Author: matt

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author, the always helpful and funny SideShowBob233, for writing this post while I’m on vacation. I’ll see you on January 1!

Check kiting is an old fraud practice that is no longer as useful as it once was because balances can be verified in real time by some services. So, yours truly was sure surprised a couple of years ago when I called my hub bank to find out why my bank account was locked, and they told me it was closed because of “ACH kiting”. I asked what that was and the nice, friendly lady who was shutting down my account explained that it was the practice (similar to check kiting) of moving money out before it has cleared for the purposes of fraud. As I had not done this, and none of my ACH transfers had actually failed or been recalled, I asked why they were accusing me of this. She gave me a non-answer along the lines of “we heard this from a different bank but will not disclose who” and it suddenly made sense (can you picture the light bulb going off above my head, causing my flaming red hair to catch fire, set off the sprinklers, and pissing off my whole family?)

I had been using my hub bank as – surprise! – a hub, meaning I was transferring funds from a target account (back in the days when Walmart had bill payment in their app) to my hub bank and then sending them on their merry way back to wherever they were needed.   While this was a terrible idea (see my EWS commentary on why using personal accounts for ACH is terrible) when one of my banks was shut down, they apparently called my hub and told them I was ACH kiting.  Strange considering none of my ACH transfers ever failed, but they clearly didn’t understand why I was doing it and decided it was fraudulent.  I can see why they might have felt this way given my practice of pulling funds a day or two after they arrived.   At the same time I’d run probably $2M through their account by that point, so you’d think if I was going to pull my scam I’d likely have done it already, but compliance folks have to make themselves look useful somehow I guess. 

In the good old US of A, ACH is handled over network connections with cups and string (see below), and those strings sometimes break (ask PaymentUS about this).  Now most countries that also provide free healthcare (some with death panels – looking at you Afghanistan – some without) have instant ACH, but you wouldn’t want your money right away when you can get it in three business days would you? So we will love our cups and strings and enjoy our 3 day fund clearing, but know that our bank infrastructure is the best in the world, if by best you mean worst. 

Since those fateful and fun days of yore I’ve learned a lot and I let funds sit for 3 full business days before moving them on their journey, unless I’m using a bank account where they understand money won’t sit in their account forever and they tolerate this (you can rake taek this however you want).  That and moving all your funds only between business accounts except when absolutely necessary are keys to avoiding my fate. 

Not this fate (who’d want to avoid this anyway!):

But rather this fate:

– SideShowBob233

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author, MEAB’s P2, for writing this post while I’m on vacation. I’ll see you on January 1!

Growing up, I never liked to play Luigi in Mario Bros. This wasn’t for any real reason other than the fact I didn’t like his green outfit, and also being player two meant that I had to go second instead of being able to go first. As a kid, nobody else liked to be player two either. 

As an adult… that’s a different story. 

Being a player two in the miles and points community is nothing like playing Luigi in Mario Bros. For example, I don’t have to wear green turtlenecks or overalls. Also, I’m pretty sure Mario never took Luigi to Europe in business class on points, or booked the family in a swanky hotel because a suite upgrade was about to expire. But, while being player two comes with a million and a half perks, like getting upgraded at the best hotel in North America, it also has its challenges. For example:

• Being a player two means that you spend part of your weekend driving around the valley to five or six different grocery stores (including the one right next to a delicious boba shop) to purchase gift cards. 
  
• Being a player two probably means that you have no idea how those gift cards turn into cash and/or points (?), but you’re a passenger princess, so you sip your boba and talk about how excited you are to get upgraded on your next flight.
  
• Being a player two means that when you get the mail, there’s twenty five credit cards waiting for your player one. When you text them, the response is “oh cool, the first batch came.” (First batch?!)
  
• Being a player two means getting dirty looks from old men who think you’re in the wrong for standing in the first class line at the airport. Especially since you probably have a latte in your hand, are rocking a “just rolled out of bed” messy bun with dark sunglasses, and wearing an old beat up Theranos sweatshirt. 
  
• Being a player two means watching that same old man make his way to comfort plus because he might have status, but your significant other (SO) has more, so you two got upgraded and not him. 
  
• Being a player two means getting a battlefield upgrade when you’re already on the plane and looking back at all the plebeians as you race up the aisle like you’re Cinder-fucking-ella. 
  
• Being a player two means that there are spreadsheets that you have no hope of untangling in the event something happens to your spouse.
  
• No really. I have no idea what the spreadsheets mean. Are there spreadsheets? I’m unclear, but I know I have a boba so it’s prolly fine. 
  
• Being a player two means that your SO probably has ten plane tickets for destinations like “Australia”, “Japan”, and “Peru” and when you ask him what trip he’s going to take he says “IDK felt cute, might cancel later.” 
  
