– $250 off of $1,800+ with Virgin Atlantic through March 30 – $100 off of $500+ with Marriott through March 31 – $250 off of $1,000+ with Marriott Homes & Villas through April 13
Gamers gonna game, but family Virgin Atlantic Business redemptions gonna tax.
– 1x at Food Lion through February 28 for a single purchase, the cap is variable – 1x at Staples through January 31 for two purchases, the cap is variable
SimplyMiles works with any Mastercard, not just AA cards.
Each has economy tickets at 15,000 miles each way between the US and Europe, and I was able to find a few 50,000 mile Business class redemptions between those cities and secondary European cities, but the availability is about as rare as recovering stolen meat in Cupertino, CA.
Pictured without further comment: Police recover stolen meat.
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 hilarious demi-whale with a penchant for writing, irieriley for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1! If you’re interested in writing a guest post, please reach out!
If you’ve managed to find your way to this little corner of the Internet full of award hackers, manufactured spenders, degenerate gamblers, and various other scallywags, chances are you’re drinking from an uninterrupted firehose of information.
There is just so much content and media to consume (and that was even true before the era of AI slop), even in the churning space, that it can be difficult to stay on top of what’s going on.
Between public blogs, private groups, reddit, neverending Doctor of Credit comments sections and hundreds of pages of Flyertalk discussion on the proper Maldives soundtrack when flying to Conrad Rangali, it’s impossible to read everything.
I don’t think you should, either. If you only get your share of churning news from one source, you’re in the right place. Matt is very good at getting the point across succinctly (unfortunately, I am not), and understanding some references here requires reading between the lines. Some of the plays shared here and elsewhere aren’t spelled out 100%, whether for brevity, sensitivity, or both.
Due to this (and the general deluge of noise in the space), you likely find yourself skipping past posts and comments talking about cards you don’t have, airlines you don’t fly, and plays you aren’t playing.
In some cases, that makes sense. I care much less about Kroger than someone in Ohio. But when there isn’t a clear geographic or similar barrier to something, you’re likely making a mistake by not taking the time to understand the play. And sometimes, even geography doesn’t matter – as long as you “live, work, or worship here”.
Pictured: Vincent “irieriley” Adultman explaining his local business to a CSR at a credit union in Twin Falls, Idaho
Things change really fast in manufactured spending, and some of the most profitable things don’t last long*. The amount of plays I decided to ignore over the years because I wasn’t already doing it are up there with my penchant for calling my very-not suave self “Rico Suave” in high school in the annals of irieriley’s regrets.
While I believe you should do your best to understand an angle, there are definitely levels to it. If the DQ thread on reddit is delving into a trivial change to an Amex coupon benefit or Doctor of Credit comments are discussing free Hawaiian BBQ sauce, you can probably safely skip learning more, unless you really like Audible (or BBQ sauce).
But if you’re in a smaller community and someone is discussing the intricacies of how to complete a fuel dump mistake fare or how a new fintech fits into a liquidation strategy and you don’t understand the conversation, you should be trying to figure out why.
It may not even be a conversation – it could be an observation that you make yourself as part of probing and think to yourself why on earth does this need to be spelled out as company policy?
Some examples of things I’d probably want to look deeper into if I came across them and didn’t understand them:
Why, oh why is MEAB’s favorite credit card a Sears store card?
Why does a cash back fintech not pay out on certain vendors? And for that matter, why do they not pay out on a subscription to a churning podcast?
Why does the Android app store say everyone who downloaded a different fintech’s app downloaded the app of a random credit union in Lubbock?
Why are people talking so much about the timeframe for the 35% rebate on cash business fares booked with MRs via an Amex Business Platinum? I thought transferring was always the best value?
Why does the new group I’ve joined talk so much about Costco gold?
It might not necessarily even be some big, hidden secret. If the blogosphere is to be believed, the slowdown on Amex NLL offers and continued prevalence of pop-up jail was probably one of the biggest negative trends of the year for the hobby.
But I’d argue that the most negative news of the year, especially for our friendly cetacean population, is the cap on Schwab cash out and subsequent cap on 4x dining MR points on the Amex Personal Gold. There’s not much to parse through here – no need for a SUB when you’re a whale that’s gonna whale.
Ultimately, it’s up to you how much time you want to spend on this hobby. It can be like a full time job, but with the right knowledge, it can pay like one too. Sharing finds and data points and making friends in the community can go a long way towards finding your like-minded group of maximizers.
– ireriley
Pictured: a whale with a mentee regaling on the days when you could cash out $50k $44k of Membership Rewards points per week. No, I don’t know why it has both legs and a tail, and yes, I am extremely afraid of it.
*Footnote: While I am advocating for you to put more effort into understanding plays, I am not advocating for you jumping into a new play without doing your due diligence and assessing your personal risk tolerance. I regret missing a lot of plays, but I don’t regret missing Hardbody, The Plastic Merchant, etc.
This card is useful beyond the sign-up bonus because it can eventually be product changed into the AAdvantage Silver card, but only after a year thanks to the CARD act.
– Link your credit cards to Dosh – Buy in even multiples of $300 – Look for lower fee variants if you know how to liquidate them
These are Pathward gift cards.
