Fuel point markets, gift card markets, and buyers group spot prices obviously change as supply and demand change. Practically speaking, what this means is:
When there’s a big deal that’s widely accessible, resale rates drop
When it’s been a while since there’s been a big deal, resale rates climb
Hard hitting stuff, I know. But really, there’s a point for churners other than remedial economics: Volatility in most of churning resale activities is really high. Over the course of a week, rates may change by 1%-3% on bulk gift card brands, or by 5% over the period of a month. Fuel points and buyer’s groups see similar pronounced behavior.
The takeaway? Sometimes holding things for a week or two increases your profit, and keeping a mental tab on average volatility helps you optimize your game. Of course, don’t forget about the velocity of money either.
One of the “endearing quirks” of churners is the uncanny ability to assign a (probably incorrect) cash value to non-cash instruments. For example, I’ll do it right now:
What’s the value of a Hyatt point? 2.0 cents
What about a Delta SkyMile? 1.1 cents, but only if you fly Delta and have a Delta credit card
What’s about an AAdvantage mile that never gets redeemed? 0.0 cents
Ok smart guy, what about a Bud Light in the Lufthansa First Class Terminal? -$46 per can, *waves hands* because something something opportunity cost
How about a hard credit pull? This could be a complex calculation involving things like the average credit card sign-up bonus value, the opportunity cost of minimum spend on a 2% card, the loss of a potential 5/24 slot, the small probability that it causes eyes to end up on your account, how much more an incremental sign-up bonus will increase your happiness, and the mental overhead of additional accounting.
But, I like to keep things simple to make it easy to decide if any particular deal is worth a hard pull:
I’d always trade $800 for a hard pull on my credit report (and yes, I’d trade $800,000,000 for one million pulls on my report, interested parties can reach out). The further below $800 I get, the less interesting a deal is for me.
So, my expectation value for a hard pull is $800.
What’s the point of this article? Great question and I’m not sure I know (exactly what you wanted to hear from a, uhh “trusted”, source), but it does serve as a measuring stick: it’s pretty easy to find credit cards that require a hard pull and have a sign-up bonus or ongoing value worth at least $800. If you’re not getting that, perhaps question why and whether or not you should do something different.
Happy Thursday!
Other churner focused endearing quirks? Mismatched socks.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Look – yes it’s cryptic, but it’s also actionable. #teamcrypticallyactionable
Let’s start with the captain obvious statement for the day: Certain plays only work at a single place, but other plays work at hundreds or thousands of places. Let’s give two concrete examples:
gift card purchases at Food Lion won’t work for Kroger fuel point resellers
account bonus funding with a credit card works at many banks and credit unions
As you get deeper into the stack of manufactured spend plays, you’ll often find that many of them fall into the second category, there are plenty of entities where a particular play will work.
Because churners are often working in small groups, everyone in the group will hit the same entity at the same time and drive themselves collectively to a quick shutdown because the group’s volume became too big to ignore. The corollary is that plays are often longer lived when the group spreads out its targets for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
So, today’s wisdom: If you can run a play somewhere different than everyone else, you’re probably going to be a lot better off for it. Don’t follow the herd when you don’t have to.
Happy Monday!
Did you know? Avoid following herds of pickles too because reasons.
Let’s roll with a hypothetical and single out Capital One while we’re at it, because reasons.
Assume that you’re shopping for exactly $1,500.00 worth of hot Takis at the local Kroger affiliate. After ringing up your cart full of Takis, you swipe your Venture X card. The charge goes through, but then you get this message on your phone:
Hi, it’s Capital One. It looks like you may have purchased a gift card from FRYS-FOOD-DRG #0073 on your Venture X Business ending in 1111.
We want to remind you that Capital One and government agencies will never request payment in the form of gift cards.
If you think a scammer is trying to convince you to pay them with a gift card, don’t give them the gift card information. Instead, call us at the number on the back of your card.
Obviously, Capital One has already algorithmically determined that (1) your Takis look a lot like gift cards, (2) you’re either a manufactured spender or a rube, and (3) they don’t want to pay for your chargebacks once the jig is up whether or not you’re a rube.
If, on the other hand, you toss a few coins into the register or swipe a nearly empty gebit card and watch it auto drain before swiping that Venture X, you’ll never hear a peep from Capital One’s automated systems because rubes don’t buy $1,499.22 worth of gift cards (obviously).
So, carry some extra change, nearly drained gebits, or go to an actual cashier and ask them to split payments before buying hot Takis in the future; your account’s longevity probably depends on it.
