Category: Status

EDITOR’S NOTE: Special thanks to John from BABC for putting together this guest post during the holiday season last year, and special jeers to Matt from MEAB that it’s April now.

I am a High School math teacher who not only participates in churning credit cards, bank accounts, gift cards, brokerage accounts, college tuition grants (I received a free master’s degree in education along with a free car back in 2019 from that endeavor), and pretty much anything else. I am also a tour guide of the many Churning Adventures in this fun and profitable game via my YouTube Channel. Every year, I spend an entire year making a single YouTube video where I attempt to document every single bonus I collect from January to December of that year. Usually, there are so many that I forget to document every single one. My annual goal from when I started in this fun and profitable goal back in 2017 is $10,000 from opening up new accounts. This past year, 2024, was my best yet as I made well over 3x that and after thinking about a few bonuses I didn’t include… it was actually, almost 4x that goal!

This post is not to brag. I document the profitable plays with videos 3x a week, so you can also participate if you choose to do so. I don’t pay out the bonuses, and I don’t make up the rules to get the bonuses… as I said, I’m just a tour guide for these Churning Adventures. Some of the manufactured spenders reading this would simply laugh at “rookie numbers,” while others would be impressed… others would travel to the Marriott in Lubbock, TX, just to step on a rake in the lobby and call it just another day, as business as usual.

I wanted to discuss in this post why this is a profitable game? Why are there so many opportunities to more often than not just sit at home on your couch or at a desktop, press a few buttons, and make more money appear in your bank account than actually getting dressed up, fighting traffic, and teaching a full day at a public high school? This process took me about 6 minutes today, from a single bonus to make more in churning than I would in a 10-hour day of being a high school math teacher. (I drive about an hour each way and spend my contract hours of 7 A.M. – 3 P.M. at that place with those people) That’s where the 10-hour figure came from, but I usually stay later as I refuse to take my teaching work home. I am also a member of the FIRE community and do plan on reaching my early retirement in 2-4 years, and just churn full-time and collect weekly dividends from high-yield ETFs… God Willing.

The answer to profitability and why people get paid is a simple one that is sadly not taught in our public schools. I know because at the beginning of each semester in the 13 years that I have been a teacher, I ask my students the simple question, “Why do people get paid?”. Of the thousands of students who have sat in my classroom in 13 years and counting, nobody has managed to answer the correct answer to that question when I first asked it. I shame our public education system by saying to my students, “Wow, from kindergarten to 12th grade… nobody can correctly answer this simple yet profound question that will impact you for the rest of your life, why do people get paid?”

I would get the standard response, “People get paid for working… DUH!” and I would follow up with, “Well, what does work produce? EVERYONE gets paid for the EXACT same reason… they don’t get paid the same amount but for the EXACT same reason,” and then, I get greeted by confusion and silence. I would also hear, “People get paid because they have bills.” Then I would follow up and say, “If I’m looking to hire an accountant for my business, would I ask the applicants, ‘Who has the most bills?” as that would produce the most qualified person… right? If you get paid to pay bills, then the person who has the most debt and bills would be the most qualified. Then my students would say that makes no sense. Then the consensus would be “I don’t know why people get paid”.

I would ask my students which profession makes a lot of money? One student would typically say that doctors make a lot of money. I would ask my class, “Who would just go up to a random doctor and hand them $1,000? Doctors are supposed to make a lot of money, right?” Everyone would just look at me, confused. I would follow this up with, well, what if you had a broken arm? You would gladly hand a doctor $1,000, right? The students would say, “Of course”. I would say, “What is the difference?” Well, the broken arm… What is the broken arm?

The Broken arm is a problem. It’s a big problem. If your car breaks down, who do you call? Someone to fix that problem… If your air conditioner stops blowing cold air, who do you call? Someone to fix that problem. (Interesting fact, Houston, not Lubbock, is the most air-conditioned city in the world) People get paid to solve problems. If you solve little problems, then you will get paid a little money. If you solve bigger problems, then you will make bigger money. That is why people get paid. That is why everyone gets paid… to solve problems. No matter if you are a teacher, a doctor, or a churner. It just so happens that EVERY single problem is a math problem, and that math class is the most important class you can take in your life.

This is how we need to look at life and churning. What problems do the banks have? They need new customers and are willing to pay very nicely to get them… funny enough, it doesn’t matter if you are a new customer or a repeat new customer, you will get paid out the same. Banks also need money to lend out so they can make interest from customers.

The average person who buys a $300,000 home and stays there for 30 years and doesn’t pay anything extra on their mortgage will end up paying about $700,000 for that house… that’s why banks pay pretty much nothing as far as interest goes on checking accounts and demand you keep a certain amount in your account that pays no interest or you get a fee, and banks get their product for free.

