Category: MS Hints

Background

Loops in churning are powerful because you can stack earnings as a dollar flows from a credit card, to a FinTech, to another, to yet another, and eventually (hopefully) back to your bank account to pay off your credit card. Instead of earning 3x on a single purchase, a loop might push the net earnings on that purchase well above 3x.

But if it’s good once, isn’t it better multiple times? Yes, but as you scale those loops across multiple cards, multiple players, and multiple charges in flight, tracking becomes a non-trivial load. Imagine keeping track of the following every day, knowing that any step in the chain might have a failure that needs manual intervention:

  • Buy a $499.51 sportsbook gift card
  • Load the sportsbook gift card into a FinTech account intermediary
  • Load the FinTech account’s funds into a sportsbook
  • Play through at least $499.51 in funds
  • Withdraw the $499.51±(profit/loss) into a FinTech’s rewards account
  • Use the FinTech’s platform to pay your credit card

Great! Now do that again 10 times per player, for 15 players, each with different initial gift card amounts for tracking, every day. Also, don’t forget to run your other plays that aren’t sportsbook related for the day too. Finally make sure you haven’t lost something along the way; I hope you’re good at Excel, Beancount, SQL, or something else to track it.

The Brick Wall

Some of the best churners I’ve met eventually take a few months or more off because tracking takes time, dealing with sludge when something goes wrong takes time, frozen accounts take time, and in net the mental load can push them to hit a brick wall and burnout.

Once you’ve burned out and stop manufactured spend, you earn exactly $0 per day, $0 per week, and since America Loves Math™, $0 per month too.

The Lesson

A loop can turn 3x earning into 6x, but too much looping and tracking can eventually turn into burnout which earns 0x. So, don’t forget simplicity and don’t be afraid to skip most of the steps in a loop to keep yourself sane when the world comes running at you.

Happy Wednesday!

Counterpoint: Sometimes brick walls are fake.

A balancing act that we frequently face in manufactured spend and churning is knowing how hard to hit a deal. If you push it too hard, you may kill it in days. If you don’t hit it hard enough, you’re leaving money on the table – potentially a lot.

What’s the magic behind how hard you should hit a deal and when you should back off? In my mind it comes back to two fundamental questions:

  • Who’s paying for your earnings?
  • What metrics, compliance, and regulations are important to them?

If you can answer those two questions then you’ve got a guide for how much abuse a deal will tolerate. If, for example, you’re dealing with a small, local casino’s loyalty program that’s relentlessly focused on bringing in gamblers, you can bet that they’ll know pretty quickly if they start paying out a ton of rewards due to your shenanigans. So, I’d treat such a thing as a short, surgical strike and try and run the deal low and slow over months or years.

On the other hand, if you’re dealing with a dinosaur bank that has disconnected legacy systems and trillions of dollars in assets, your debit card funding would probably have to get well into seven or eight figures before it showed up as a blip on anyone’s KPI dashboard, and on top of that they’d have to be curious enough when they see it to dig in and figure out what’s going on. So, this one is a probably a pedal to the metal play, understanding that time and not volume will probably make the deal die.

So, an unsolicited suggestion: When you encounter a new deal, think about who is paying for it and what their regulations are as a guidepost.

Good luck!

Sample bank KPI shenanigan finder.

Some new second and third tier credit cards have recently bounced, and often these are where the fun and real profit in the churning space lies. (Especially because payment services often work better with non-major cards.)

  1. The Bank of America Sonesta World Mastercard has a heightened sign-up bonus. This one’s vitals:

    – $0 annual fee for the first year, $75 annual fee afterward
    – 150,000 point sign-up bonus after $7,500 spend (tiered)
    – 2x earn on dining and other noise

    I’m guessing most of you aren’t familiar with Sonesta Hotels or their points program. They’ve got some rather nice properties, but they’ve also got a few infamous properties like Red Lion and America’s Best Value Inn. Their points are generally worth 1-2 cents each depending on the redemption, and redemptions vary between 10,000 points and 60,000 points with the vast majority of properties at or below 30,000 points.
  2. The Credit One Bank Wander American Express card launched. Its vitals:

    – $95 annual fee
    – No sign-up bonus
    – 5x on dining, gas, and other noise

    Points are worth a fixed 1.0 cents each, and can be redeemed in batches of 1,000.
  3. The Synchrony Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard waitlist opened yesterday. There’s no listed special bonus for signing up for the waitlist, but I don’t see how it could hurt to join (famous last words). The card’s vitals:

