Name: The Optimal Order For Getting New Credit Cards (2026)
Uploaded: 2026-03-30T15:02:08.000Z
Duration: 17 min 49 s
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So because I've got almost 30 credit cards and I run a YouTube channel talking about this stuff, I'm always getting asked the question, "What's the best credit card that I should get next?" And I think that's because the average person might assume there's some sort of secret card out there that maybe only people like me would know about.

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However, the truth is that the best credit card for you to get next is probably going to be very different than the best card for someone else, and that's because there's actually a very specific order you should be aiming to get your credit cards, and that order is going to be highly based on what previous cards you've opened in the past.

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So whether you're starting from zero previous cards or you've got a few cards already, in this video I want to go over the exact optimal order for getting credit cards if your goal is to earn the most value possible in the shortest amount of time for either straight-up cashback or points and miles for travel.

Now, honestly, I wish I knew this optimal order even existed before I got started with my own credit card journey because I definitely did not follow this and it led to a few mistakes like denials and sign-up bonuses I missed out on.

So with that said, the first card in this optimal order is going to be your choice of either a student credit card, a secured credit card, or one of plenty other starter cards that are out there on the market.

Now, when most people are trying to get their first credit card, they quickly find out there's a pretty common catch-22 going on here, and that's the fact that you typically need some sort of credit history to get approved for a credit card, but without already having a credit card in the first place, building that history can be a bit of a challenge.

So that's where something like a student card comes into play because these cards are going to be designed specifically for students and other younger people who are at least 18 years or older with very little income or credit history at the moment.

Now, student credit cards are only going to give you a super low credit limit to start out so that you can sort of learn how a credit card works as you begin making on-time payments with it, and there's a bunch of these student credit cards available to sign up for, but I've got a couple that I typically recommend for most people.

The first is the Chase Freedom Rise, which has no annual fee, earns 1.5% cashback on everything, and can even give you a $25 statement credit when you sign up for automatic payments within the first 3 months of opening your account and then remaining enrolled for at least 90 days.

Chase also says that you can increase your approval chances for this card with Chase Banking by either taking an existing Chase Bank account you have or opening a new one and then depositing at least $250 into that account before completing an application for the Freedom Rise.

Also, by getting started with this student credit card, you're going to start developing your relationship with Chase, and that can honestly be really helpful later on in your credit card journey when you start looking at some of the other better cards Chase offers, which we'll talk more about in just a bit.

Then the other student card I'd recommend would be the No Annual Fee Discover It Student Cashback Card, and this one's great because it earns 5% cashback on rotating quarterly categories like grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, and more, and that's up to the quarterly maximum of $1,500 of combined spending in those categories each quarter when you activate it.

Discover is also famous for their unlimited dollar-for-dollar match of all the cashback earned on cards like this in your first year, so if you're a student but you actually have a decent amount of spend, then this could be a great option to earn a lot of cashback.

Now, if you're having a hard time getting approved for a student card that gives you an unsecured credit limit like those first two options, then your next best bet is going to be to look into opening a secured credit card, and there's actually a secured version of the Discover It that I'd say is a good no annual fee card as well.

Just keep in mind, though, that with a secured credit card, you're going to have to put down a refundable security deposit of a few hundred dollars or so that's going to act as the amount you'll get a credit limit for.

That way, you can start to build credit responsibly, but the issuer can kind of rest easy knowing they've got your deposit, which they're only going to keep in the event you decide not to repay them what you owe.

Don't worry, though, because after 7 months, Discover is going to begin automatic monthly account reviews to see if you qualify to be upgraded to an unsecured credit card with them where they can give you that deposit back.

But in the meantime, while you're using the secured Discover card, it does give you some decent rewards like 2% cashback on gas stations and restaurants up to a certain amount each quarter, as well as that unlimited dollar-for-dollar cashback match in your first year.

Then a few other starter cards I like are the US Bank Alts2 Go Secured, the Chime Card, and the Capital One Platinum if you want to look into any of those as well.

But the key thing here is that all those cards I just mentioned have no annual fee, so above all else, make sure to go with a $0 card to begin your credit card journey because there's really no need to be paying anything to start building credit, in my opinion.

Also, I got to mention the golden rule here with credit cards if you're new to this stuff, which is to always pay your statement balance on time and in full by the payment due date every single month, and that's because doing that is going to avoid interest, which is one of the main goals when using credit cards responsibly.