Last year, I made over $31,000 by opening up new accounts and solving the problem of needing new customers for banks and credit unions, and brokerages that need new customers and are willing to pay us for it… Join me in solving the fun and profitable problems that only churners and MSers can solve to make this the most profitable 2026!

– John from BABC

I have no idea what problem this duck solves

  1. Ford launched a new Comenity issued Visa. It looks great until you see that Ford Rewards points are worth only 0.5 cents each toward the purchase of a new car, after which it looks just ok. The vitals:

    – No annual-fee
    – 15,000 point ($75) sign-up bonus
    – 6x (3%) back on grocery, gas, restaurants, EV charging, insurance, tolls, and parking
    – 2x (1%) for other purchases

    It’s not unheard of for a churner to use an auto-manufacturer card to churn a car, but this one would be a lot of time at your favorite Kroger, Speedway, or similar to end up with a Ford. The fact that it’s a Comenity card could change the calculus.
  2. GiftCards.com has a promotion for a $10 GiftCards.com gift card with a $100 Visa or Mastercard gift card through tomorrow night using promo code SPDBOGO. This is limited to three per account, but players don’t let that stop them.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  3. MGM Rewards has a free 90 day status match and challenge to keep status through January 2028. Match status by the end of June, and retain status after 90 days with either 50,000 Tier Credits for Gold or 150,000 Tier Credits for Platinum.

    For those mathing at home, 50,000 Tier Points is a breeze to earn with only *checks notes, furrows brow* $12,500 in spend. *sigh*

Happy Thursday!

Good news: It’s not against the rules to buy a kids Ford and say you churned a car, I checked.

  1. There’s a unique sign-up bonus for the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card (the $95 annual fee version for those keeping track at home):

    – 50,000 Bonvoy points after $3,000 spend in three months
    – $400 Marriott egift card instantly on approval

    You’ll also get 2x$50 statement credits after spending $500 in airline purchases (1x in the first half and 1x in the second half of the year).
  2. Staples.com has fee-free Visa egift cards, limit five per account, four per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  3. American Express Delta Stays gamers are going through a bit of a rough patch, or at least that’s what my robot overlord translators told me in the most broken English they could muster. The action here? Be trickier if you’re going to play tricks.
  4. The Lufthansa Miles & More program has a new status match for ITA Airways, British Airways, and Iberia elites, with status lasting through the end of February 2027. USA based addresses are included in this one too.

    The match is free for ITA elites, or €99 for the others. The match doesn’t include HON Circle, but you can match to Senator which gives Star Alliance Gold for United Club access even when flying domestically. There’s a joke in here about cheese cubes, but I’m going to leave that as an exercise to the reader.

Have a nice Tuesday friends!

My translation robot in action.

MEABNOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 15 and December 31, at least none from me. We may have guest posts during that period, but that depends on you sending me some. On January 1(ish), we’ll celebrate with the 2025 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs.

One of the common refrains in manufactured spending and churning circles over the last six months goes something like:

“2025 was the worst year of churning since Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in 1914.”

In my opinion the reference is rather oddly specific and a tad on the nose, but churners are a special breed so I’ll let it slide. Anyway, in 2025 we saw:

  • The birth of Chase pop-ups
  • The floosie adjacent deaths of Community, Synchrony, and some American Express
  • Citi 6x dining comas
  • Numerous airline and hotel devaluations
  • A gutting of the value of some bank points
  • Capacity controls on bonus categories at many major issuers
  • Other unmentionable control tightening
  • A preview of January 2026 Citi badness

Look, that all sucks for sure, but it brings me to my general feelings about churning in the last decade. Specifically:

  • Plays that aren’t “where the masses are” bring better results on average
  • Volume eventually kills everything, but this is especially true in aggregate
  • When the unwashed masses punch-out, new opportunities arise
  • Pivoting to new angles makes changes profitable again
  • Always be probing

2025 brought plenty of bad changes, but it also opened new opportunities to be sure. If you feel like you haven’t seen those new opportunities, get out there and pound the pavement! Also because I want you to learn something in this post, platypuses do indeed have stomachs, take that 1989!

Have a nice holiday season friends, and send guest posts over, please!

Alec finally delivers the next line after “Always be probing“, but in onomatopoeia form.