• Being a player two probably means hotel hopping in the middle of your vacation and, while this is completely normal, you’re more concerned that you’re going to hop to one that won’t give you a free restaurant breakfast. 
  
• Being a player two means getting put in the presidential suite at least twice. 
  
• Being a player two means that you now ask your SO if they “think we will get upgraded to the Presidential suite?” on each consecutive vacation. 
  
• Being a player two means that you probably look like a bougie bitch on your instagram page. You’re not, but you delight in playing one on TV. 

However, this isn’t simply a list where I’m low key flexing about the cool things I sometimes get to do because I live with MEAB. I have a point, I promise! Being a player two also means that you must have a large amount of communication and trust between you and your player one. My husband — MEAB — travels…A. LOT. He travels for family, he travels for fun, he travels because he’s a Sagittarius (IYKYK), he travels with me, and he travels without me. In order for this lifestyle to work, we have to trust each other and have a ton of open communication. I not only have to trust that he works for the good of our family, I have to understand what all that hard work amounts to. It’s more than the fun and games of presidential suites and battlefield upgrades — it’s opportunities for us and our family. More than that, it’s experiences that help us and our children understand the world a little bit better. 

Not only that, but being a player two probably means that your player one is working with your credit.  MEAB and I have always had open dialogue about this. I know exactly what he’s doing and I know that everything gets paid, not in the future, but IMMEDIATELY. There is literally nothing I don’t know about, and if I asked him to stop, he would without question. He’s a risk taker for sure, but not with my credit, and not with things that could really get mucked up. He’s a consummate thinker. He wants to use the system, not break the system. I really admire him for that. 

So, to all my player ones out there: thank you for reading this blog post. And, if you happen to have a player two, take them out for a little bevie bev (short for beverage) and have an open dialogue about what your goals are for miles and points hacking, AND what the boundaries are.

And for God’s sake, take them to the Waldorf Astroia Pedregal with a Hilton free night certificate or two. You’ll thank me later. 

MEAB’s P2 after visiting Kroger #7. NOTE: The boba cup was shrunk to 2/3rds its original size with AI to fit properly in the frame.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author, a churning-FIRE sage and podcaster extraordinaire, Kai from The Daily Churn Podcast, for writing this post while I’m on vacation. I’ll see you on January 1!

As the new year approaches and things slow down for the holidays, I’ve been reflecting a bit on the blessing and curse of being an optimizer. I think many of us, particularly churners, love to optimize. We optimize our travel, our miles earned, our points burned, for first class flights, five star hotels, and cashback at almost zero cost. What’s not to love?

Society also loves optimizers. Improve efficiency, get promoted. Launch a startup, get rich. Work smarter. Hustle harder. Eat healthier, live longer. Hack your workout, your morning routine, your relationship, your life.

Nothing builds a habit faster than an activity that produces tangible results. Encounter problem. Find optimal solution. Release dopamine. Rinse, repeat.

Do anything a thousand times, and it’s no longer an activity you do. It’s a part of who you are. There are worse things to be than being an optimizer. In fact, family and friends probably love your optimizing. You help them optimize their vacations, their finances, their diet. It feels good to help others.

Your partner, roommate, or cat might be the only one who sees the other side of the coin.

They see you spend three hours researching the best pillow for stomach sleepers, cross-referencing amazon reviews with Wirecutter recommendations, checking slickdeals and camelcamelcamel for historical lowest prices, cashbackmonitor for the highest portal rates, cardpointers for active credit card offers, retailmenot for coupon codes.

They see you spend days on the phone chatting with customer service to figure out the ins and outs of their award booking system, so you can secure first class tickets for you and your friends.

They see you spend weeks working on a bot to automate thousands of micro-transactions to take advantage of interchange arbitrage opportunities on a few niche fintech platforms (only to see it die before you could really scale it up, sadface).

They also see that year by year, despite everything in your life becoming more optimal, you still spend just as much (often more) time optimizing.

That is the optimizer’s curse.

There are an infinite number of things to optimize. There is no end. After all, stopping short of optimizing everything would be, well, sub-optimal.

Optimizers trend towards maximization. I mean, what kind of wildebeest would you have to be to quit halfway, to buy a pillow before reading the negative reviews, to manually perform a thousand micro-transactions, to leave award availability to pure chance?

But more and more, I see the value in satisficing. The idea of being satisfied with good enough. The middle ground between doing nothing and optimizing everything.

If you’ve ever had to suffer through corporate indoctrination (or took biology), there’s a principle you may be familiar with. It’s the Pareto Principle – 20% of the work often yields 80% of the results. Viewed another way – you spend 80% of your time squeezing out the last 20% of the juice.