All right, now after about 12 months or so of using a student, secured, or other starter card to set a solid foundation, next year we're going to start ramping things up a bit and getting into the fun stuff by opening some better credit cards, and these cards are going to be better because they're offering higher credit limits, more benefits, elevated rewards, and most importantly, larger sign-up bonuses that are really going to be key here for helping us to unlock a lot of value in the shortest period of time.

Now, the only problem with unlocking all this value is that each credit card issuer is going to have these different rules and these things they're looking out for that are going to essentially determine how likely they are to approve or deny you, and so that's why this optimal order even exists because you have to kind of understand and then navigate these rules so that way you don't get cards in the wrong order and then accidentally leave a ton of value on the table.

So for the next few credit cards in this optimal order, I'd go for either the normal Discover It card if you didn't already get the secured or the student version of this card previously because Discover is just really good early on.

But then after that, I'd move on to two no annual fee Chase cards, which are the Freedom Unlimited and the Freedom Flex.

The Chase Freedom Unlimited earns 1.5% back on the all other purchases category, and then the Freedom Flex earns 5% back in rotating quarterly categories for up to $1,500 in combined spending on those categories each quarter, similar to the Discover It card, but usually the rotating categories on these two cards don't overlap.

Also, even though these Chase Freedom cards are advertised as earning cashback, if you read the fine print on Chase's website, you're actually going to be earning ultimate rewards points here, and that's important for later on.

So a pro tip is that if you're interested in using your Chase points for travel, then I would save up those points until you get certain other Chase credit cards in the near future.

Now, as far as spacing out when you might want to apply for each credit card, I like to recommend opening a new card every 3 to 6 months on average, and that's for two main reasons.

First, spacing out new credit card applications by 3 to 6 months allows the hard inquiries associated with those applications to kind of settle so that way your credit score can recover nicely after each one.

And then second, I found that spacing everything out like that really just helps you to avoid overspending as you work towards the sign-up bonuses on each new card.

So those two cards I just mentioned typically come with offers that might be for something like $200 after spending $500 in the first 3 months, but other cards we're going to get to next year are going to have sign-up bonuses that require even more spending like a few thousand dollars in the first 3 to 6 months, so you never want to find yourself feeling like you're being forced to overspend just to get those bonuses.

Now, the one thing that's really helped me keep my spending in check as I've used credit cards over the years has been apps that give me detailed insights into my spending habits, and the one app that I've really liked the most for this is Rocket Money, who's actually the sponsor of today's video.

Rocket Money helps you save both time and money while also allowing you to manage your money better, and it does this through features like tracking your spending across any credit cards or other accounts you have, canceling unwanted subscriptions right within their app with just a few taps, creating customized budgets, and more.

So again, as you're getting more and more credit cards in the optimal order we're talking about here in this video, Rocket Money is going to allow you to see all your transactions across these cards in one single place.

That way, you don't have to log in and out of several different accounts from different issuers just to keep track of things.

Rocket Money's also been great for helping me and my wife stay on top of the various subscriptions we're paying for by automatically consolidating them into a list for us, and then again, with just a few taps, Rocket Money's able to cancel subscriptions we might not want anymore right within the app, which is super convenient.

And then with the in-app budgeting feature from Rocket Money, we're also able to set how much we want to spend in different categories based on our savings goals, and we can then change up those amounts whenever we want to, which is useful for giving us flexibility to adjust things on the fly, especially when it comes to our travel spending, which is normally higher during certain months when we're actually redeeming our credit card points to go on a trip.

So to save more and spend less, go to rocketmoney.com/danielbron, or you can just scan the QR code on the screen right now, and we'll have a link down below in the description as well where you can get started for free or unlock even more features when you sign up for premium.

That's rocketmoney.com/danielbron, or check out the QR code on screen, and thank you again to Rocket Money for sponsoring today's video.

Now, back to the optimal order for credit cards here.

So after you've got both the Chase Freedom Unlimited and the Freedom Flex, the next card I go for is the Chase Sapphire Preferred, which is actually going to be the first premium credit card in this order.

The Sapphire Preferred has a $95 annual fee.

However, what you get for that annual fee is a really nice sign-up bonus that's going to be much higher than those no annual fee Chase cards.

And if you ever want to see what current offers are available on some of the cards mentioned in this video, then I'll go ahead and leave some links down below for those as well if you want to learn more.