    – $99 annual fee
    – 40,000 point sign-up bonus with $3,000 spend in 90 days
    – 3x earn on Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Hotels, and Virgin Voyages
    – 2x on gas, grocery, EV charging, and other noise
    – $15,000 and $30,000 annual spend rewards (companion certificate, hotel night, and other noise)

    It earns Virgin Red points which can be freely transferred to Virgin Atlantic miles. You can also earn up to 50 Virgin Tier Points monthly allows you to reach Silver status on spend alone. (Thanks to DDG)
  4. In May, Wells Fargo launched the Signify Business Mastercard and I missed writing about it, but it’s a nice base hit with Wells Fargo becoming more relevant nearly every day. This one’s stats:

    – $0 annual fee
    – $500 sign-up bonus after $5,000 spend in three months
    – 2% cash back earning everywhere

Now, what’s Visa up to lately? There’s probably a lot at your local mid-sized credit union!

You’re supposed to have a portrait of someone who definitely knows what they’re talking about when you link to credit cards in a blog, right? MEAB FTW.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third-party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running through August 6. As usual, Amazon gift cards are excluded because I guess they want to encourage reselling of other, higher rate brands.

    Bulk resale rates are creeping back up to previous highs now that Pepper rewards nerfed its rewards earning structure, right when we were getting used to the new world order.
  2. Today is Bilt’s rent day, and:

    – It’s the second to last time that awards earn double points on up to $10,000 in spend; on October 1 it’ll be limited to $1,000
    – You get a free second guest and some free booze on Virgin Voyage cruises booked through Bilt today

    I suppose we now know more about Richard Kerr’s tweet’s meaning last month, and I guess we also learned that maybe he’s experiencing an off-by-one error.
  3. American Express has new targeted offers for adding employee cards online at the generic links. (If you get offer not available, put the card on a different login and/or periodically refresh the page and it may become available.) Each is for 15,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 spend, limit five per card:

    – Business Gold (POID K4IY:9869)
    – Business Platinum (POID K4IY:9870)
    – Blue Business Plus (POID K4IY:9867)

    These have all been confirmed to post even with other K4IY offers. There’s language in the offer’s terms and conditions that says you may have bonus points clawed back if you close the primary or employee cards within a year. I’m not aware of that ever being enforced in practice though.

Preview: Bilt’s next devaluation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been out of the country for a couple of weeks, but I’m now back. I tried to keep up on responding but fell woefully behind. I’ll do my best to catch-up by the end of the week though.

  1. Do this now: Check for 20,000 bonus Membership Rewards for enrolling your American Express charge cards (Green, Gold, or Platinum) into Pay Over Time. Then, set a reminder to shut off Pay Over time in 121 days.

    If you get the bonus offer on multiple cards, consider activating them in separate tabs as simultaneously as possible because reasons.
  2. Do this now: Add all of your Chase Sapphire and Freedom cards to your Instacart account for free Instacart+ membership, each card adds more time, and you use the same landing page each time too. You won’t be able to do this after tomorrow.
  3. Rakuten In-Store has 1-3x Membership Rewards or 1-3% cash back at Lowe’s with a linked card. Goose the offer with the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card’s monthly home improvement credit too.

    The terms say this doesn’t work with gift cards, but we all know that’s probably not true because reasons.
  4. OfficeDepot / Office Max stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Buy even multiples of $300

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  5. Hilton for Business members earn double elite night credits for both business and leisure stays through the end of 2024. You can register for Hilton for Business and link your accounts here if you haven’t already done so. (Thanks to LoyaltyLobby)
  6. The American Express Business Gold card has a 200,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus after $15,000 in spend available by referrals only. Different cards from the referrer can have different bonuses, so check them all because reasons.

Commemorative summer coffee mug; presented because reasons.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Mastercard has new mid-month targeted spending offers for online spend:

    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $1,000
    – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $1,000
    – $30 statement credit after $500
    – $50 statement credit after $750
    – $70 statement credit after $1,000

    These offers stack with other ongoing offers leading to $350+ in statement credits monthly for many. Sure the sign-up bonus sucks, but that’s not what this card is about. If only giftcards.com, this offer, and the next news item could form some kind of holy trifecta. (Thanks to Justin O, Dave 37, and birt)
  2. Two airline portals have back-to-school shopping portal bonuses for cumulative spend through August 12, which is an extremely long time for a shopping portal.

