A person opened seventy credit cards. Not to arbitrage signup bonuses. Not to build a churning empire. Not even to fund a gambling problem. They opened them to find the one card worth recommending to strangers on the internet.
They landed on the Chase Sapphire Preferred. The card every personal finance blogger has recommended since 2016. The Toyota Camry of travel rewards. The missionary position of credit card strategies.
Seventy cards. That's more credit applications than most people have job interviews in their entire lives. The credit inquiries alone probably tanked their score into subprime territory three times over. But they kept going. Searching. Applying. Activating. Spending the minimum to avoid closure fees.
And after all that research, after cycling through American Express Platinum and Capital One Venture X and whatever dogsh*t co-branded airline card exists for Spirit Airlines, they circled back to the card that shows up first in every Google search for "best travel credit card."
The Chase Sapphire Preferred gives you points you can transfer to airline partners you'll never use because the blackout dates make booking impossible. It offers travel insurance that requires filing a claim through a portal designed by someone who hates you personally. The annual fee is ninety-five dollars, which is exactly ninety-five dollars more than you should pay for the privilege of earning 1.25 cents per dollar on travel purchases.
This person could have stopped at card number two. They didn't. They opened sixty-eight more because admitting you were right the first time would require self-awareness, and self-awareness doesn't generate affiliate commission links.
Seventy cards and the answer was always Chase, which is exactly what happens when you confuse financial optimization with having a f*cking hobby.
Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash
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