Have a nice weekend!
Alternate method: buy a bag of hot Cheetos with the hot Taki’s, but be aware that this may cause the spontaneous and abrupt end of the universe.
A credit union account that you opened years ago can often be your best friend when new techniques are discovered. For example, one of my favorite credit union accounts has been useful as:
a money order dump
a bill payment target
a CD funded with credit card target
a debit load target
a basis for a credit card with the same credit union
other games
There are often dry spells between plays though, and if you’re not careful, an account primarily useful for gaming might be closed for inactivity during your dry spell, with any remaining funds being sent to your state’s unclaimed property division. To avoid that, I do the following:
Set up a recurring $1 (or whatever the minimum) monthly ACH to the account from a central checking account, or from another credit union target account.
If you’re worried about the monthly drain on your central account, there’s no reason you can’t set the transaction up in reverse a few days later.
Good luck, and happy Thursday!
Sadly, not all games keep credit union accounts active.
One of my favorite ways to think about relationships with banks and FinTechs is “how much would you have to pay me to never use [institution] again?” (The severed relationship question)
My answer varies greatly depending on the institution, ranging from probably $500 (let’s say RobinHood), to $1 Million.
When a shutdown from a bank or a FinTech happens, I like to reframe the shutdown in terms of the severed relationship question and look back on my earnings. For example, if RobinHood gives me the almighty 🪓 and I earned over $500 from games with their app, then I got at least the value of the severed relationship question, so I can frame the shutdown as a success rather than as a blow.
As a bonus, I may find my way back into an institution that shut me down, which lets the game start over; sometimes when you’re shutdown, it’s just another opportunity to answer the severed relationship question for a second (or third) time.
How many miles should you hold in a loyalty account before you start liquidating them or choosing to earn something else instead? My hand-wavey answer is: Hold as many as you’ll redeem between now and the next devaluation. Of course, we don’t really know when the next devaluation will happen, but we can look into the last 10 years to try and find patterns on a program specific level.
Why Programs Devalue
Before we do that, let’s remind ourselves why devaluations happen:
Inflation happens, and mileage earning is tied to prices
Airline CASM increases over time
Hotel CPOR increases over time
Devaluing a currency helps a balance sheet
Devaluations suck, but they’re entirely predictable over time. If we take as a given that programs will devalue, the next logical question is “how often?”
The Frequency
I collected data for frequent flyer program devaluations from the year 2015 until now for the major five US airlines. For this dataset, I only considered redemption devaluations; I excluded elite program changes, the removal of free-stop overs, and similar perks that aren’t directly tied to the mileage redemption rate. Some of these devaluations were only for specific types of redemptions (for example, partner awards to Europe), but that didn’t matter for this study. If redemptions devalued in some way, they were included here.
Now, let’s go airline by airline, sorted by frequency of devaluation:
Ok, now what’s the expectation value for a devaluation in each program, just taking the number of devaluations divided by the time period (10 years)?
Airline
Devaluation Time (Expectation Value)
Standard Deviation
Delta
1.00 years
0.42 years
United
1.67 years
1.05 years
Southwest
2.00 years
0.88 years
Alaska
2.00 years
1.11 years
AA
3.33 years
1.82 years (sqrt(3/10))
What do I do with that?
Alright, how do you make this data actionable? Well let’s go back to my hand-wavey metric for when you should stop holding miles in a particular program: Hold as many as you’ll redeem between now and the next devaluation.
That means that I wouldn’t hold more Delta SkyMiles than I’m likely to redeem in the next 1.00 years, or at least the next 1.00 years after October 2023 (😬 Spoiler alert: It seems likely that we’re going to see another Delta devaluation soon.) It’s also yet another argument about why you should be holding flexible currencies that transfer multiple places and can be cashed out directly.
Long holiday weekends provide plenty of opportunity for churners and manufactured spenders, like:
Discount gift cards
Portal bonuses
Sales on airfare and stays
Discount goods for resale
They also provide another great unlikely benefit: In-store crowds.
Say what now? Crowds are a benefit? Yup. In crowds, cashiers and customer service desk personnel just want to keep lines moving. That gives you two ways to play holidays for in-person games:
Just keep running back to back transactions at self check out. As long as you’re quiet and not actively causing problems, you’ll be ignored. Holidays can be huge volume days
Try new things, if something hits wrong, customer service is too busy to make up rules and cause problems, they’ll usually just clear the error and move on
Good luck, and have a nice holiday friends!
Labor Day self checkout secondary effects, Kroger style.