My inner optimizer hates this rule. But there is no denying its truth. If I had just blindly bought the best pillow recommended by Wirecutter, it would have taken me ten minutes tops. I would have been perfectly satisfied. I would have saved myself almost three hours of research.

But in the moment, it felt good to maximally optimize all the way to 100. Optimizing puts me in flow state. Time slips away. One minute it’s morning and I’m at my desk sipping green tea. I blink and it’s the afternoon. I have four different browsers open, I’m thirty tabs deep into a reddit rabbithole, and I’m VPNing into Dallas for some reason.

And therein lies the true cost of being an optimizer. Lost time. Time you could have spent with family. With friends. Time you could have spent on your hobbies. On picking up a new hobby. Time spent hanging with your partner, your kids, your pets. Maybe time you could have spent finding a P2.

I’m the best at ignoring this cost. There’s so many ways to justify it. This is saving me money. This is making me money. We’re going on an amazing vacation. My partner loves nice hotels. I love flying first class. I’m helping a friend. I’m helping my parents. I don’t mind doing it. This is a buy-it-for-life [insert item].

Some days, my phone blows up not from texts or calls. But from reminders I set myself days, weeks, months, sometimes even years ago. Reminders for things I need to do to stay on top of my optimizations. Cards I need to cancel, offers I need to redeem, money I need to transfer, calls I need to make, deliveries I need to skip, subscriptions I need to pause, refunds I need to follow-up on, bonus deadlines I need to stay on top of, new opportunities I need to try.

Opening my Google Keep can feel like entering a warzone… duck, swipe, ignore, defer, reschedule for next week. Phew, made it out in one piece.

We optimize to improve our tomorrows, often at the cost of todays. How many vacations have you sat in your hot tub on the balcony of your top-floor oceanview suite, waves lapping at the beautiful beach below, laptop perched precariously on your knees to avoid water from the damn hot tub and glare from the damn sun, as you “quickly” check your email, scroll your blogs, post a pic of your suite to your group chat, while the latest episode of Huberman plays in the background?

Oh you’ve never done that? Cool cool, me neither.

There is always a tomorrow to optimize for. Until one day, there isn’t. You’ll lay on your deathbed, and if you’re lucky, be coherent enough to reflect on your life. Will that time you won 25 stars playing the starbucks game flash before your eyes? Or that free award flight to Lubbock? How about those pillows?

What will flash before your eyes? Maybe we could spend more time doing that.

So this holiday season, I’m advocating for being a little less optimal. To put in 20% of the effort for 80% of the results. To let go of opportunities that aren’t worth your time. To maximize less. To do less. To free yourself from your reminders, your calendar, your self-imposed mind palace of deadlines and commitments. To break the optimizer’s curse through satisficication. Satisfition. Satisfiction? Whatever, good enough.

– Kai from The Daily Churn

This dog is, uh, satisficed with the pillow.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author, the always helpful and funny SideShowBob233, for writing this post while I’m on vacation. I’ll see you on January 1!

EWS, or Early Warning Systems LLC, is a credit reporting agency co-owned by some of our favorite banks: Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.  I used to think of them as similar to ChexSystems (which anyone who’s been denied a bank account before knows and thoroughly loves in a non-platonic way) but they’re actually less similar to ChexSystems and more like a colonoscopy for your bank accounts, but without anesthesia (or a lollipop at the end).  You can request your consumer EWS report once a year using instructions here.  Once you send them the request they will email you within a few weeks, or tell you they will mail it to you.  It’s quite eye opening, I liken it to opening your trunk and finding 69,420 Airtags inside.  And remember after you request it what the late Tom Petty said (no not Here Comes My Girl – what is wrong with you anyway – the waiting is the hardest part).

Once the suspense has been lifted and EWS has deigned to give you your report the real fun begins.  You’ll get a nice report (164 pages in my case) full of every single freaking thing you’ve done in nearly every bank account you own (some bank accounts do not report to EWS thankfully, but most do).  You will see:

• Every check written on every account
• Every ACH transfer made (with destination shown for many of them)
• Daily bank balances for a few months (and monthly for a few years) for some banks
• Accounts you closed within the last 3-4 years
• Accounts you opened in the last 3-4 years
• Tears streaming down your face when you see how much info about you in tracked
• In my case a rake between the eyes

In short, it’s an all you can eat buffet of tracking information for a bank that wants to see if you are a churner or not.  Or a money launderer.  Or if you have a strange sexual fetish that involves sending ACH transfers back and forth.   Regardless of the actual reason for the transfers, any bank looking at this kind of thing is not going to be happy.  Now some may shrug, some may open four new bank accounts without telling you (Wells Fargo is a co-owner after all) but some will see the kind of transfers a heavy MSer does and will kick you to the curb.   It’s not a coincidence that about a week before my shutdown letters from Chase arrived, they pulled my report twice.

