Results of Recent Credit Card App-o-Ramas

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I shared with you the other week that I have gotten quite addicted to the miles and travel points-earning world.  In the past 12 months alone, I’ve applied for 13 credit cards and have been approved for 11 of them.

To further maximize the points earning potential for our family, I recently involved Ken in these credit card application sprees!  Back in September, I wanted to take advantage of the temporarily increased sign-up bonus for the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express card.  On our upcoming trip to Russia, I want to stay at a Starwood property in St. Petersburg, so this sign up bonus will allow us to stay there for three nights completely free of charge.  Whoop!

Generally speaking, when you are doing an app-o-rama (AOR), or credit card application spree as it is also called, you want to apply for several cards all on the same day.  Therefore, he applied for three cards on the same day, just a few days before the SPG increased offer expired:

• SPG Amex Personal Card (30,000 SPG Points after spending $5000 in the first six months)

• US Airways Premier World Mastercard (35,000 Dividend Miles after first purchase)

• Citi Hilton HHonors Visa Signature Card (50,000 HHonors Points after spending $1000 in the first four months)

Each card was instantly approved and we received them over the next two weeks or so.  I had also completed an application spree in late July, so it was going to be a push to meet minimum spending requirements.  I still hadn’t completed the minimum spending from my July AOR, so ideally we would’ve waited to do Ken’s AOR, but I definitely wanted to take advantage of the increased SPG Amex that was expiring on September 3.

My July AOR consisted of the following applications:

• Chase AirTran Personal Card (32 A+ Rewards good for two roundtrip flights after spending $2000 in the first three months)

• Chase AirTran Business Card (I was ultimately declined for this despite some friendly calls to the reconsideration line.  Apparently five open cards with Chase was enough to get this one declined, even after offering to move around or close some of the unused cards)

• US Airways Premier World Mastercard from Barclays (35,000 Dividend Miles after first purchase.  This was my second card of this type and I thought I might be declined since my first one is still open.  But it was approved with no issues!)

• Citi AA Personal Platinum Visa (50,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $3000 in the first three months)

Eight days later I applied for the following card using the now defunct trick described in this Flyertalk thread.

• Citi Platinum Select Mastercard (35,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $1500 in the first three months)

So, there you have it.  We were really swimming in some points for a while, but we’ve been redeeming them a lot for our February trip to Russia and an upcoming trip to New York City.

What are Ken’s thoughts on his new involvement in my obsession?  He thinks it’s complicated, but since it also nets him free travel, he gives me free reign to do what I think is best.

Have any of you involved you spouses in the miles and points earning world?  How have they adapted?