Author: matt

In churning, there are times in which miles are locked, cash is frozen, stock market trades are blocked, ACHs are held, sports books aren’t paying, and a dozen other circumstances get in your way, all of which mean you’re not able to:

  • Earn interest on your money
  • Make stock trades when it’s advantageous
  • Book award tickets when availability pops

It’s easy to look back on those lost opportunities and dwell on the financial loss, and psychologically speaking a small loss hurts more than a big win feels good. My best advice for dealing with those losses is to learn from them, but don’t dwell on them. After you’ve examined them and figured out what you could do differently in the future, start looking forward.

Have a nice day friends!

Lessons apply to cities too.

  1. Do this now (for Marriott Bonvoy Ambassadors and Titaniums): Register for United and Marriott’s reciprocal earning:

    – 1,500 Bonvoy points and 1,000 United MileagePlus miles for a stay after August 31
    – 500 United MileagePlus miles per stay at Marriott properties
    – 750 Bonvoy points per United flight

    Afterward for masochists, consider how many United flights you’d have to take to earn a free night at a Marriott Courtyard.
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, the Paris train system of credit cards, has new beginning of the month spend offers:

    – $125 statement credit with $750+ spend or $200 statement credit with $1,500+ spend monthly in gas, grocery, or restaurants through December
    – $100 statement credit with $500+ spend or $150 statement credit with $1,000+ spend in monthly in gas, grocery, or restaurants through December

    Those who didn’t have that type of offer seem to already have a prior monthly version. (Thanks to Peter, bktran, TeddyH, and K).
  3. The Chase Sapphire Reserve personal card has updated its Pay Yourself Back categories for Q3. Grocery, gas, home improvement, and annual fees will be reimbursed at 1.25 cents per point, and select charities at 1.5 cents per point.

    The Sapphire Reserve business card only has charities as an option, and only at 1.25 cents per point. At least you still can buy a $50 Lululemon gift card for free twice a year I guess, which works out approximately 0.63 pants per year.
  4. American Express offers has a new offer for 20,000 Membership Rewards or a $200 statement credit after $1,000+ spend with AirFrance / KLM.

    Yes, it’s not hard to hit this offer with a family traveling to Europe. But also, it’s possible to hit it in less obvious ways.
  5. The American Express Delta Business cards have no-lifetime language (NLL) links that match their recent normal link heightened sign-up bonus:

    – Business Gold: 90,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Business Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Business Reserve : 110,000 SkyMiles after $12,000 spend in six months

    The personal cards still have regular lifetime language in their offer terms.
  6. American Express Membership Rewards will reduce the transfer ratio to Emirates Skywards on September 18 from 5:5 to 5:4. Or if you prefer, from 225:255 to 225:180, because math is fun (or at least it’s “fun”, idk).
  7. AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue has released its July promo rewards for travel through December 31. US cities in this month’s promotion are: Portland OR, Austin TX, Atlanta GA, and Dallas TX.

    Economy flights are 18,750 miles and business class are 60,000 miles each way.

Happy Wednesday!

Math is just as “fun” for computers as it is for us.

Travel hacking and churning have lots of incompatible answers to the same question:

[Q]: Are two one-way bookings cheaper than a roundtrip?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Is a round-trip booking cheaper than two one-way bookings?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Is booking for two cheaper than booking for one, on a per-passenger price?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Is booking for one cheaper than booking for two, on a per-passenger price?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Is the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card the absolute best card to get?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Is the American Express Business Platinum the absolute best card to get?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Will Hertz throw me in jail if I rent with them?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Will I have no issues renting through Hertz?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Will Chase shut me down if I ramp my spending by 10x in a month?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Will Chase let me continue if I ramp my spending by 10x in a month?
[A]: Yes*

[Q]: Is SideShowBob233 a real person?
[A]: Yes*

When you’re collecting datapoints or asking for advice, don’t forget that absolutes are almost never there. Instead, we see trends and patterns.