Now, with the Sapphire Preferred, you're also going to start to get some more travel benefits, which includes a $50 annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit and a bunch of other great travel protections as well.

And on top of that, you're going to get the ability to transfer any Chase Ultimate Rewards points you've been earning on this card or any of the points you've been earning on the Freedom Unlimited and Freedom Flex too.

Transferring points out to programs like World of Hyatt, United, Virgin Atlantic, Flying Blue, and many others is how people like myself are able to find ways to sometimes get double the value of our points or more.

So for example, if I had, let's say, 75,000 Chase points, I'm usually able to transfer those points to get around $0.02 per point, which makes those 75,000 points worth around $1,500.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that Chase credit cards aren't perfect, and there's definitely a lot of other credit cards out there to consider using over the long term as well.

But I think that in terms of looking at the optimal order of things here, you just can't skip over Chase credit cards because the fact is that many of them have super valuable bonuses and some other features that make them worth checking out at least once in your credit card journey.

Also, Chase has an infamous 5/24 rule that you may have heard of, which says that if you've opened five or more personal credit cards across all issuers within the past 24 months, you will automatically be denied for any new Chase credit cards.

So because of this rule and because of the value of the welcome offers on Chase cards, the optimal order of things is to prioritize Chase cards first while you're under that 5/24 rule and then go for credit cards from other issuers later on.

All right, so after you've got that initial Chase trifecta of the Freedom Unlimited, Freedom Flex, and Sapphire Preferred, you should still be under 5/24, and so at this point in the optimal order, I would go after business credit cards if you can.

Now, before you skip past this step because you're thinking that you can't get business credit cards, just keep in mind here that most business cards out there are actually designed for small businesses and even people with side hustles.

So you don't have to own some sort of massive corporation to get approved for business credit cards, but instead, if you do things like e-commerce, social media, consulting, tutoring, DoorDash, driving for Uber, or any other number of things that will qualify as a small business, then you should definitely be looking into business cards because they're going to be super useful for your business, and they typically have large sign-up bonuses.

Now, for most credit card issuers, their business cards are actually not going to be included in your Chase 5/24 account because they do not show up on your personal credit report.

However, certain issuers like Capital One have business cards that do show up on your personal report and do count towards 5/24, so just keep that in mind.

But what I'd recommend next year in this optimal order is to look into getting Chase business credit cards if you can because even though those don't count towards your 5/24 status, you do have to be under 5/24 to have a chance of getting approved for them in the first place.

So if you ever find yourself being under 5/24, then I would take a look at the no annual fee Ink Business Unlimited followed by the Ink Business Cash.

You probably want to keep spacing out these cards every 3 to 6 months as well because the minimum spend can be a bit higher to earn the larger sign-up bonuses.

But the cool thing here is that these two Ink cards actually earn the same Ultimate Rewards points as well that can be combined with your personal Chase credit cards after you just call up Chase to link your accounts.

Then if you had some success in getting those first two Chase Ink cards, you might want to consider picking up the $95 per year Chase Ink Business Preferred as well, which has another nice welcome offer, and this card's also very useful if you have a lot of shipping or ad spend for your business.

Now, at this point here in this optimal order, you can keep going after other business credit cards from Chase or even some business credit cards from maybe AmEx as well while you're under 5/24.

But if you've been spacing out your applications for those personal credit cards from before, you may start to see some of those accounts get to be more than 24 months old, which is going to start decreasing your 5/24 count.

So now we can start to shift our focus back over to opening our next few personal credit cards.

And for this, anytime I want to open a new personal card, I always want to ask myself, "What's my Chase 5/24 count?" And if I'm under 5/24, then usually the most optimal thing to do is to continue looking at any other Chase credit cards.

So personally, I would then start looking at whether there's any good offers going on for what we call keeper cards that Chase might have, and these are going to be co-branded hotel and airline cards that give some sort of benefit every single year that easily justifies their annual fee.

Two examples of this that I'd be taking a look at would be the $95 per year World of Hyatt credit card and the $95 per year Marriott Bonvoy Boundless, and that's because each of these cards comes with a free night award that I know I'm going to easily use every year to book a night at a hotel that would normally cost way over $95.

Then after getting any of those keeper cards from Chase or any other cards you might come across with really good limited-time offers, I'd also consider taking a look at the Prime Visa Next, and that's because this Chase card lets you earn an unlimited 5% cashback on Amazon for no annual fee as long as you're Prime member.

