Category: Meta

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 followup to last year’s diary while I’m on vacation. I’ll see you tomorrow on January 1!

I’m a simple girl with simple needs. Like many of us, I like coffee in the morning, yoga in the evenings, and since I teach middle school, I always hope that a day will go by without hearing the words ‘skibbidi toilet’ or ‘hawk-tuah’. It’s not a lot to ask for, and most days two of those three things are usually accomplished. I’ll let you wonder which two. Anyway, as I said, simple.

At least I thought I was simple. Then my husband took me to Europe over the summer. 

It was not my first trip to Europe, in fact not even my first trip to Europe this year. And, since I’m married to MEAB, it probably won’t be my last. However, traveling with him has slowly chipped away at my “simple girl” aesthetic, and now I’ve surpassed the scale of “simple girl” to “passenger princess” and I fear I’ve landed firmly at “Bougie Bitch.” Because, my friends, this was the summer I flew Lufthansa First Class. 

I’d like you to imagine for a moment, if you will, this school teacher wearing thrifted pants and a Taylor Swift Eras Tour t-shirt arriving to Munich Airport with MEAB. We check in, and the ticketing agent at the counter said “You’ll go to the lounge this way. They’ll take care of you there, and you won’t have to board with all the other people.” I look at MEAB with my eyebrows shooting off my face as I mouth “other people”? He chuckles, because he knows what’s in store. 

We are two of four in the entire first class lounge. I’m brought a specialty margarita and given delicious food to eat. There are no babies crying, no jostling for space, none of the hundreds of minor inconveniences that might plague other people when flying. Just simple relaxation.

When the time comes for us to board, we are taken down a secret elevator and passage to our gate (though I’m told in Frankfurt it could have been a ride in a Porsche), where we board our A380. I’ve got my carry on luggage and pink backpack on and looking very much like a thrifty swifty. But no. This girlie goes UPSTAIRS (you guys, planes have stairs!) and I find my seat. A wildly comfortable window seat in first class. 

Immediately I’m given the best sparkling wine I’ve ever had. I’d like to call it champagne, but I think it was a sparkling Rosé. Either way, delectable. For the next ten hours I’m feted like a MFing princess. Caviar – check. Alcohol – check. Some of the best food (that’s also gluten free because life) – check. Lay flat bed – check. Pajamas – check. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss the bathroom. It’s literally larger than our main bathroom in our house. Not only that, but stocked with goodies. Mouthwash, facewash, toothpaste, Evian facial mist…I opened all the drawers, took all the pictures. You get the gist. All in all, it was life changing. Exceptional. Luxe. Bougie. 

Now, I won’t lie. It wasn’t my first time in international first class. However, the time before had been on American Airlines with a grumpy stewardess who thought gluten free meant I couldn’t have ice cream and an airline meal that was the worst chicken I’ve ever had. It was a truly disappointing experience on AA…not so on Lufthansa. 

The Lufthansa flight was my Nexus event. If Loki hadn’t fixed the sacred timeline, it’s very possible that the timekeepers would have popped right out and culled me right there. Because, my friends, this is when I went from a simple girl with passenger princess tendencies to a Bougie Bitch with uppercase Bs. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a nice person. I still teach 8th graders American History, I scrape gum off my carpets, learn all the new teen lingo, and yell MAKE ROOM FOR SANTA when two kids start the weird, slow hug that tweens do. I’ll still fly Southwest to get to Mexico, and EasyJet to get to Munich if I need to. But the fact is that I don’t want to. The process of becoming a Bougie Bitch has been slow. So slow that you may not have even noticed if you weren’t looking for it. But that all came to a head this past week. Let me lay the scene.

For Christmas, MEAB took me to Europe. Why? Because this Bougie Bitch loves Europe and I love Christmas and so he took me on a quick tour of Christmas Markets. We went to London, Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. It was a wonderful trip that culminated in a stay at the Park Hyatt Vienna and some of the most amazing coffee I’ve ever had in my life. We flew Air France home, and had a three hour layover in CDG. Easy right? Should have been. Except…our gate was in the K concourse in 2E. 

There’s nothing wrong with the K concourse. It’s perfectly fine by airport standards. Pretty, brightly lit, easy to access. No problems there. Except when we went to the lounge. The first sign of trouble was when we had to go downstairs to access the lounge. But, it’s fine, no worries. Our legs work, so we checked in and got a seat. That’s where it went off the rails. 

There was a family entirely spread out in one section. Parents, grandparents, small children. Food everywhere, on the floor, on the kids’ faces. They were very loud, and I’m not talking about the children. The grandparents were practically yelling a conversation. The Dad was walking around the lounge with no shoes…it’s a mess. Then, a very drunk guy sits next to us and is just…smelling of alcohol. There’s people milling about coughing over the food, people talking on Facetime without headphones. If the boarding area for Southwest Airlines was turned into a lounge…that’s what this was. 

And that’s when I knew. I didn’t want to be with the other people, I wanted to be in a first class lounge, sipping champagne. Because I’m no longer a simple girl. I’m a Bougie Bitch. 

