Best Time of the Year to Get a Bonus Credit Card
Credit cards use rewards to lure customers, but play right and you can come out ahead. Most issuers offer great sign-up bonuses at certain times of the year. New research from NerdWallet reveals the best months to sign up for various bonus credit cards based on these offers.
NerdWallet analyzed the offer templates of popular limited-expiration credit cards to determine when customers can best take advantage of these offers. Overall, they found that customers were missing out on $ 177 reward and $ 15,338 travel points by applying for a reward card at the wrong time.
They found that for travel and aviation credit cards, the best time to take advantage of these offers is November. As for hotel cards, in August there were the most proposals. Overall, NerdWallet found that the three most popular reward issuers – Chase, Citi and American Express – offered the most deals in late summer and fall. The chart above shows the number of time-limited offers by each issuer by month.
Here’s how they explain their methodology:
In particular, we have verified our domestic limited-time offers by reviewing travel sites such as The Points Guy, Million Mile Secrets and One Mile at a Time, as well as specific issuer sites. We’ve found at least two sources for each Limited Time Offer to make sure we have the correct offer dates. We got perfect booking data (47 days) from CheapAir’s analysis.
To calculate the average number of points or miles lost when applying for a card without a time-limited offer, we took the difference between the best card offer and the regular offer and weighed it based on the popularity of the cards analyzed. We multiplied the scores by the weighted average of these cards’ rewards to get the dollar amount.
It would be remiss not to remind you of the responsible use of credit card rewards . Always pay your balance in full and understand how signing up for a new card will affect your credit .
If you like the travel rewards game you can check their full results at the link below. They also offer some interesting ideas on when you should sign up for a travel reward card, depending on when you plan to travel.
Credit Card Research NerdWallet Travel | NerdWallet