An interesting phenomenon in churning that ostensibly surfaced in 2026 is weaponized FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). I suppose that’s probably been true in many circles for years; but churning, an industry built on trust, has been largely immune. Something’s absolutely changed recently, and discussion of intentional misinformation campaigns is spreading.
The Rove shopping and travel portal added JetBlue TrueBlue as a new 1:1 transfer partner approximately 37 seconds ago. They’ll also have a 20% transfer bonus to JetBlue running through November 14, pushing the ratio to 1:1.2.
If you don’t yet have Rove, use a friend’s referral and make their day.
The Amazing line of credit cards (formerly AmaZing with a capital Z, I’m really glad they rebranded that err zinger) has an increased $1,000 sign-up bonus after $5,000 spend in 120 days. The cards carry no annual-fee:
There are Washington and Nevada banks with the same family of cards, but without the increased sign-up bonus. All of these banks do manual underwriting, and it’s annoying but not arduous.
– 5% on Safeway, Albertsons, and other Just4U online – 3% on Safeway, Albertsons, and other Just4U in store – 3% on gas, dining, utilities, and streaming – 1% elsewhere
I don’t normally post about rumors because (1) they’re wrong with let’s call it at least p=0.50, and (2) they’re rarely actionable. Well, today we have a few rumors that buck that trend, partially because it’s about Triple Dip Season™.
They’ll also reportedly add an annual $250 Airbnb Experiences credit that’s only valid in conjunction with an Airbnb Luxe stay. I’d call the likelihood of this at p=0.90.
There’s a now open waitlist for the Flex.One Elite Visa card, which offers 3% base cash back and up to 5% with a ridiculous $1 million capital on deposit requirements, prolly with no interest. The card carries no annual fee though, so there’s that.
Since today is p day, let’s call the likelihood of Flex.One Elite Visa surviving with 3% base cash back on spend for at least six months p=0.40. Also, let’s call the likelihood of you sticking through the site’s annoying forced animations without flipping to something else p=0.33.
What’s the most valuable thing in churning and manufactured spend?
Breakfast (oh I thought you meant of the things you eat)
Networking
Networking comes in many forms, but typically we have three groupings: chat, video, and in-person. You’re going to get something different out of each and the information shared in each is different. If you’re not doing all three, consider changing.
The Groups
I’m sure that there’s a churner out there who talks to his buddy over Motorola radios, but generally there are three main groups for information exchange:
Chat (Telegram, Slack, Discord, ICQ?): Information exchanges happen quickly, things are in writing so data tables work really well, lots of people can share, and you can catch up after you’ve “been on vacation for the last three months”.
Unfortunately in chat, nuance gets lost, complex topics are hard, and trust might be difficult when you’re talking to GiftCardDestroyer420.
Video calls (Zoom, Meet): Information exchange is slower, but complicated ideas are easier to deal with, and a question and answer clarification phase is generally automatic. These are also ideal places for distilling months of knowledge into a few nuggets.
There’s a downside though, right? Yeah. Scheduling calls often requires fitting an elephant into a hole the size of an aardvark (quick, how big is an aardvark? Idk but sounds smaller than an elephant), it’s easy to get distracted, and it’s hard to have a natural conversation and topic change.
In-person (meetups, conferences, dinners): Churners, as a group, are a diverse people both geographically and socially, and our chief export isn’t actually corn despite popular opinion. When you meet churners in-person, you’ll see body language, be able to sidebar a conversation with whispers, bond over drinks, and also occasionally make life-long friendships with “Rob from Telegram”. Information is often the most nuanced and high-valued, but you’ll occasionally have to read between the lines or develop trust before that value shows itself.
Downsides? Youbetcha. Unless you live next door to your churning bestie, you’re probably driving for a long time, possibly traveling across time zones, and maybe even catching an intercontinental flight to meet. Also, sometimes there’s a guy who doesn’t shower.
Cool Story Bro
Diversification makes sense in a lot of places, this isn’t any different. Chat provides breadth and speed, video provides depth, and in-person builds trust and creates opportunities for serendipity. Obviously each can reinforce the others too. If you’re not doing all three, you’re probably not operating at peak efficiency.