    – Southwest Rapid Rewards : 2,000 miles after $500 spend
    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 2,500 miles after $600 spend

    Likely Alaska and American will have similar bonuses later this week, and Delta won’t because they don’t believe in holy trifectas (according to sources that I just made up).
  3. American Express Offers has several new airline offers:

    – 30,000 Membership Rewards with $2,000+ spend at ITA Airways through September 30
    – $300 statement credit with $2,000+ spend at Virgin Atlantic through September 16

    Normally these are semi-gameable, but ITA is particularly hard to deal with so caveat emptor. (Thanks to Connor and DoC)
  4. The Chase IHG Premier One Business card has a heightened sign-up bonus of 200,000 points after $9,000 spend in six months, and the $99 annual fee is not waived for the first year. The card also gives $50 in United Travel Bank credit annually, so I’d consider that part of the sign-up bonus too.

    We talked about an IHG devaluation last week and now that the dust has settled, the point value should probably be taken as somewhere between 0.45 cpp and 0.85 cpp, or even more if you have the IHG Select card for it’s 10% rebate and you book flexible rates.

Have a nice Tuesday!

The other holy trifecta.

Manufactured spend, churning, and travel hacking are often hidden behind a veil of coded words and language, and whether or not that’s necessary is a subject for another time. Often the coding isn’t direct words, but rather what isn’t being said. That is, sometimes to find the weiner hiding between two sides of a hot-dug bun (you’re welcome Chad), we need to read between the lines.

Yesterday, an almost perfect, chef’s kiss example of reading between the lines graced churners. And, as if that weren’t enough, it came from a prior churning gamer turned gamee. (In case the post is deleted, I’ve archived an image for future generations):

I’ve never seen a more perfect and succinct object lesson. I mean, this is college textbook, honorary PhD, commemorative gold-leaf plaque level, but I digress.

There are at least two sides to explore this post from:

  • If you know exactly what this post is talking about: Try and view it through the lens of someone who doesn’t, and ask questions like, “what sticks out about this post?” and “What might help you recognize posts like this in the future when you might not know it’s talking about?” The better you answer those questions, the more effective you’ll be in the future.
  • If you don’t know what this is about: There are a few weird things about this post. To help with what those might be, some friendly redditors ask questions and make probably incorrect assumptions based on those questions. Do their answers make sense? What happens if you explore a little, do those explorations line up with those answers? Also, what do twitter X users have to say? Finally, who is this guy?

Good luck, and happy Tuesday! Also, sorry not sorry for another “so-cryptic-that-no-one-can-understand” MEAB post.

PS: I like Richard, he’s a decent guy and I don’t think he deserves the bad rap he gets. We need to separate the gaffe from the human on this one.

A churner consults the MEAB decoder book, unsuccessfully.

  1. Do this now: Register for Q3 credit card bonus categories, for spend between July 1 and September 30:

    – Discover IT: 5% back at Walmart and grocery stores, up to $1,500 spend
    – Citi Dividend: 5x on gas, up to $6,000 spend annually
    – US Bank Cash+: Select 5% and 2% categories, up to $2,000 spend on 5%
    – Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex: 5x on gas, EV charging, live entertainment, and movie theaters, up to $1,500

    Q3 is full of soft-balls for hitting spend, both for online floosie spenders and for in-person spenders. Take the Speedway to Walmart Neighborhood Market for the quickest route on the latter.
  2. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to Air Canada’s Aeroplan program through July 31. This is a good bonus if you’re booking Star Alliance awards, but like a seasoned manufactured spender views deals worth less than $100, it feels a bit 🤏 compared to the recent Bilt 150% transfer bonus.
  3. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, alternatively named the “5% of a lawyer’s annual salary in bonuses” card, sent mid-month spending bonuses on Saturday. We’ve seen:

    – 200,000 points after $750 in online spend
    – $50 statement credit after $750 in online spend
    – $70 statement credit after $1,000 in online spend

    For the first time since last June, I didn’t receive a mid-month spend bonus, so I’m officially declaring a nationwide state of June-gloom. (Thanks to MS Ninja, birt, and Adam)
  4. Most American Express Delta cards have increased sign-up bonuses that are at a relatively local maxima, but the bonus is still not amazing compared to historical versions so they haven’t shown up here. However, one card bucks the trend:

    The American Express Delta Gold has a $500 statement credit and 40,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in three months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year offer that shows up during on the checkout page of a (dummy) flight booking. In this case, it’s probably an all-time best bonus, but unfortunately it’s not available via referrals and I doubt it’ll show up there too. (Thanks to AbjectRaise)
  5. The Barclays AAdvantage Aviator card has a 70,000 AA mile bonus after making a single purchase and paying the $99 annual fee payment in the first 90 days.

    There’s also a targeted 60,000 miles + 10,000 miles for the referred and an additional 10,000 miles for the referrer offer floating around for those operating in Mario+Luigi (two player) mode. (Thanks to DDG)

MEAB pouts.