Chase Ultimate Rewards has a heightened redemption for Apple products at a rate of 1.5 cents per point for the Sapphire Reserve or 1.25 cents per point for the Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred cards (or less on other, stupider cards). The promotion runs through the end of November.
These rates beat regular Pay-Yourself-Back rates, especially if you’re in the reselling game.
There are two small business merchant processing sign-up bonuses:
Since we’re MEABers around here, let’s caution a few items: (1) running more than a few gift cards will almost certainly get your account shut down and banned from the processor which could have repercussions on future real businesses; (2) running your own credit cards will almost certainly get your credit cards shut down, sometimes even same-day with banks like AmEx; and (3) you’ll get a 1099 for payments processed. So always be probing, but know when a fence is electrified too, and this one is.
My advice is to keep these accounts completely above board if you’re going for the bonus. If you don’t have a real business for merchant processing, consider selling a few things on Facebook Marketplace. Combine with the previous item for extra #flair.
You can pair this with the Citi AA Personal card’s 75,000 AAdvantage miles after $3,500 spend in four months which also has the annual fee waived for the first year, just space out the applications by eight days or one will be automatically denied.
– No more reciprocal earning on paid flights or stays – Exchange AA miles for Hyatt certificates after several Loyalty Points thresholds – Choose Hyatt certificates as a Loyalty Point Reward at some thresholds (this is a bad value) – Exchange Hyatt Milestone Rewards for AA seat coupons or status – Hyatt elites can redeem points for “status for a day” with AA (this is also a bad value)
We don’t know what the conversion rates look like yet for exchanging miles, but we do know what the redemptions for threshold rewards and status for a day look like, and they’re terrible. Don’t let the hype machine get you excited over this. UPDATE: Gary at VFTW let me know that we do know that redemptions for Category 1-4 certificates will start at 25,000 AA miles, and redemptions for Category 1-7 certificates will start at 65,000 AA miles.
– 5 carriers: 10,000 bonus miles – 10 carriers: 100,000 bonus miles – 15 carriers: 1,000,000 bonus miles
There are 21 (or 20 minus Aeroflot) SkyTeam carriers. I believe it’s possible to do this at an approximate cost of $75 per ticket if you’re very flexible and able to sandwich it in-between other flights you’ve already got on the books, putting the lower minimum cost at approximately $1,125. If you’re less flexible or don’t have additional travel that you can piggyback on, you’re probably looking at $5,000 in tickets to pull this off. The SAS Eurobonus chart is quite good on SAS metal to Europe at 50,000 miles in business, and it’s reasonable-ish for partner awards. One million miles would be worth 20 business class one-way flights on SAS metal, so there’s utility for gamers.
Alanis Morissette called and told me that one of the most valuable airline currencies, AirCanada Aeroplan, teamed up with one of the least valuable hotel currencies, Marriott Bonvoy. Under the partnership, you can match status between two programs:
– Premium Signature Visa: 80,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months, $89 annual fee – Rewards Signature Visa: 40,000 points after $1,500 spend in three months, $49 annual fee
Both of these sign up bonuses say “up to” and that your bonus will appear before you submit your application, so double check that they haven’t tried to #bonvoy you during the sign-up flow. Speaking of Bonvoy, how do Best Western points values compare? Well, two things: (1) They’re worth 10-20% more than Bonvoy points, and (2) you’re staying at a Best Western, so discount as appropriate.
The American Express Hilton cards have increased sign-up bonuses, and they’re available via referral so go that route before using any public link, and yes it’s ok for P1 to refer P2:
– Business: 175,000 Hilton points after $8,000 spend in six months – Aspire: 175,000 Hilton points after $6,000 spend in six months – Surpass: 165,000 Hilton points after $3,000 spend in six months – Honors: 100,000 Hilton points after $2,000 spend in six months
Sometimes these offers appear with free-night certificates too but not this time. Also, remember “to get out of PUJ use BBT”.
– 40,000 points after $3,000 spend in 90 days – Upgrade certificates or other rewards after $15,000 and $30,000 annual spend – 2x at dining and grocery, and other less fun categories – $99 annual fee
In the current state of the rewards landscape, Synchrony cards are slightly preferable to many other issuers, which makes this card worthwhile for me even though it’s a personal card.
Giant Foods, Giant (which is the same-ish but different), Martins, and Stop & Shop stores have 10x points on Home Depot gift cards through Thursday of next week, limit $2,000 per rewards account. (Thanks to GCG)
Chase Offers and BankAmeriDeals have 10% back at Sheraton Hotels, W Hotels, and TownPlace Suite hotels on between $100 and $570 in spend with various expiration dates.
– Membership Rewards will be able to be converted to Alaska MilagePlan via HawaiianMiles – The Hawaiian co-branded Barclays cards are more valuable than they used to be
I wouldn’t transfer Membership Rewards to Hawaiian miles for the conversion yet because there’s no bonus and you won’t win any prizes for transferring early.
Apparently the Pepper gift card platform’s merchant categorization is now back to normal, and yesterday’s post was all a giant lie. We’re all free to earn 4x Membership Rewards through our gift card games.
After this debacle I wouldn’t believe anything you see on this site again personally.
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.
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.