I was surprised when the feature was extended from 2025 into 2026, so color me double surprised that it’s now been extended through the end of 2028.
Ye-olde American Express BBT seems to have died, or at least is in long term cryo-storage bug mode. Don’t know what that is? That’s ok, it won’t affect you in that case.
Welcome back to our ongoing risk series … err, what’s the opposite of masterclass? Yeah that thing. Today, we’re tackling credit risk, which frankly goes both ways just like a poorly tuned metronome:
The risk an individual bank sees
The risk that you’re controlling
Spoiler: The bank’s risk is minimal compared to yours.
Bank’s Perspective: You Look Like a Baddie, and not a Good Baddie
Normal people use their credit card for a few hundred dollars worth of groceries, Netflix, the local coffee spot, a restaurant or two, with wild out of the ordinary purchases once or twice a year that exceed $1,500, like say a new couch.
A manufactured spender, on the other hand, might spend $5,599.99 one minute, $1,999.99 at a store repeatedly over the next 10 minutes, and then $2,047.60 five minutes later, all using the same card. Sure, you can train a bank’s algorithm to think that’s normal, but the second a fraud analyst looks at your transactions, the jig is up. When an analyst looks at a manufactured spender’s account, scary sounding terms like bust-out (it looks like it), money laundering (it’s not), identity theft (it’s not), fraud (it’s not), and spending problem (guilty) start appearing in their mind.
The bank is going to take that and go one of two ways:
Financial review: Pause your credit accounts, require your tax returns, and then ask you to justify how you can spend $90,000 daily on a W-2 job that definitely doesn’t pay that daily, or even monthly
Shutdown: They just close all your accounts, blacklist your social security number (unless they don’t), and accidentally mail you a check for -$0.33 to cover your confiscated points balance
So, how do you manage credit risk as seen from the bank’s perspective?
Train the automated algorithms so they don’t fraud alert while you’re buying $1,015.90 in bananas
Don’t do things that cause an analyst to look at your account
Have enough funds at the institution to give them confidence that you’ll be able to pay your credit card bill
It also helps to know which banks are more tolerant; like most things there’s a spectrum.
The Credit Risk You See
The way in which some manufactured spenders string together FinTechs, quasi-banking institutions, and rewards cards is magical at best and demonic at worst. It’s great when everything is working though! Let’s take a sample fictitious loop:
You probably earn something at most of those steps along the way. Cool, eh?
Now, what if you’re floating $450,000 spend spread across a dozen credit cards in-between statements while running through this loop, and PayPal decides it’s going to freeze your account and hold existing funds for 180 days? In the process, it rejects an incoming payment and causes the futures market provider to hold its funds too.
Now you’ve got some or all of that $450,000 tied up for six months, and probably credit card bills coming due to multiple lenders in less than a few weeks.
How do you manage that?
The age-old adage: Never float more than you can afford to lose (hopefully only lose temporarily in this case)
Why do one big loop when you can have multiple smaller, hopefully uncorrelated loops? Let one fail rather than all of them
Have a plan for stitching together the ends of the loop when the middle fails
Chargebacks? (Don’t do this)
Good luck out there, and have a nice weekend friends!
Next time: How to know when the jig is up, networking style.
– 30,000 Membership Rewards or a $300 statement credit after $2,500+ spend on US-originating flights at ANA through November 30 – $50 statement credit with $250+ spend at Best Western through December 31
60,000 ThankYou points after $4,000 spend in 90 days
$150 (or 15,000 points) via Rakuten
This card often has a 80,000 point bonus which is *checks notes* 20,000 points more than currently. That bonus especially likes to appear in Q4 too. Even if you only value Citi ThankYou points at their straight-to-cash value of one cent each, waiting for the increased sign-up bonus would give $200 in additional ThankYou Points. Last I checked $200 > $150. Of course Rakuten will still probably offer its regular, non-increased rate of $50 back when the bonus jumps to 80,000. Also, last I checked $200+$50 > $150.
tl;dr: Having an increased bonus on a portal doesn’t mean you’re getting a good deal. (Thanks to reader Harisch for letting me know about the increased offer in September)
Happy Wednesday!
On the other hand, there’s always alternative math.