*: Sometimes It’s either route specific, destination specific, airline specific, bank specific, person specific, or card specific. Or maybe just specific specific.

MEAB in a nutshell, sometimes the “may” is absolute.

  1. Turkish Airlines has a promotion for one million bonus award miles after flying Turkish to six continents between now and October 27. There are a few gotchas:

    – Visiting Istanbul / Turkey doesn’t count
    – You must connect through Istanbul airport
    – Only revenue tickets count

    I’ve seen itineraries priced between approximately $4,000-$5,000 to complete this challenge from zero; With flexibility I think you could get the total cost below $3,000. If you’re bored, one million bonus miles combined with (probably) earning Star Alliance Gold status through 2027 and the miles you’ll earn for flying make this a decent deal. (Thanks to mforch)
  2. JetBlue has a bonus promotion for travel through 2025 for both revenue and award tickets provided they’re not basic economy:

    – 150,000 points after visiting 15 cities
    – 200,000 additional points after 20 cities
    – 25 years of Mosaic 1 status after 25 cities

    You can do this with flexibility for under $2,000, or you can jam it all into a week for more. But: (1) I’ll bet your Mosaic 1 status that JetBlue won’t be around in 25 years, and probably also not in 25 months, and (2) a few credit card bonuses and hitting spend are a better use of your time – but what do I know? Maybe you really like blue corn chips and 6″ standard definition TVs.
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. Even multiples are better than odd in general, but also here.

    These are Pathward gift cards.

A lucky Mosaic 1 elite is upgraded to the broken-screen no-distractions suite seat.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a special guest post from irieriley, a churner who went from crawling to marathon long sprints in a short time.

In the world of manufactured spend and churning, it’s implied that there is a rigid structure of clearly defined rules that govern what you can and can’t do. Chase 5/24. Amex pop up jail. Don’t cycle Citi. Don’t cycle Synchrony*, etc. etc. etc.

A lot of this collective knowledge is sourced from smart folks that were willing to be the guinea pigs and push limits to understand exactly what those limits are.

But in the spirit of probing, you shouldn’t consider any of these rules as completely impossible to circumvent. I once cycled a Citi Double Cash 9 times back when I didn’t know it was an issue, and a large Citi balance was a prerequisite for a long, tedious afternoon of liquidation. I’m still alive years later, continued shenanigans and all. 

Now, I’m not saying to go throw in an application for the absolutely incredible Chase Sapphire Reserve Business™® if you’re way over 5/24, because it will be a waste of a hard pull. I’m just saying that historically, there’s been ways to get around these obstacles.

CoD streamers credit card bloggers ready to share the incredible CSR Biz news

Here are some common “rules” I’ve seen over the years that I wouldn’t hesitate to spend 5 seconds testing if I came across them:

  • No business cards
  • No Amex
  • Debit cards only
  • One deposit per day
  • Max $ deposit

Best case scenario, the rule doesn’t apply, and you make more money. Worst case scenario, the transaction doesn’t go through, and you proceed with your day. Medium case scenario, the rule doesn’t apply, but you get a terse email and need to get creative to keep your account open. The underlying systems and platforms that power our favorite banks, CUs and fintechs are just so finicky that you’ll never know until you try. 

While we’re on the subject of things not being what they seem, here’s some advice: In a lot of online communities, getting zero answers to a question you pose is likely a sign you asked a dumb question. But in this one, if your question is thoughtful and researched and nobody responds (or in my case, you are DMed to delete the question), you may be on to something. In this case, silence is deafening. 

– irieriley

*Ok, I will concede that not cycling Synchrony does seem to be sound advice.

A MSer continuing to enjoy the spoils of breaking the rules after realizing “debit cards only” did not apply in practice at his latest target

Introduction

There’s a spectrum of what churning blogs will talk about, ranging from ultra low frequency things like fuel dumps to an onslaught of affiliate card articles for the new big bank special. Somewhere close to the fuel dump end of that spectrum is discussion about credit card retention offers. Retention isn’t mentioned much, not because it’s a fragile secret, but rather most credit card affiliates relationships forbid bloggers from discussing it at all. Fortunately (?) though, I’m not burdened with affiliate relationships.

