Author: matt

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™.

Rumors

  1. On January 1, the American Express Platinum personal cards will probably have their Fine Hotels and Resorts credits restricted to 2+ night stays, sorry for everyone with their $300*n one-night bangers.

    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.
  2. Lululemon may be integrating Level 3 transaction into its POS systems to prevent Personal Platinum quarterly credits from working on gift cards. What’s my likelihood estimate here, asked no one? I think about p=0.55, but there are some strong indications of FUD.

News

With that out of the way, a few quick hits:

  1. 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.
  2. Giftcards.com has 10% off of $100 virtual Visa gift cards with promo code VISATREAT, limit three per account. This code hasn’t hit the portals yet, so I wouldn’t expect them to track but I’d still try.
  3. Citi Offers has two new travel related offers:

    – $50 off of $300+ with JetBlue through November 30
    – $30 off of $300+ with Marriott through November 30

    (Thanks to FM)
  4. Bank of America was fined $1.2 Billion for failing to have a compliant anti-money laundering program.

Happy Wednesday!

About the accuracy of those probabilities…

Introduction

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.

Happy Tuesday friends!

Next time: Reconsidering free hotel breakfast.

  1. One of the Citi AA Business Mastercard’s soft, often under-reported perks is that spend on employee cards earns loyalty points for both the employee AA account and the account holder’s AA account.

    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.
  2. 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.

    Possibly related: American Express was fined $350 million last week for insufficient anti-money laundering oversight. Also, before you ask: No, the prior paragraph wasn’t even tangential money laundering, but different people with different focus are sailing the ship now, so keep your game changing.
  3. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Mastercards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. Giant Food has 2x points earning on Mastercard gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500 per account. Meanwhile, sister-stores Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins have 8x points on Zillions gift cards, but the limit is a stupidly low $500 per account.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  5. Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to British Airways Avios through October 31.
  6. American Express offers has an offer for $225 off of $1,250+ in spend at ITA Airways through November 30 for US originating fares.

Happy Monday, friends!

Next time: Manufactured spend with Ye Olde Mint.

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
  • Minimize cycling, where possible
  • Diversify your spend, don’t put it all on that Credit One Vegas Golden Knights card

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:

  • Credit card → Neobank → Futures market → Bill Payment → PayPal (heaven forbid) → FinTech → Hub bank account → Credit card

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.

  1. The Goldman Sachs Apple Credit Card has a $100 sign-up bonus after $100 spend in 30 days. Why is $100 notable? Chase is acquiring the Apple Credit Card portfolio and will take over management likely by the end of next year, though maybe much sooner. If you’re shutdown with Chase, this may get you back.

    Don’t worry: The same Goldman that lost lots of money on the Apple Card also lost lots of money on the GM card so there’s a strong track record despite strong conviction otherwise.
  2. InComm Incentives has a $500 bonus gift card and fee-free Visa, Mastercard, and American Express gift cards for new customers on their first $50,000+ order using promo code NOFEE26 through Sunday. Just don’t use an American Express card to buy.

    These are Sutton / InComm gift cards. (Thanks to GCA)
  3. MasterCardGiftCard.com has a promotion for 50% off of purchase fees with promo code SHOPEARLY26 through October 31. Just don’t use an American Express to buy: the InComm sites don’t earn points on American Express first party cards.

    There was a time when the SHOPEARLY family of codes outlasted its planned expiration by nearly a half of a year.
  4. American Express Offers has offers for:

    – 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

    Fuel surcharges are bad on ANA now, but they’re not $2,500 bad.
  5. The Chase Southwest Visa cards have a targeted promo for 25% bonus miles with at least $3,000 spend through the end of the year, registration required. The maximum earn is 20,000 bonus miles, or $80,000 spend in non-bonus categories.

Happy Thursday friends!

Goldman has conviction in its government services investments too.

Since at least September 28, you’ve been able to self refer via Rakuten for the Citi Strata Premier credit card with $150 back. Sounds good, right? You’d think so based on a plethora of (late) coverage yesterday, but the answer is no. The current sign-up bonus with your self referral is:

  • 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.

  1. Do this now: Choose a free Alaska Atmos Community for extra mileage earning and benefits in 2026. The best options for most of the US are:

    – Global Locals: 10% extra status points on international travel
    – National Parks: Incremental extra miles and status points on some US destinations
    – Families on the Go: 20% miles rebate on award flights for kids 12 years and younger

    There’s a handy comparison table here, although unfortunately it’s a PDF.
  2. Wyndham has a promotion for double miles to United MileagePlus in 6,000 mile increments through October 30, which puts the transfer ratio at 6,000:2,400.

    For the last n years, where n = 1, United has had a 20% bonus for incoming hotel miles in the second half of October. With counting statistics, that puts the error at ± 1, so you’ve got a chance of between 0% and 100% of this returning again this year. Thanks math! (Thanks to mmrose1980)
  3. Hyatt is back on Capital One Shopping, which currently means at least a 1% rebate on paid Hyatt stays without forgoing elite benefits. Gamers will probably find a lot more than 1% too. (Thanks to FM)

Happy Tuesday!

Alaska was a trend follower.

  1. The Barclays Mastercard Black has a new sign-up bonus of 75,000 points (worth $1,500 toward airfare) after $6,000 spend in 90 days. Never heard of it? That’s probably because it’s got a stupid-high annual fee and typically no sign-up bonus. The card’s vitals:

    – $699 annual fee
    – Effectively 2% earner on purchases, at least as long as you redeem for airfare
    – $200 annual airline credit
    – $100 annual dining credit
    – A Priority Pass with restaurant access

    If you’ve got the right angle and dig deep, there’s a little hidden value in this card.
  2. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have 10x points earning on Zift Zillions cards through Saturday, but caveat emptor: As of yesterday evening, these points weren’t properly posting.
  3. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Visa gift cards through Saturday, always buy in even multiples of $300. Why? Math.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  5. American Express Membership Rewards has two transfer bonuses:

    – 25% to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue (1:1 → 1:1.25) through October 30
    – 20% to AeroMexico Club Premier (1:1.6 → 1:1.92) through October 31

    Why 1:1.6? Something about the metric system #themoreyouknow.
  6. Marriott Bonvoy has a 15% transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan through October 31. In 60,000 point increments, the transfer ratio under the bonus is 6:2.8.
  7. American Express offers has $75 off of $350+ at Hertz through October 14.

Happy Monday friends!

A churner discovers value in the stupidly named Barclays Mastercard Black Card.