Well that’s great SideShowBob233 you say (with the heavy emphasis on the “2” in “233” because you’re a bit psycho sometimes – don’t blame the messenger) but what the hell can I do about this? It’s not like you’re going back to your old second job waxing those wrestler’s backs – so is there any hope?   Yes, yes there is. 

You may note on your report that some bank accounts do not show up.  Your first step (after cleaning up the waxed back hair from the wrestlers – I can’t believe you left that on your floor since you quit 3 years ago and starting MSing) is noting all the accounts that DO NOT show on EWS.  Some credit unions do not report to EWS, but some do.  However zero business bank accounts showed on my report, and I’m willing to bet 69% of that back hair you just cleaned up that none will show on your report either.   So you want to move your transfers to business checking accounts whenever possible, as those will not be tracked.  Business checking accounts especially have an added advantage that banks generally do not care how you use them or how much money you run through them (not counting money orders – sooner or later those get noticed and you get shutdown). 

Don’t take my word for it – try it.  I’ve had several banks tell me that my transactions look like business activity and that I needed to stop it.  I’ve yet to have a bank tell me that for a business checking for example, although I like to imagine it going something like this:

Bank: SSB233, is that business activity we’re seeing in your business checking account?
SSB233: Why yes it is business activity

Bank: We’d like you to stop the business activity and move it to a business account
SSB233: But it is a business account

Bank: OK our bad, we’ll just charge you this $50 fee, make you come in branch for no reason,  and you’ll be good to go
SSB233: [steps on a rake]

So there you have it, EWS (which also owns Zelle – because who doesn’t want the people who managed to screw up money transfers so badly also holding all their bank data).  Thanks for listening to my rant, and if it doesn’t make sense to you I say go step on a rake. 

Pictured: SideShowBob233’s EWS report smacks him in the face.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author, the always helpful and funny SideShowBob233, for writing this post while I’m on vacation. I’ll see you on January 1!

Chase has some of the best checking and savings accounts bonuses, often $500 or $900, and people often jump at the chance to churn these every 2 years.  It sounds great, but when mixed with MS this can be a recipe for a Chase shutdown. 

Chase got in trouble with the feds over their lack of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance a few years ago and as a result has enhanced their AML analysis to a ridiculous level to avoid getting slammed again.  As a result innocent churners and MSers who use Chase are at risk of shutdown by this team.  I know what you’re saying “But SideShowBob233 (you’re saying the 233 part too) I won’t get shutdown I’m not stupid enough to do something to get on their radar” and you’re right – you’re not that stupid but it doesn’t mean you’re safe either.

Many things can get you on their radar that you have no control over:

• Fraud on a debit card linked to the account
• Another financial institution having a glitch and pulling a payment multiple times (looking at you Barclays)
• A fraudulent ACH
• SideShowBob233 going in your local branch and stepping on a rake while filling out a deposit form and accidentally putting your account number on the deposit slip
• Some other thing happens that neither of us (and not even your mom!) warned you about

Once one of these things happens, your account will be flagged for review by the AML team, and once they see your activity on your credit cards (and potentially pull your EWS report – more on that later) they will decide you are not worth the risk and shut you down.  OK, so my cards are closed, not the end of the world – but it won’t be just your cards.  It will be the cards of anyone who was an AU on your account, possibly anyone who lives at your address, and also possibly anyone who was ever linked to you via an AU or employee.  And those people will be banned from Chase for at least 7 years, maybe longer although getting back into Chase is YMMV. 

So how do you avoid this?  Simple, don’t have a deposit account (personal checking, biz checking, savings, CD, etc.) at Chase.  Without funds on deposit their AML team doesn’t get to look over your profile.  Their credit card team can still shut you down for rewards abuse or other reasons, but those shutdown for those reasons tend to be whales (although you never know). 

Yes, you are missing out on the potential for multiple checking bonuses but is your Chase relationship worth it (the answer is NO!).  Don’t be like SideShowBob233 (you read the 233 part aloud again because that’s how you roll) and get shutdown because you think it won’t happen to you.  I was in the it won’t happen to me boat, I barely used it other than a direct deposit to keep it free, then I accidentally over-drafted it on a Saturday night paying my credit card after a rake party. 

And finally, if you are going to do it anyway, please tag me when you do get shutdown so I can say I told you so.  But seriously if you do want to get the checking because you are cool enough to avoid the AML team, at least slow your Chase MS when the account is open. 

Stay tuned for my next rant sometime soon on the bane of churning existence (your EWS report). 

Even Canada is listening to SideShowBob233, going as far as naming bills after him.