Part of a good credit card strategy is making sure that you’re organized enough to deal with regular ongoing maintenance. Organization (or fear of it) is one of the things that I think keeps many people away from travel hacking. And that’s fine – what I (and many of you probably) do is not for everyone – juggling 20-30-50 credit cards, manufacturing spending, etc. I do like to say though that for many “regular” people, if you begin with the end in mind, and figure out where you want to go, you can probably get your flights and hotels for just about free by just signing up for 1 or maybe 2 new credit cards and putting them at the front of your wallet for a period of time. It’s how we helped a family of 5 get to Berlin, and how we’re trying to get a family of 3 to Australia at the end of 2016.
Success! Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate!
GETTING new credit cards
I talk a lot about the actual GETTING of new credit cards – most recently we had Planning a November 2015 credit card signups, and then November 2015 credit card signup results: 140,000 points + $200 statement credit.
Most recently I got 2 unexpected credit cards in the mail, and meeting the signup requirements on those new cards will net me hundreds of thousands of points.
ORGANIZING your credit cards
Last month I talked about my sweet travel hacking Christmas present – a binder to organize my credit cards
(those are not my actual credit card numbers, in case you’re wondering! :-D)
Previously my credit cards had just sat in a drawer in my house, except for the small (rotating) number that went in my wallet. Now I have a binder with 3×3 baseball card sheets, with cards in them. I’ve chosen them to organize them by bank, and this also lets me keep my authorized user cards with the card for the primary card-holder
Getting RID OF credit cards
Of course the other way to organize your credit cards is getting RID of cards. I don’t always do a great job of cutting up my cards when I close my account (I should be better, I know). So while I was organizing my cards, I looked through and any card which had been closed, I cut up and properly disposed of. Most of them were no problem, but of course it’s a little trickier to destroy a metal Chase Sapphire card
Thankfully the tin snips (barely!) took care of things.
What about you? How do you best add, organize and remove your credit card collection?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
For those who don’t have tin snips (and as an alternative to the prepaid mailer Chase will send you if you call Customer Service), you can just drop off your old Sapphire Preferred card at any Chase branch and they’ll destroy it for you.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll keep this in mind for my Marriott card, which appears to be metal as well. Can’t wait to destroy that one… aside from the sign up bonus the card is as good as junk.