The Call

Retention offers encourage you to hold on to a card you might otherwise cancel, and should it help your mental model you can think of them as a secondary sign-up bonus for the same card. The mechanics of getting a retention offer are simple, call the number on the back of your card and say something like:

I was considering closing my card ending in [XXXX] because [reason], but before I decide what to do I was wondering if there were any retention offers?

Most banks will have an offer on most cards, and some banks, especially Citi and American Express, often have multiple offers available and occasionally won’t give the best one first. So, assuming an offer is available, the next thing to say is something like:

Hmm, thanks. Are there any different retention offers or than this one available?

You may have to do this multiple times to get the best offer.

The Juice

What do backs offer for retention? Typically something like:

  • American Express: 15,000-120,000 points (or equivalent statement credit) with some spend
  • Chase: $100-$300 statement credit
  • Citi: $100-$200 statement credit, bonus multiples on all spend, or an annual fee waiver
  • Barclays: Annual fee waiver
  • US Bank: Annual fee waiver, $100-$300 statement credit

This works on no-annual fee cards and on co-branded cards too.

The Gotchas

Some banks, especially American Express, see retention as a two-way street. If you get a retention offer, plan on keeping that card open for at least 366 days unless you want to be banished to pop-up jail and have a (low probability) retention bonus clawback.

Have a nice Thursday friends!

Alternative retention script (may not work as well).

  1. Bank of America has a targeted promotion for +2x or +2% on top of regular earning between August 1 and September 30 via USPS and (probably) email. Like last year’s version, it appears that the rewards are uncapped. (EDIT: Some cards are reported to have a $5,000 spend capacity for the promotion, others don’t)

    If you’re targeted, it’s probably worth spending some time with charges on your cards to get the fraud alerts under control before August 1, and it’s also worth figuring out how to pay Bank of America in a post alternative payments world. (Thanks to Rocky)
  2. Citi ThankYou Points has a 50% transfer bonus to Accor ALL through July 19. With the bonus, the fixed euro value of an Accor point, and the current US dollar exchange rate, this is a cash-out value of 1.74 cents per ThankYou Point.
  3. Citi ThankYou Points also has a 20% transfer bonus to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue through July 19.

    Citi’s prior transfer bonus to FlyingBlue was 30%, which is *checks notes* 10% more than this one.
  4. Southwest has a Companion Pass offer:

    – Book two one-ways or a round-trip by June 27, non-basic economy
    – Fly by August 31
    – Get a Companion Pass for September 11 – November 15

    Rebooking any travel booked before May 29 will cause you to lose free checked bags, better cancelation terms, your dignity, etc.
  5. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards excluding Amazon, and on fixed value Visas and Mastercards running through July 8.

    What about Pepper you say? Look, I know an update is overdue, but give it another week or two, everything keeps changing in a static kind of way.
  6. Giftcards.com has two promotions for select gift cards, which include virtual Visas, Virtual Mastercards, One4All, and Home Depot gift cards:

    – $5 free giftcards.com gift card with $50 purchase using promo code BOGO50
    – $10 free giftcards.com gift card with $100 purchase using promo code BOGO100

    These codes come and go, so if there’s no inventory now check later and you may find it. Portals specifically exclude these codes from earning, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t work.
  7. The Bank of America Air France / KLM FlyingBlue Mastercard has a heightened bonus of 70,000 bonus miles and 100 XP after $3,000 spend in 90 days.

