(Update 2/23/12: The Continental/United Airlines merger is almost complete, and the last official Continental flight taking off on March 2nd. The new company will be called United, so this Continental Airlines OnePass Plus Card will no longer be available as of the end of February (March 1st). This is your last chance to grab the 30,000 mile sign-up bonus if you’ve never had a Continental card before. “This one-time bonus offer is valid only for first-time Continental Airlines personal cardmembers with new accounts. Previous and existing Continental Airlines personal cardmembers/accounts are not eligible for this bonus offer.”

Note that the application for the United Explorer Card says that “United MileagePlus Explorer cardmembers will only receive one 25,000 bonus miles award if they apply for both the United Explorer Card and the Continental OnePass Plus Card after 7/19/2011.” This isn’t mentioned on the Continental application. If you only have the older United non-Explorer card, you should still be able to get the Continental bonus.)

The new Continental Airlines OnePass Plus Card from Chase has improved their sign-up incentive to include 30,000 free miles and a pretty nice mix of perks for travelers.

Sign-Up Bonus: Free Flight

• 25,000 Bonus Miles after first purchase (no minimum amount) for first-time Continental Airlines personal Cardmembers. That’s enough already for one free roundtrip airfare within the continental US.
• 5,000 More Bonus Miles for adding an authorized user to your account. This is another easy one to get. Remember, just because you add someone doesn’t mean you have to give them the card. 😉
• No annual fee the first year. The regular annual fee is $95, but is waived the first year.
• If you spend $25,000 on the card annually, you’ll get another 10,000 bonus miles. Since you earn 1 miles per $1 spent as well, this works out to 1.4 miles/dollar when you reach that mark.

Travel Perks

• Free checked bag. If you fly on Continental, you and a companion will each get your first checked bag for free. That’s a savings of $50 roundtrip, per person.
• Primary rental car insurance. Almost all personal credit cards only offer secondary rental car insurance, which means you have to file a claim with your own auto insurance first, which means you have to pay the deductible and possibly face higher future premiums. With primary collision damage waiver (CDW) even for personal use, you get coverage for damage or theft without having to make a claim.
• Additional travel insurance that isn’t on all cards, like trip cancellation insurance up to $1500 for a illness with doctor’s note , delayed baggage coverage up to $300 if you have baggage delayed more than 18 hours and need to buy items to get by.
• If you decide to keep this card past the first year, you’ll get two free passes to their First-Class airport lounge.

As you may have heard, Continental and United are merging, and the resulting airline is supposed to have the name United. Here’s a chance to rack up some miles that will eventually merge together.

Not good enough? Currently, there are also other ways to rack up $500+ in credit card bonuses…

(Update: That was quick, looks like they are sold out. Perhaps they will replenish later.)

If you have some American Express Membership Rewards points lying around, perhaps from the American Express Platinum or the AmEx Rewards Premier Gold, then is for you. Reader David reports that right now you can get a $25 Gap gift card for 1,250 points when you redeem by January 29, 2012, which is 50% less than the normal exchange rate for gift cards ($25 = 2500 points). Supplies are limited.

Even if you don’t like Gap clothes, PlasticJungle.com and others from my gift card sellback website comparison will give you up to $83 for a $100 Gap gift card. That works out to a value of 1.66 cents per point (10,000 points = $166), which is much better than any other direct cash-out option, although some people may be able to get better value by redeeming airline miles for award flights.

Looking back, 2011 was a great year for credit card sign-up incentives. The major issuers rolled out some new cards and features and offered up big bonuses to get you to try them out. By picking up the tastiest offers, you could have reaped thousands of dollars in bonuses even with average incomes and without spending more than normal. If you have good to excellent credit, why not earn some money with it? Here’s what Mrs. MMB and I decided to jump on last year:

Chase Sapphire Preferred: $625 in travel
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card gives you 50,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 in purchases within the first 3 months. With this new card, Chase is basically trying to make a premium card that competes with American Express, with their Ultimate Rewards rivaling Membership Rewards. (It’s metal and heavy, too!) For example, you can now transfer Ultimate Rewards points to Continental/United, Southwest, British Airways, Hyatt, and Marriott. This the same system the Chase Freedom card uses now as well.

