Sometimes in manufactured spend, there are opportunities only available if you commit to spending a lot in a short period, and then commit to doing it again and again because #degenlife. When an opportunity like that presents itself, I suggest you think about the opener and ask:
Am I a jetliner pilot?
Am I a private pilot?
If I’m not, how overconfident am I, and is there someone around to help me learn?
Reach to grow, but only to the extent that it’s feasible. Really, I’m suggesting you consider whether your bravado is bigger than your capability before committing to lofty thing.
When someone first hears about this play, they almost always (smartly) say something like: “Wow, what’s the opportunity cost on that, how much are you actually paying for that lifetime status?” With a followup of something like: “That’s $9,000 cash back on a 2% card.” Why wouldn’t you just do that?
They’re not wrong, but maybe they’re not right too.
Is There Opportunity Cost?
Let’s read from the fictitious “Bible of Churning, Chapter 6, verse 7”:
1x spend has no opportunity cost if there’s no other credit line available to spend on.
Basically, yeah, $450,000 spend on a 2% cash back card is $9,000. But, what if you’re also already doing that and maxing out that 2% cash back card’s credit line? If you’ve got the spend capacity and you can make the numbers work, do both and don’t worry about opportunity cost from a fictitious credit line.
Good luck, and happy Tuesday friends!
PS: Thanks to everyone who reached out wondering if I had a medical event after at least three typos in yesterday’s post. I did have a medical event of sort, but strictly speaking a doctor might disagree. The condition: “AA WiFi speeds”
An interesting phenomenon in churning that ostensibly surfaced in 2026 is weaponized FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). I suppose that’s probably been true in many circles for years; but churning, an industry built on trust, has been largely immune. Something’s absolutely changed recently, and discussion of intentional misinformation campaigns is spreading.
What’s the most valuable thing in churning and manufactured spend?
Breakfast (oh I thought you meant of the things you eat)
Networking
Networking comes in many forms, but typically we have three groupings: chat, video, and in-person. You’re going to get something different out of each and the information shared in each is different. If you’re not doing all three, consider changing.
The Groups
I’m sure that there’s a churner out there who talks to his buddy over Motorola radios, but generally there are three main groups for information exchange:
Chat (Telegram, Slack, Discord, ICQ?): Information exchanges happen quickly, things are in writing so data tables work really well, lots of people can share, and you can catch up after you’ve “been on vacation for the last three months”.
Unfortunately in chat, nuance gets lost, complex topics are hard, and trust might be difficult when you’re talking to GiftCardDestroyer420.
Video calls (Zoom, Meet): Information exchange is slower, but complicated ideas are easier to deal with, and a question and answer clarification phase is generally automatic. These are also ideal places for distilling months of knowledge into a few nuggets.
There’s a downside though, right? Yeah. Scheduling calls often requires fitting an elephant into a hole the size of an aardvark (quick, how big is an aardvark? Idk but sounds smaller than an elephant), it’s easy to get distracted, and it’s hard to have a natural conversation and topic change.
In-person (meetups, conferences, dinners): Churners, as a group, are a diverse people both geographically and socially, and our chief export isn’t actually corn despite popular opinion. When you meet churners in-person, you’ll see body language, be able to sidebar a conversation with whispers, bond over drinks, and also occasionally make life-long friendships with “Rob from Telegram”. Information is often the most nuanced and high-valued, but you’ll occasionally have to read between the lines or develop trust before that value shows itself.
Downsides? Youbetcha. Unless you live next door to your churning bestie, you’re probably driving for a long time, possibly traveling across time zones, and maybe even catching an intercontinental flight to meet. Also, sometimes there’s a guy who doesn’t shower.
Cool Story Bro
Diversification makes sense in a lot of places, this isn’t any different. Chat provides breadth and speed, video provides depth, and in-person builds trust and creates opportunities for serendipity. Obviously each can reinforce the others too. If you’re not doing all three, you’re probably not operating at peak efficiency.
60,000 ThankYou points after $4,000 spend in 90 days
$150 (or 15,000 points) via Rakuten
This card often has a 80,000 point bonus which is *checks notes* 20,000 points more than currently. That bonus especially likes to appear in Q4 too. Even if you only value Citi ThankYou points at their straight-to-cash value of one cent each, waiting for the increased sign-up bonus would give $200 in additional ThankYou Points. Last I checked $200 > $150. Of course Rakuten will still probably offer its regular, non-increased rate of $50 back when the bonus jumps to 80,000. Also, last I checked $200+$50 > $150.
tl;dr: Having an increased bonus on a portal doesn’t mean you’re getting a good deal. (Thanks to reader Harisch for letting me know about the increased offer in September)
Happy Wednesday!
On the other hand, there’s always alternative math.
We have a series on risk that won’t write itself, so I guess that’s what I’m here for. Smart readers can guess today’s entrant (because it’s in the title): Shutdown risk. What’s that? Well, (a) duh, and (b) the risk that a bank, FinTech, credit card issuer, or other counterparty throws its virtual hands up in the air and says “that’s a nah from me son.”