    Annual bonus XP stacks with these cards, but sign-up bonus XP don’t, and yes, you can get multiple.
  8. The Chase United Quest card has an increased sign-up bonus of 115,000 MileagePlus miles and 3,000 PQP after $4,000 spend in three months. You’ll need a promotional code from a United Agent for this offer. You can find one in the comments of a DoC post, make one up in the form UA3[XXX] where [XXX] is three random letters and numbers, or you can just use 999999.
  9. Chase Sapphire news:

    – Reserve referral links are now available
    – Preferred has a heightened bonus of 75,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months
    – Pre-October 26 earned points have boosted travel redemptions, post-October 26 earned points don’t (referring to 1.5/1.25 cents per point on the Chase Travel Portal)
    – Points are redeemed in FIFO order (first in, first out)
    – Pay Yourself Back remains

    I’m going to do my best to not talk about the Sapphire for the rest of the week, there’s absolutely no need feed the marketing machine.

Happy Wednesday!

Yes it’s about birds, but it might as well be about Sapphire marketing.

Introduction

How unlucky do you have to be to have the credit card community learn about your new credit card on the same day that the Chase Sapphire Reserve marketing blitzkrieg kicks-off? At least 17 unlucky units by my calculation, which happens to match Crypto.com’s luckiness as measured with my science-o-meter.

The Card

Luck notwithstanding, Crypto.com launched a Visa credit card issued by Comenity bank with tiered “cash-back” rewards, and those tiers are based on how much crypto you’re staking. For turbo crypto newbies, staking basically means loaning your crypto to others which locks you out from trades while your crypto is on loan, and the staking for this card requires you to lend for at least a year. The staking requirements and tiers for the card’s bonus and cash-back are:

  • $0: 1.5% cash back, $100 bonus after $1,500 spend in 90 days
  • $500: 2.5% cash back, $150 bonus after $2,000 spend in 90 days
  • $5,000: 3.5% cash back, $500 bonus after $5,000 spend in 90 days
  • $50,000: 5.0% cash back, $1,000 bonus after $10,000 spend in 180 days
  • $500,000: 6.5% cash back, $25,000 bonus after $25,000 spend in 180 days

Those numbers look great, except a few things:

  • Crypto coins behave a lot like stock, they can go up or down in value at any point
  • Staking your coins effectively locks them up for a year, giving lots of time for value to change
  • The price of the coin you’d be staking in, CRO, is very volatile
  • CRO’s price is down 60% from December, not a great trend
  • Cash back from spend is on this card is actually a lie, you earn CRO on your spend
  • You could stake your crypto elsewhere and earn a return directly from staking too if it weren’t tied up with the card
  • Crypto.com rug pulled with their own tokens in the past
  • Crypto.com’s compliance team for their prior version of their credit card were hawks, though that was Community Federal Savings Bank and not Comenity

In theory you could mitigate some of these concerns with hedged derivatives trading on CRO, but US traders are effectively locked out from (relatively speaking) safer markets for doing so.

The Gamble

Now, let’s think through some of the potential losses if we gamble on this card:

  • Your CRO may lose some or all of its value
  • Comenity may not like the kinds of transactions that we do and prevent you from earning on spend
  • There’s opportunity cost in staking

Finally, let’s assume that your staked crypto loses 30% in value during its lockup period. How much will you have to spend at each tier to cover that loss with the increased bonus percentage (ignoring the modest sign up bonus)?

  • $0 staked → $0: Obviously, this is all gravy at 1.5% cash back
  • $500 → $350: Spend $15,000 to break even versus nothing staked
  • $5,000 → $3,500: Spend $75,000 to break even versus nothing staked
  • $50,000 → $35,000: Spend $428,571 to break even versus nothing staked
  • $500,000→$350,000: Spend $3,000,000 to break even versus nothing staked

So it’s clear that if you’re going to gamble with an advantage, either you’d better have good confidence that you can get a lot of spend through without issues, or you’d better believe that CRO isn’t going to lose value.

If that weren’t bad enough, there tolerant cards from other issuers that earn 2%-2.625% on general spend and maybe more with the right payment types, so your opportunity cost looking outside of the Crypto.com ecosystem is real.

Tl;Dr

Opportunity cost is real, crypto is volatile, and crypto.com has rug-pulled before. It still might be a great card, but I doubt it.

Happy Tuesday!

A hat that guarantees its wearer will be left alone in public.