I'm gearing up to pay off my student loans right now, the only real downside I can think of is that it's been on my credit report for close to 20 years now, which increases my average age of accounts. I almost want to leave them with a small amount due on them, especially since my average age of accounts is relatively low since I cycled alot of signup bonuses the past few years.
Speaking of which, I figure I have spent quite amount of time researching/testing it out so might as well share whatever knowledge I did receive as some people may find some of it useful.
Chase is the bank behind most of the cards with good signup bonuses, and they have a rule where they will automatically reject your application if you've applied for 5 cards within a 24 month period, so generally speaking, open all chase cards first before you move onto the other banks.
Chase's most popular card is the sapphire preferred or reserved. I've cycled these twice now over the past 5 years, but recently they changed it so you could only get the signup bonus every 4 years, opposed to every 2 years.
The reserve has 3x points on travel spend (including ubers/lyft) and restaurants. The points are generally valued at 2 cents a piece if you are able to transfer the points for free flights on a deal, but are worth a base of 1.5 cents a piece if you simply order a flight/hotel through their travel portal. I'd compare with travelocity before paying for something this way though.
People like to pair the chase sapphire with the chase freedom unlimited, which gives 1.5% cash back on all purchases, but you can transfer these to chase ultimate reward points if you have the reserve, so then it's more like 2.25-3.00 cents a purchase, where you put kinda miscellaneous purchases that don't usually have a bonus like travel or restaurants. Think like concert tickets or clothes shopping, etc. There's also the chase Freedom card which gives 5x points on various categories per quarter.
Chase also has cards with Southwest, Marriott, Hyatt, United, IHG, Iberia, British Airways, all which come with signup bonuses worth like $500-700 worth of free stuff. None of the hotel cards are amazing, but usually have a fee waived the first year, and you can either cancel before the year is up, or after that you get one free night stay each year to offset the $95 fee. The british airways card is nice, because if you ever get an AMEX card you can always transfer those points to British Airways at certain times per year where they offer a 40% points bonus. Using british airways points to fly domestically has been how I've generally found the most value on domestic flights, because you use the british airways points to fly american, and you get a better rate than if you just had american airlines points.
Chase also has a no annual fee card which gives 5% back at amazon.
Next up the Citibank has 3 cards with decent signup bonuses, the Prestige ($450 fee) Premier ($0 fee first year then $95 fee) and American Airlines card ($0 fee first year then $95 fee). The Prestige is nice in that you get 5x points at air travel & restaurants. The points are worth 1.25 cents (redeemed for travel through their portal) up to 1.7 cents (transferred to an airline partner and finding a deal). Restaurants is the bulk of my spending, so this is a nice return. You also get $250 in travel credits to offset the fee (I think you can wipe out uber charges with it) and the main big benefit of this card is if you frequently travel with big dollar hotel stays. Twice a year you get your 4th night free, so good for those that do at least 2 big trips per year, even if it's like a super expensive crazy room.
I'll probably get that card when I can, (You can cycle the citi bonuses every 2 years from when you open or close the card) but I recently got the cheaper Prestige, which I'll likely cancel before I have to pay a fee. That just gives 3x points on travel and gas, so I've been putting my ubers/lyfts on it mostly, and nothing else.
The American Airlines card just has like $850 worth of free airfare, and no annual fee the first year, so is nice to cycle.
Capital One Had a good venture rewards bonus of 10x points at hotels.com, mixed with hotels.com's own loyalty program works out to about 25% back off hotels, but that's ending soon. But other than that it's got a $500 in free travel signup bonus.
Bank of America Premium rewards has same thing, $500 free travel, and is otherwise fairly useless unless you also have an investment account with Merrill Lynch (or otherwise have $100k in BoA Accounts), then this card is basically 2.625% cash back on every purchase.
DiscoverIt has a good card with no annual fee that has 5% cash back on rotating categories every quarter. This quarter is Amazon, so I ended up saving $75 after getting the wife an ipad.
Amex's signup bonuses are once a lifetime, but they have hilton, delta, etc. which have $500-$750 signup bonuses. I happen to like the Amex Gold card, and put most of my everyday spending on this. $250 fee, but you get $120 in grubhub credits and $100 airline incidental credits per year. I order myself lunch for delivery at work at least once a month so can actually use the grubhub credits. I actually find the offers that AMEX offers to everyone that you annoyingly have to select as fairly valuable. This card gives 4x points at restaurants and grocery stores, and the points are worth up to 2 cents each.
The Amex offers are a little goofy, but do come in handy. It's like stay at a hotel in Vegas and spend $500 and get $100 off, etc. Or buy sunglasses, or at Macys, or Total Wine, etc. It's pretty good if you're ever going to shop for clothes or stay at a hotel. For example, I'm going to aspen for christmas, just happened to check the current offers 2 seconds ago for this post, and it gives a pretty good offer of almost 50% off for aspen ski tickets booking through aspensnowmass.com. So it is tracking my shit as that has never been an offer before, but it's helpful.
There are also a couple of decent signup bonuses if you have some cash that you aren't earning much interest on.
Discoverbank has 1.7% interest right now, and you get a $200 bonus if you transfer $25k. The bonus is paid in like 45 days and you can go from sign up to transfer in a couple of minutes.
Capital One has a similar 1.7% interest rate and a similar bonus from $200-$1,000 if you transfer $10k or $150k, but takes closer to 4 months to receive the bonus. Works out to about 4-5% Risk free on an annual basis, but they're probably more helpful to open one simply if you find you probably keep more money in your checking or general bank accounts that aren't earning interest.
Chase has some similar bonuses, and bonuses like $625 just for transferring money from say an E-Trade account to their chase investment platform. Also a $1,000 bonus for transferring $75k into their premier checking/savings accounts. Both of these I think you can almost do every year.
Citi has similar checking bonuses to chase, but they don't give a high interest rate, and unlike chase you can't count money held in their investment platform to get the bonus. So their $15k for 40k points promotion seems like the best bet to me, as those should come untaxable.
CIT bank $300 bonus and TD Ameritrade $1,000 have similar bonuses.