  1. Swagbucks and SoFi have a $505+$300 new account sign-up bonus, requiring $400 in direct deposits within 40 days.

    SoFi accounts are churnable and Swagbucks has a referral bonus so use another player or a friend’s referral link.
  2. The Citi ThankYou Mastercard, the card issued to replace Citi Shop Your Way Mastercards, sent out targeted offers over the weekend, continuing in its predecessor’s path:

    – $75 off of $750+ in online spend through December 14
    – $100 off of $1,000+ in online spend through December 14

    You can’t currently apply for this card as far as I can tell, but there is hidden code on the dashboard with an application link. It’s probably vestigial, but there’s a 🤏 chance that you’ll be able to apply in the future.
  3. Chase Offers has approximately a dozen new card linked offers for Marriott brands, they’re all some variation of 10%-15% back on on up to $270-$750 in spend through December 31.
  4. United devalued the redemption cost of saver rewards within T-14 days, it’s unclear how wide spread the devaluation is, but redemptions in the continental United States seem uniformly worse.
  5. American Express now requires social security numbers at application time for personal authorized user cards. I confirmed the news on my accounts, but I can tell you that they’re still not once in a lifetime. Also, business employee cards are still “same as it ever was, same as it ever was, … water dissolving, and water removing” though (sorry about the ear-worm).
  6. Articles were everywhere because it was great content-monster food, but I’ll try and keep it as short as possible here so you don’t waste your time elsewhere:

    Hilton added a new Diamond Reserve tier that requires $18,000 of qualifying spend at Hilton properties with 40 stays or 80 nights, there’s currently no other way into it. They also lowered the requirements for other tiers slightly, but credit card jockeys need not care. The benefits for the Diamond Reserve tier are lukewarm at best (automatic 4PM late checkout, a suite upgrade certificate, a concierge, and premium club access at the ~10 properties that offer it.)

Happy Wednesday!

A different kind of credit card jockey.

  1. The Capital One VentureX business card has a better offer than we discussed yesterday when working through a business relationship manager (a small business banker). The offer is still tiered:

    – 150,000 miles with $30,000 spend three months
    – 250,000 miles with $300,000 spend in six months

    Putting the two together with the base spend of 2x means 3.33 miles per dollar on $300,000 spend which is honestly great for people in their “$300k spend? 🤏!” era. If you don’t have a business relationship manager, call your closest Capital One branch and ask to be connected to one. (Thanks to urgetopurge)
  2. Frontier Airlines, the airline that left their cookie era more than a decade ago, has a Gold status match for any Southwest Rapid Rewards member with or without Southwest elite status. The match costs, $40 and lasts through the end of 2025; and is probably cheaper than a single carry-on bag fee with Frontier; so call it bag fee arbitrage.

Churning eras in concert.

Major US Airlines are all targeting Southwest elites with extremely generous “twist-the-knife while they’re dying” style status matches, and that means you’ve got a unique opportunity for manufacturing a ton of airline status with a single swing. Let’s start with earning A-List Preferred using a Chase Southwest credit card:

  • $5,000 spent = 1,500 tier points
  • 35,000 tier points = A-List
  • 70,000 tier points = A-List Preferred

In post-mathematics words, $230,000 in real or manufactured spend takes you from zero to A-List Preferred, or if you’re an underachiever $115,000 spend takes you from zero to A-List. Now, once you’ve got that status, combine with:

So, for $230,000 in manufactured spend you can hold status with all of the top five US airlines and also status in every major airline alliance in the world, MEAB style.

Happy hunting!

Next time: taking it to the next level.

The Pepper gift card reselling platform, the current mass market frontrunner in the race to move funds from venture capitalist bank accounts to your wallet, has a few newsworthy updates:

  • They got a loan last week, and they did the most Pepper thing possible when filing: The CEO’s name is spelled wrong. (This is probably a bridge loan, VC funding definitely doesn’t look like this)
  • Yesterday, they offered (with most of the cash back coming in a couple of weeks):
    • Unlimited Amazon gift cards at 25% off
    • Walmart gift cards at 24% off, up to $1,500 per account
    • HomeDepot gift cards at 22% off, up to $3,000 per account

I think it’s clear that Pepper is eating most of the cost on these offerings, which could lead you to a few conclusions:

  • They might be trying to pump sales in anticipation of funding hurdles and are fiscally fine
  • They might be trying to make payroll and are fiscally almost dead
  • They’re just benevolent and like giving away money, but they have plenty of it

One of those three is probably right. Make your risk/reward calculations accordingly. Since no one asked: I’ve been bringing down my Pepper float to smaller numbers gradually over the last couple of months, and I’m approaching zero but not there yet.

Finally, I want to add something to a common argument I hear about Pepper, which is “Who cares if I lose the $20,000 I have floated to Pepper right now? I made way more than that.” It’s a good point, but I’d like to offer that if you can catch the falling knife, you can make “way more than that” and still not lose $20,000.

Happy Thursday!

Live view of Pepper manufactured spenders.