But my favorite features are the cash options and the 20% bonus towards travel. 10,000 points = $100 cash = $120 towards travel at no markup (same price as Expedia, Travelocity, etc). You can mix points and cash however you like, which means 40k points = $500 towards any airfare or hotel nights. No annual fee the first year, $95 after that.

Ink Bold Business Charge Card: $500 cash or $625 in travel
The small business version of the Chase Sapphire, this card also offers a huge sign-up bonus. The Ink Bold® Business Charge Card from Chase gives you 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points – after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months your account is open. For more details, please see my Chase Ink Bold review post, including details on what constitutes a small business.

Citi ThankYou Premier: $500 in gift card or $665 in airfare
The Citi ThankYou Premier Card is another travel-oriented premium credit card gives you 50,000 ThankYou points after spending $2,500 within 3 months of account opening. The special feature here is that it offers you a 33% premium on when used towards travel. That means those 50,000 ThankYou points can be redeemed for $665 in airfare. They also have their own airfare portal with the same prices as Expedia, and you can also mix and match cash and points if you don’t have enough points to pay for the entire amount. For more details, please see my Citi ThankYou Premier review post. (Now expired)

Gold Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express: 30,000 miles
The Gold Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card from American Express is not a great deal for everyone, but it works out very well for us. (It’s actually our second card, I had one previously.) My wife and I both fly cross-country together to a city primarily served by Delta at least once a year to visit the parents. The sign-up incentive is pretty good – 30,000 Skymiles after just $1,000 in purchases within your first 3 months.

More importantly, the card comes with a buy-one-get-one-for-$99 companion voucher (now expired) that saved us $250+ this year since it’s usually during a holiday. We’ve used this voucher before, and the prices are comparable to online travel engines, but you do get stuck with the taxes of $50 or so. The annual fee is free the first year, and $95 after that. You also get a free checked bag on every flight for you and up to 8 travel companions (so one card gets us two free bags as a couple, a $50 value per person each roundtrip). The total one-year value of this card is at least $600 if value a mile at a penny.

Grand total: $625 + $625 + $665 + $600 = $2,515
That’s just for four cards from three different issuers, which is far less than the most cards I’ve applied for in a year on my own. This means a couple could make over $5,000, which is 10% of the 2009 US median household income of $50,221 per US Census. As for us, we plan on making good use of this money to cover future airfare and hotel expenses. This total also does not include any earnings from cash-back rewards credit cards.

If we include the Ink Bold Business Charge Card, the required spending total was $11,000. Exclude the Ink Bold, and it goes down to $6,000, which if you use time-shifting techniques like pre-paying bills such as insurance/utilities or buying gift cards for groceries/gas, works out to a reasonable $500 per month. That’s well within our normal spending anyway.

Honorable mentions go out to three other cards:

• The Chase British Airways 100,000 miles offer came back in 2012, but both my wife and I already jumped on it previously and have already used it for a luxurious business-class trip around Europe.
• The Southwest Airlines card offered up 50,000 points (expired) which was good for over $800 in Wanna Get Away airfare after just one purchase of any amount. The current offer is 25,000 points for a still-respectable $416 in airfare. We don’t fly Southwest all that often, so we passed on this card this year.
• The Hyatt Card offers two free nights at any Hyatt in the world after any first purchase, which includes some rather swank hotels. There is a $75 annual fee. My sister got this card and we were pretty close to applying, but we wanted to hold off until we had firm travel plans since I believe you have a certain time to redeem.

My psychic powers tell me that some of you are wondering about this ;), so here’s the answer: How Opening and Closing Credit Card Accounts Affects Your Credit Score.

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