I got 50000 miles for getting the Barclays AA CARD and another 40k from citicard when I spend 2k. I pay my house insurance so that's easy. I can get round trip to coz for 27.5k miles and $98. I cancelled the Barclays card and will reapply after required times up.
If I can remember properly, over the past 3 years or so we've grabbed 2 Barclay's cards when they offered 60,000 bonus sign-up miles (keep one of those cards to this day as our primary card). 2 Citi cards that offered like 50,000 miles each. 1 Citi business card under my wife that offered 70,000 miles. (next card will be another Citi business under my name but I'm waiting for the bonus miles offered to hit 70,000 again from the current 60,000). So, total bonus miles has been about 290,000 and we run EVERYTHING through the primary Barclay's card as soon as we meet the minimum required to grab the miles on the other cards. We cancel the other cards the year we got them then before the $99 annual fee hits the following year. Since we run everything we can through the cards that's around 30,000 miles per year so we're up to almost 400,000 miles over the past 3 years - all American Airlines miles that tends to offer the best routes out of Norfolk, VA. So if we stick to the Carribean or Hawaii, we're looking at around 60,000 total miles used per trip for us. That's enough miles for about 7 trips to the Carribean and/or Hawaii. Now, we do still get stuck with the international fees and those ridiculous baggage charges since our dive gear goes with us but it still certainly beats buying tickets for every trip.
If you fly American, listen to the credit card specials they pitch on the plane. Those are usually some pretty great deals with the annual fee waived the 1st year and next to no requirement to charge so much $ over the first 3 months or whatever. Grab one for everyone in your family you commonly travel with and start flying cheap. As soon as the bonus miles hit, cancel the other cards and keep 1. I've found the Barclay's Aviator card to offer the best benefits so we've kept 1 of those all the way through. We get a $99 companion fare voucher anywhere in the US every year with that card so when it doesn't make sense to use miles for a domestic 48 state flight 1 of us flies for $99 RT.
When if you find you've burned through all the sign-up bonus miles cards for 1 airline in the time frame before you can apply again, there's always other carriers you can start working through to bridge the gap until the time frames to re-apply reopen for your preferred carrier.
Also, don't listen to anyone who says multiple pulls of your credit report (within reason) will materially impact your credit score in an adverse way. That is absolute nonsense started by credit card companies who don't want you ditching their cards. May drop a couple points and then recover a few months later but that's it.