*disclaimer: Please don’t think less of me, dear reader, I know that what I experience is exceptional and I’m grateful every day to MEAB for providing me with such elegant experiences. I run a silly little blog about historical postcards at myhipstory.com, I’m a history nerd who wears mostly thrifted clothes and still pays out of pocket to buy pencils for my classroom. I just also really like caviar and champagne.* 

Evolution of a P2: Post Bougie Bitch transformation.

Introduction

In one of the weirder developments of 2023, a year full of weird developments, American Express temporarily offered bonuses for downgrading its Membership Rewards earning cards to cheaper variants. It happened in late 2022 as well with the Delta cards too.

These offers have surfaced again in the last couple of weeks, proving that 2024 now officially exists in American Express’s mainframe.

What’s Going On?

The offers appear via targeted link in your online dashboard, via targeted email, or as a retention offer when you chat or call a customer service agent. Because these offers were visible to agents, my assumption in the past was that downgrade offers were an intentional decision by American Express to prevent losing card members who might no longer want a premium card.

My new opinion though is that these aren’t intentional, but rather a periodic bug in American Express’s systems because:

  • Their lifespans don’t match other AmEx offer lifespans (they’re shorter)
  • They’re targeting some members that have had the card for years,
  • They’re targeting members a few months after annual fees were paid
  • The T&C language specifically mentions the word “upgrade”
  • They’re only appearing on personal cards false, thanks to Bork

American Express’s technology stack includes a mix of systems that date back many decades, and I’m sure it’s hard to fully predict the outcome of a change in one part of those systems. I hope it’s obvious that in general that’s a good thing for churners.

How to Play It?

If you get one of these offers, I’d note a few things:

  • To avoid pop-up jail, keep the card open for 12 months after accepting a bonus (but only if you earn the bonus)
  • Earning one of these bonuses won’t put a new card on your credit report or affect 5/24
  • You can stack this bonus with a retention offer, assuming one is available after downgrade

Good luck friends!

American Express’s technology interconnection switchbox.

Introduction

Since 2021 or so, an odd brokerage named Moomoo let crafty churners earn several thousand dollars with relatively convoluted promotions and bonuses, the kind that needed a few pages worth of text or 10 minutes worth of talking to wade through; also known as “A Churner’s Delight.”

Moomoo has now become semi-mainstream, so much so that they’ve appeared on DoC three times this year, with less convoluted promotions to bring more funds into the FinTech which is simultaneously part bank and part brokerage.

Safety

Churners are good at probing the most dank, web ridden, smelly corners of the financial world. They’re often emboldened to do so because they’ve got protections like:

  • CFPB for credit instruments
  • FDIC for deposit account insurance
  • SIPC for brokerage account insurance

For most financial products if everything fails, you’ll get everything you’re owed paid back in full thanks to the above.

FinTech Weirdness

FinTechs lean on the perceived safety to give you confidence in working with them, but as the Synapse shutdown and bankruptcy has shown, just because there’s an FDIC or SIPC insured account somewhere, you’re not necessarily protected in the event of failure. A few nuances that you should know:

Remember, “we keep all your funds in an FDIC insured account” doesn’t necessarily mean that you have any protection. Check the FDIC website to be sure.

Have a nice weekend!

Few know that the original Churner’s Delight recipe came from a cafe in Portland. (Thank to Elaine)

The travel blogosphere is an interesting place: Where else can you find a bunch of people with similar interests talking about discount diapers, free Chik-Fil-A sandwiches, overflowing lavatories, first class lounges with Porsche transfers to your aircraft, and ViaSat internet all in the same regime? Nowhere else, that’s where.

At MEAB I try and focus on things that I think will make a meaningful difference in most readers’ lives. I personally value my time at well above $100 per hour, and I assume that you do as well, that means that I draw a line about which things I’ll post and which I won’t. If something doesn’t feel like it crosses that threshold, or if it’s a stretch to call it travel related, you won’t find it here. Instead you’ll only find (I hope):

  • Things that make you money
  • Things that make you miles
  • Things that maximize your money or miles, specifically related to travel
  • Things that make you laugh, but only in direct relation to the previous points

There’s a threshold for when something is interesting, and 500 points for taking a 10 minute survey is really, really below the value that I place on my own time, and by extension your time.

What’s the point? If you’re wondering why I’m not talking about a particular hotel promotion or a bank bonus that you find on other major sites, it’s probably because I think it doesn’t meet the $100 per hour imaginary line, or that it’s not directly relevant to making money or miles. If I miss something that clearly does cross that threshold, please let me know!

A visual representation of the line.

Opinions lie somewhere on a spectrum in daily life for just about any subject. For example, you’ll find people that tell you the best Mexican food restaurant is Taco Bell, and you’ll of course find plenty of other people with the (correct) opposite opinion. EDITOR’S NOTE: I tried to link to sources for the opposite opinion, but there were so many that it literally broke the internet so I had to revert the links.

