest Companion Pass
- and the biggest of all, a minimum of 2% cashback (or the point equivalent) on nearly every dollar I’ve spent for 10 years just by putting the purchases on a credit card
These extras have been worth at least an extra $2,500/year for me.
The summary of points and rewards here only includes the accounts that I’ve signed up for in the last 10 years. I have not tracked Whitney’s accounts as meticulously, but she has signed up for probably about 75% of the same cards and accounts as I have above, earning her own rewards, points, and free nights which we’ve used toward free travel.
If you include all of the cash and points that Whitney has earned on her own credit card and bank account bonuses, then we’re well over $100,000 in total value from sign-up bonuses combined over the past 10 years! That’s mind blowing to me!
Advice for Others
If you haven’t started pursuing credit card and bank account sign-up bonuses, I strongly encourage you do so. These bonuses can lead to serious value, even if you don’t go as extreme as I have over the years. With just one new credit card and bank account bonus each quarter, it’s realistic to earn a few thousand each year in cash and free travel with minimal effort and hassle. Not bad at all for a side hustle you can do from home.
A great place to help you get started is this credit card sign-up bonuses recommendation page. I also recommend reading this article discussing the basics of credit card sign-up bonuses so you can learn how to do this effectively, and most importantly be sure not to pay any unnecessary interest or fees.
Are you already using credit card and bank account sign up bonuses to earn rewards and free travel? Let me know in the comments!
Have questions about all of this? Leave those in the comments as well!
Thanks for reading!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 