Category: Wisdom

EDITOR’S NOTE: Matt is on vacation until at or around January 1, 2026. Until then we have guest posts, today’s post is brought to you by the infamous SideShowBob233. Special thanks for the post!

An old adage from the stock market is “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered” (or a variation on this, such as “pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered,” or something that only AI would give you “pigs are pink, hogs taste like chicken”) which also applies to churning.  

Since many behaviors in this hobby involve practices that stores, banks, store managers, random cashiers empowered by the FBI and the AML police deem inappropriate or undesirable, it’s important to stay under the radar to avoid shutdowns, store bans, or a stern scolding from your local Karen that “buying more than $266.29 in gift cards is structuring and will get you the death penalty”.  Most churners implicitly understand this, but there are some caveats which is why I’m here to fill you in (and also annoy you). 

Rake Caveat 1: No matter how carefully you step through a walkway filled with rakes, someone else will run through it screaming “look at me!”

Translation (from AI – better than I expected): 

  • Even if you act with care and humility, others may behave recklessly or dramatically just to draw attention.
  • It’s a commentary on how some people thrive on spectacle, even at the cost of consequences. 
  • It can also reflect frustration: your quiet diligence might be overshadowed by someone else’s loud antics.

Clown 🤡 Translation: For every churner who is carefully staying within limits, going slowly to avoid detection, there is another whale hammering away at the same play calling attention to it, and eventually getting it shutdown. 

Rake Corollary 1.69: When a screaming rake victim is noticed, they will attract rakes to every person tiptoeing through the rake field.  

Translation (from AI – again better than expected): 

  • Disruption is contagious: One person’s loud mistake or drama can ripple out and affect others who were trying to avoid trouble.
  • Attention amplifies risk: When someone’s chaos gets noticed, it can shift the environment—making it harder for others to stay safe or unnoticed.
  • Caution doesn’t guarantee immunity: Even if you’re careful, someone else’s recklessness can drag you into the mess.

Clown 🤡 translation: Once eyes are on the play, anyone who has done the play is subject to adverse action.  It could mean clawbacks, it could mean shutdowns and bans.   Or even worse a scolding from Karen where she whips out her AML procedures, shakes them in your face while warning you of FBI repercussions for buying  a gift card. 

Clown 🤡 Conclusion: You can’t control other people and while some are knowingly hammering a play before it dies, others are foolish and greedy and do things like calling to bank to complain when their play doesn’t code the right way (“My fake direct deposit from myself didn’t trigger the bank bonus, can you please investigate”).    If you have a situation where there’s a good play, but the adverse action from the play is known to be severe (a ban at your favorite bank where your spouse will divorce you if they get banned) it may be safer to skip the play.  As a foolish man once said, “you miss every shot you take you looooser.”

– SideShowBob233 (website, seems NSFW but mostly isn’t)

SideShowBob233 avoiding adverse 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.

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.

The deeper you go into the churning hobby, statistically speaking, the more often you need to move big chunks of money from one bank to another. You’ll often run into blocks, like:

  • Daily ACH limits
  • Monthly ACH limits
  • Banks worried about being a hub
  • Too many wires causing an account closure

There’s a nice way around all that, just write yourself a check to transfer money, then mobile deposit it or take it to a branch. Old school cool applies.

Have a nice Thursday!

For bonus points order real checks that look fake. Banks love it!

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.

Introduction

American Express, Wells Fargo, Chase, Citi, Bank of America, FakeBank LLC, FakeFinTech LLC, Rob’s Credit Union, and lots of others issue cards that have annual credits tied to a calendar year. When you pair that with the note that most issuers also let you refund an annual fee up to 30 days after it posts, you arrive at December being the best churning month of the year because:

  1. The first statement is usually 30 days after approval
  2. Your annual fee usually posts on the 12th statement (at 360 days, roughly)
  3. You can usually request an annual-fee refund within 30 days

This obviously doesn’t work for issuers that don’t issue annual-fee refunds though, like banks that rhyme with schmapital bun. It’s also a ymmv proposition with Bank of America, but it works there in the majority of cases.

The Actual Triple Dip

Because a card approved in December spans the calendar years 2025, 2026, and 2027 with a single paid annual fee, you can earn annual credits in all three years, hence the term “triple”. Because it’s silly that banks let us do that, we add the term “dip” (I couldn’t be bothered to fact check this part).

An Example

How about our good friend the American Express Business Platinum? Annually, you’ve got credits to cover things like:

  • $200 airline incidental
  • $150 Dell credit + $1,000 Dell credit
  • $600 annual Fine Hotels and Results credit
  • $360 Indeed credit
  • $250 Adobe credit

So if you apply for a card in December, your 12th statement won’t generate until between mid-December 2026 and mid-January 2027. Once that happens, you’ve still got another 30 days for games and an annual fee refund. With a single annual fee, you’d be able to get:

  • $600 in airline incidental credits (2025, 2026, and 2027)
  • $450 + $3,000 in Dell credits (2025, 2026, and 2027)
  • $1,200 in Fine Hotels and Resorts credits ($300 for 2025, 2*$300 for 2026, and $300 for 2027)
  • $1,080 in Indeed credits (2025, 2026, and 2027)
  • At least three migraines while dealing with the Adobe credits (various)

Good luck out there, and have a nice Tuesday friends!

Next time: Failed triple dips.

Credit card rewards are kind of a big deal. Obviously earning 4x at grocery stores, 5x at office supplies, 8x at gas stations, 10x on travel, or 14x hotel spend can be used to leverage lifestyle creep in the form of (choose at least one):

  • outsized value
  • discount travel
  • cash-flow

A non-significant boost also comes from earning on the payment side. Plays vary, but consider some public options like:

  • paying your taxes with a credit card or rewards debit card
  • paying a local credit union HELOC with a credit card or rewards debit card
  • paying your mortgage with Plastiq (yes, it still exists)

The biggest unicorns allow payments directly with a credit card, but plenty of demi-unicorns work with a debit card too. A few options:

There are other options too, always be probing.

Three wheel to four wheel upgrade lifestyle creep.

In the Ten Commandments of Churning, of which I’ve yet to discover nine of the commandments, we discover an auspicious writing that’s particularly relevant in the last couple of weeks:

Terms and Conditions are only advisory unless you’re in legal mediation or in a court of law.

– The 10 commandments of churning, unpublished

Just because a particular bank tells you that they won’t award a sign-up bonus to prior customers doesn’t mean that they actually behave as written. Just because a credit card company says that they won’t award points if you buy a gift card doesn’t mean that you won’t see points when you buy a gift card.

Conversely, just because a crypto company says that you’re eligible for a sign-up bonus doesn’t mean they’ll pay it out unless you force their hand.

Happy Tuesday, and always be probing.

Wednesday Weather forecasts are advisory too.

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.

Have a nice scary weekend friends!

Kroger fuel points, but as a drink.

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.