I’m an optimizer; frankly, I think most of us are or we wouldn’t be doing this on a day to day basis so I guess misery loves company, right? We’re all rather adept at optimizing credit card category spend multipliers, payment windows, new application timing, and new account bonuses.
Optimizations aren’t perfect though and it’s easy to get stuck in local minima. I regularly see newbies and experienced churners alike make an optimization mistake with their time: spending minutes or even hours chasing a deal that’s not worth very much. An extremely successful salesman once gave me some simple advice:
It takes about the same amount of time to do a small deal as it does to do a big deal.
The obvious lesson is to spend your time on bigger things instead of on smaller things. An alternative way to think about this is to consider the minimum you need to make for different manufactured spend and travel hacking opportunities, and don’t bother with the ones that don’t have a big enough return on time. To that end, I’d suggest having a mental set minimums, much like pilots have a set of weather minimums. In case you’re a visual learner, here’s a sample table that you can fill in for “fun”. For extra “fun”, compare with your neighbor:
| Activity | Minimum Profit Needed ($) |
| Leaving home for in-person manufactured spend | |
| Manufacturing spend at home (something quick) | |
| Manufacturing spend at home (something less quick) | |
| Calling customer service for a retention offer | |
| Tracking a card linked offer over couple of months | |
| Social engineering a customer service rep | |
| Trying to find a spot in Costco’s parking lot |
Happy Wednesday!
There’s a spot right there, see?