That's super valuable to have in your wallet for both cashback and travel-focused credit card users.

But now at this point in the optimal order here, after you're all satisfied with the Chase cards you've got under the 5/24 rule, now I would start to think about moving over to Capital One Next.

The reason why we're going to move over to Capital One is because there's really two credit cards they offer that I think are worth picking up for the value they provide.

And since we're still early in our credit card journey, prioritizing Capital One can be a good idea because they tend to be a bit more strict with approvals if you have what they would consider too many cards.

So this is one of those issues I ran into myself because I had 13 personal credit cards when I first tried applying for the Capital One Venture X, and they denied me twice for that card for having too many revolving accounts on my credit report, and I know a lot of other people out there have run into a similar issue.

So with that in mind, I would go for the no annual fee Capital One Saver card next year while you still do not have too many personal credit cards showing up on your credit report.

And on top of the welcome offer you can get with a Saver card, you're also going to be able to earn 3% cashback on grocery stores, dining, entertainment, and popular streaming services.

Then after the Saver card, I'd wait at least 6 months before applying for either the Capital One Venture or Venture X, which are both great premium travel cards.

And the reason you want to wait at least 6 months here is because Capital One has a rule called the 1/6 rule, which says that they're typically only going to approve you for one of their credit cards every 6 months.

So going with the Saver card and then the Venture or the Venture X after 6 months is going to help us to avoid breaking that rule.

Now, at this point, I'd recommend sort of choosing a path of where you want to go next year in this optimal order.

So do you want to keep going down the path that has more upside value with earning points and miles for travel, or do you want to go down the path that has more simplicity and less annual fees with cashback?

If you want to be mostly a cashback person, then cards like the Robinhood Gold card might be your best option next, and that's because this card earns 3% cashback on everything as long as you're a Robinhood Gold subscriber, which costs $50 per year.

You can also look to slowly get a bunch of other cards I'd recommend, like the AmEx Blue Cash Every Day or Blue Cash Preferred, the City Double Cash, the City Custom Cash, and maybe even a few other niche credit cards you might come across.

But basically, the goal here is to accumulate cards that are going to earn you anywhere from 3 to 5% cashback on pretty much all spend categories.

Just be aware, though, that again, with the cashback setup, you're typically not going to have as much upside value as you would with points and miles, and you're also not going to be earning as many super high sign-up bonuses because those tend to be more in the range of $200 or so for each new cashback-focused card you open.

If you want to keep going down the path of team travel, though, once you have those Chase and Capital One cards, the name of the game is really going to be to look out for elevated limited-time offers on cards from other issuers next.

And then outside of applying for cards with good limited-time offers, I'd also start focusing on city credit cards.

City's been stepping up their game a lot recently by adding transfer partners like American Airlines.

So I'd look into getting the Double Cash and Custom Cash over on the travel side of things as well because the Double Cash earns 2% or really 2X points per dollar on everything, and then the Custom Cash earns 5% or really 5X points per dollar on your top eligible spend category each billing cycle for up to $500 spent.

After that, I think adding the City Stratta Premier is going to be the best choice to complete the City Trifecta, which you can then compare to the Chase Trifecta and the Capital One Duo setups you might already have.

And then you can decide which cards out of those three setups might work best for you in being your go-to core credit card setup whenever you're not working on a sign-up bonus.

Just remember also that as you now start accumulating all these different cards with annual fees at this stage in your credit card journey, if you find yourself not getting too much value from a card with an annual fee, then make sure you look into the possibility of downgrading that card to one with no annual fee.

Now, City also has the Stratta Elite card, which has a nice sign-up bonus that you could check out as well if you want to because City does allow you to get a bonus on that card even if you've already got a bonus on the Stratta Premier.

But then at this point, again, you've got to keep looking at cards with offers that might work well for you.

Now, personally, I think there's still a ton of value from getting a built credit card at some point, even after all the recent backlash from their 2.0 update.

And that's because the fact is they're still the only program out there that lets you earn any points on housing without paying a transaction fee.

However, in terms of the optimal order here in this video, just keep in mind that sign-up bonuses are still going to provide the highest return on your spend, and only the built Palladium card is ever offered a sign-up bonus at the moment.

So I'd probably say to keep looking at higher bonuses on other cards first before checking out the built Palladium.

And the one card I want to backtrack to that you don't want to forget about here is the Chase Sapphire Reserve.