In churning, a divisive range of opinions formed about how much sharing is good; all the way from “any sharing will kill any deal” to “everything should be shared so everyone can benefit” and everything in-between. I’ve seen counter examples to sharing absolutism on both ends and I think both viewpoints are wrong. A few examples:

  • “Any sharing will kill any deal”: Obviously this isn’t true. Buying money orders at Walmart has been around since the early 2010s, and buyer’s groups have been around even longer. Both are alive and well despite massive publicity and volume
  • “Everything should be shared so everyone can benefit”: Avianca LifeMiles learned about award chart soft-spots and cabotage through a travel blogger’s DOT complaint and killed plenty of its sweet spots right after; the same thing happened with Emirates redemption on Alaska after too much online press.

There’s a goldilocks zone with most subjective opinions where too much of something is bad, too little of the same thing is bad, but some is just right. What sharing size is right for churning? That depends on the audience’s size, composition, and the topic at hand. If you think I’m not in the goldilocks zone with this blog’s content, please let me know because I’m certain I can always improve.

Tying this back to where we started: While in general the goldilocks zone is somewhere in the middle, sometimes the absolutists on one side are correct: Taco Bell isn’t the best Mexican restaurant (don’t say you never learned valuable life lessons at MEAB).

Exhibit A: A Taco Bell Mexican pizza.

For a quick diversion today, I’ve created a library of free-to-use AI generated images for sensationalist travel blog posts. Feel free to use in any way you see fit, these are public domain and sure to come in handy soon!

Airline tug collides with duck during pushback!

Airline lavatory overflows!

Bedbugs at Lubbock, TX hotel!

Man strips to undergarments for airport security!

Southwest companion pass allows unlimited free travel!

Seatbelt extender breaks mid flight!

Pilot smokes in cockpit and spills coffee on the seat!

The Chase Sapphire Preferred’s biggest ever sign-up bonus ends next month!

Teen Instagram model kicked off of flight for wearing too much makeup!

American Express claws back 93 Membership Rewards!

Cathay Pacific’s amazing business class food spread.

No smoking placard falls off of ceiling mid-flight, pilot saves the day with duct tape!

Herd of goats fly in business class for zoo charter flight!

Senator misses flight, runs out onto tarmac to stop the plane!

Exclusive: Inside look at New York air-route traffic control center’s new janitorial closet!

Kurt Cobain’s estranged daughter plays “Smells like teen spirit” on Spotify for the whole plane!

Disgruntled man secretly cut’s Mr. T’s hair when his hair blocks the in-flight entertainment.

Travel blogger pokes fun at travel bloggers instead of enjoying the beach!

Have a nice day friends!

EDITOR’S NOTE [1]: The feedback I’ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I’ve got a few posts left to publish, but I’m running low. If you’re interested in a guest post, please reach out!

EDITOR’S NOTE [2]: Yes, it’s another DaVinci Code post, sorry not sorry I guess. Stay tuned for a future site rebranding: Miles Earn and Burn, Confusing Beginners Since 2020™.

If you run around any private groups, quasi-private groups, or even reddit.com/r/churning, you probably know that PayPal Bill Pay massacred its targets yesterday. This could matter because:

  • We don’t know how much the app that rhymes with booze was relying on this volume for its ongoing cash-flow, revenue, and profitability. We do know that there was a staggering amount of volume pushed through this channel though, and most of it dried up in a flash. Is this an issue? I have no idea, but it’s another good time to re-evaluate your risk assessment and tolerance with the platform.
  • Anything that still works on PayPal Bill Pay will probably see a huge increase in volume as players shift toward what works, ultimately causing those things to die more quickly too (probably).
  • We’re likely entering a new era of discovery in manufactured spend, so research and networking is likely to be more fruitful for the next month or two than normal while we search for the next big thing.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, this still matters to you because this is a great opportunity to read between the lines and learn about what’s worked in the past; the object lessons here are lucrative and that knowledge will almost certainly help you in the future.

Happy Thursday!

Work in progress: The app that rhymes with booze’s logo, but in ripples.

One of the tenets of common sense that transcends travel hacking, miles and points, and churning is “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is“. To an untrained eye, it’s good advice and will probably keep you out of a tight spot.

If however you’re skilled in a particular field, the general advice can fall flat on its face and hold you back. In travel hacking and churning, there are currently and there have been plenty of examples that you’d miss out on if you thought they were too good to be true, like:

– Earning 24% back when buying Visa gift cards at home
– Earning tens of millions of Delta SkyMiles for buying money orders with a real bank debit card
– Getting enough cash to buy a new Subaru for adding employees to your account
– Paying a credit card’s bill with another credit card
– Flying to Europe in business class for 15,000 miles
– Buying airline miles at or below 0.5 cents a piece, in seemingly unlimited quantities
– Getting millions of AA miles with rapid card churning without paying annual fees

So, don’t let the idea of too good to be true prevent you from running a few tests when you’re a subject matter expert, instead, protect yourself and always be probing. Also, try not to visibly wince like I do when someone says “if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is”, it’s bad form.

Frat boy Chad said that Flamin’ Hot Cheeto cheeseburgers were too good to be true, and this, err, exists.