EDITORS NOTE: In 2024, I’ve introduced Guest Post Saturdays. I’m still looking for more guest posts, please reach out if you have something interesting to share with the community! Today’s guest post is from a strong community contributor, and the official churning historian, Hank.
Confucius’s churning manual says that if you want to know the future then study the past. With that in mind it’s time to get out the popcorn and enjoy some unicorns from 10+ years ago.
- Funding Citi checking accounts for $100k/pop on 4% everywhere cash back card. No elaborate shenanigans. Build a $100k CL on the Barclays Travelocity MasterCard (MEAB Unsung Hero card 2009 – 2015), fund account, repeat.
- Venmo no fee $3k/month unlimited accounts. For it’s first several years Venmo allowed up to $3k/month of fee free credit spend per account. An account was an email address, a phone number (google voice), and a unique credit card (employee card).
- 20+ BOA cards in one sitting. While nowadays BOA has credit line rules in place to throttle velocity historically a good “App-o-Rama” could net 20 cards in a sitting. The downside: highest cashback bonus was $200. Upside: easy to combine credit lines for other shenanigans.
- Buy GC sell same platform 3% profit. Gift card reselling websites didn’t used to have strong guardrails. You could buy (for example) Target gift cards, stack rebates, and sell the same gc back for a profit. Repeat, scale.
- Gold bullion by the pound. While the better known play was dollar coins from the US mint the back saving move was gold coins on Ebay. By stacking a series of rebates you could earn 2-5% spread + points. Limits were float (things haven’t changed) and your comfort levels with constantly driving 6 figures of bullion to the post office in a beat up old ford.
While the specific plays above are long gone there are variations of each circling around to this day. EDITOR’S NOTE: Always be probing
– Hank
Scrooge McDuck explaining to a police officer why thousands of dollars of dollar coins are spilling out of his trunk after a traffic accident.