Shutdowns as a Spectrum
Shutdowns come in many forms, much like your crazy ex’s promises. A few examples:
The Gentle Backoff: When you say jail to a churner, the first thing they’ll think of isn’t metal bars and locks, but rather AmEx Pop-Up Jail, which prevents you from getting future sign-up bonuses.
The Not-so-gentle Backoff: Small to medium sized credit unions are great at this, generally something like “if you don’t stop refunding those travel redemptions the week after you book them, we’re going to close your account”.
The Cold, Calculated Axe: Banks famously don’t care about feelings, and the good ones have a risk algorithm or two that, when alarms, leads to immediate shutdown. The really good ones will send you a polite letter telling you to pound sand and kick rocks while you’re at it too.
The Random Wildcards: Gift card sites, obscure portal aggregators, and fly-by-night buying groups don’t have compliance departments, instead they have automated ban-hammers. Breathe on them sideways when the wrong Toby analyst is looking and your account is locked instantly, often taking your pending payouts, rewards, and maybe your money with it.
Some shutdowns obviously sting more than others.
Managing Shutdown Risk
I know, I know, no one likes to be managed. So do the managing yourself:
Earn and Burn: Points sitting in an account aren’t assets, they’re unbacked IOUs
Learn about an Institution’s Triggers: Some issuers that rhyme with schminkrony hate cycling for example, while other FinTechs hate when you taek them as nothing but a hub, while others hate it when you chase their deposit accounts; know the pitfalls so you can dodge ’em
Isolate Your Real Accounts: Is your mortgage payment coming out of the same account that you’re depositing buyer’s group checks into? Well, cut it out. Would P2 be eternally mad if you lost your Kohl’s card? Maybe be careful with Capital One
Consider horizontal scaling: A dozen accounts for your friends and family each spending $50,000 a month is a lot less likely to ring alarms at a FinTech compared to spending $600,000 a month in a single account
As a corollary, perhaps develop a thick skin.
Coping
Remember: If you haven’t been shutdown by an institution, you haven’t gone hard enough yet.
Conventional wisdom is often good at the macro level, and frankly terrible at the micro level. Need an example before we dive in? Let’s start with a doozy: “If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Street smart, for sure. But also, someone following that advice would have missed out on six to seven figures in Pepper gift card resale profit, $1,000 for running a $1 charge, buying unlimited AA miles for less than a half cent each, or hundreds of other churning greatest hits.
Today’s Contestant
Let’s go over another of my favorites: “buying miles doesn’t make sense except to top off an account”. There are definitely examples where that’s true, but especially on the high end of hotels and flights, that’s often wrong. I guess we’ll illustrate with a concrete example because reasons:
640,000 points (160,000 nightly*4, the fifth night is free with Hilton)
That looks like a ton of points! But, Hilton will often sell you points at 0.5 cents each above board, so the $3,200 you’d pay out of pocket for those points is more than $2,400 savings over the cash price, and with better cancelation terms. Neat eh? You don’t need to buy points to top off an award redemption, you can buy points as a proxy award redemption.
It gets better though, if you’re buying points from a (churning) friend, rates are quite a bit better than the rates programs will sell them to you at, and you may get that same 640,000 Hilton points for $2,600 or less. Of course, there’s some sketch involved.
Tripping You Up
It’s not all roses though, sometimes there are road-blocks and speed-bumps. For example:
Some programs limit how many points you can buy
Gray market transactions are gray, unless you’re in the UK where they’re grey
Points aren’t always on sale
Award redemptions don’t earn points like cash bookings, so you’re forgoing a modest point-earning rebate
Good luck friends!
Next time: Debunking conventional “buy more and save wisdom”.
Today brings a special guest post from our resident clown, SideShowBob233, who has a rake to grind. Special thanks to SideShowBob233 for today’s post!
While there are some grifters out there who try to take private information for their own short lived personal gain (destroying both their standing and access to the community and also the death of the things they are selling), there are also some people who are addicted to imaginary internet points. While less of a toxic group than the grifters, they can result in the same death.
Imaginary internet points are the types of things you can get on places like reddit, where upvotes make the world go around. To be fair, before I learned how to dodge rakes I earned my share of imaginary internet points. I never knew enough in my reddit days to get a play killed (to my knowledge at least – and it helps me to forget things since I am an old clown who has taken 69 too many rakes to the face).
In smaller groups imaginary internet points are not calculated in upvotes, but in likes, thank yous, and other emojis. Often people share sensitive things are shared to show off their knowledge, or to make themselves seem important, or some are also just shared for no reason whatsoever that anyone with a degree from clown college can decipher. For whatever reason, the Joker has decided to hand out information via chosen randos instead of through direct means, resulting in a lot of these types of posts.
The result of handing out knowledge that isn’t widely shared is simple: death. So before you find yourself posting something that isn’t widely shared and also can’t tolerate a lot of volume, think about your motivation and whether your post will get it killed. And for the love of rakes, do not post in a way that makes people want to snoop around it and blow it up like a bathroom at a Home Depot. Remember loose lips sink ships, and those imaginary internet points don’t help you dodge a rake. IYKYK.
– SideShowBob233
Capital One Shopping helping you earn imaginary internet points
