You need the right spending pattern and you need to manage the card rewards. When my travel went way down, I dropped a couple cards though I keep a pretty low-cost United cobranded card to basically keep me with some semblance of status. But things like airline club membership just weren't worth it any longer.
I agree completely and I didn’t even discuss the entire “churning” strategy where there is an entire cottage industry, a subreddit and a flowchart discussing how to get sign up bonuses and how to get the best return.
Is it worth it for someone who likes to travel, and wants to save for retirement and never wants to “work for a FAANG” (again) like in my case? I would say so.
Just from the cash savings of my card setup, I would say it’s worth $3500 that offsets the $2700 in annual fees.
Then take into account the points I earn from everyday spend is worth another $3000-$5000 depending on how I choose to redeem them (see r/awardtravel).
Then take into account sign up bonuses and churning, I’m planning on doing over the next year worth around $5000.
It’s the only way that I can balance our travel hobbies with my goals of maxing out my 401k including catch up contributions (I turn 50 this year), max out my HSA and not use it and “retire my wife” so she can enjoy her hobbies.
This hobby isn’t just for people with above average incomes. If you are steeped in the culture, you can lean more toward churning and legal manufactured spending
Amex has a once in a lifetime rule for each card and now they are getting even stricter. But there are still a lot of cards you can go through if you do them in the right order between the business and personal cards.
But there is still Chase, CapitalOne and Citi. The Chase Ink Business cards you can churn as much as you want and most of the other cards have either a 24 or 48 month rule
Getting rewards that vastly exceed the costs is still very possible in the US. The days of “I travel first class internationally for free every few months and change cards as often” are long gone though. That pattern is trivially recognizable and most of the better rewards card providers will reject folks with that history even if they have perfect credit otherwise.
