In 2011 I earned an amazing 775,000 miles from credit card sign up bonuses. I detailed how I did this in a post on 1/3/12. (you can check it out here)

I’ve been thinking a lot about my 2012 strategy for credit cards applications. My plan is to only apply for cards offering a bonus of 50,000 miles/ points or more.
Hopefully there will be some huge, killer offers like the last couple of years. Somebody has to come out with a new 75-100K offer at some point. (or at least I really hope so)

To start off 2012 I decided to apply for the Chase Southwest Airlines Premier Card.
You can currently earn 50,000 bonus points after first purchase. That’s enough points for 2 free flights and worth the $99 membership fee in my opinion. If you decide to keep the card a second year, you receive 6,000 more bonus points which can be redeemed for a $100 “wanna get away fare” which covers the $99 fee.

I currently have 3 Chase credit cards so I did not think that I’d get instant approval for the Southwest card. I was planning to call Chase and move around some credit or possibly cancel one card if needed to get the approval.
To my surprise I did get instant approval and after one purchase (probably for $2), I will have 50,000 points with Southwest.

The approval screen

If you’d like to apply for the Chase Southwest Credit Card Click Here
(FYI-This is not an affiliate link and I DO NOT get any commission)