Category: Wisdom

Introduction

The continuous need to feed the content monster occasionally means every related blog out there writes about the same thing. This week’s President’s Day version hit with the news that United TravelBank hasn’t been reimbursed for American Express airline incidental credits since about 10 days ago.

Analysis

Mr. T and I share a lot of common beliefs about churning, and this event was no exception. I interviewed him for more insight (special thanks for taking the time out of his busy schedule to chat):

[MEAB]: Is it actually broken?
[Mr. T]: It might be, fool! Or it might not be. Nobody knows yet.

[MEAB]: Has this happened before?
[Mr. T]: Yes, I seen this movie before! :Late 2020, in early 2024, and in late 2024. This ain’t our first rodeo.

[MEAB]: How many times has it been declared dead?
[Mr. T]: In the last day? Or you talking lifetime? Either way, a whole lot.

[MEAB]: If it is dead, is that the end?
[Mr. T]: There are other options even for Newark and San Francisco chumps. I pity the fool who doesn’t think so!

[MEAB]: Should I use other options ASAP?
[Mr. T]: Unless you gotta close that card down in a couple of weeks, how about just sit tight and see how it shakes out?

[MEAB]: Should I write my own 2,000 word post declaring it dead?
[Mr. T]: Only if you stretch first, that’s a lot of reaching!

Have a nice Tuesday, and “never dig a grave before the deal’s even cold”.

Next up: Turning American Express Airline Incidental credits into cereal.

Introduction

Let’s chat about the Dunning-Kruger Effect. But, before we get in too deep though, I’ll remind anyone who doesn’t remember immediately what exactly that effect is (a reminder for basically all of the other readers but you):

Dunning-Kruger Effect: When your confidence in a subject books an Emirates First flight to the moon, but your competence in that subject gets you a one way ticket to Lubbock, TX on Southwest.

– Remedial Psychology by non-Psychologist MEAB, Volume II

Practice

Manufactured spenders and churners are an astute, quick-thinking bunch, at least on average. They’re also happy to give advice and help others out of a tricky situation. Put those traits together though, and your average personality in the hobby has a tendency to speak with more bravado than is strictly warranted. That is, a lot of us are walking Dunning-Kruger Effect bots. Need a concrete example? You’re reading an article from a guy who’s formal psychological training consists of an expired library card. A few more examples:

  • “<Bank> shutdowns are permanent”
  • “That trick hasn’t worked since 2017”
  • “I’ve done <churning thing> seven times this month, it’s completely safe!”

There are of course longer examples too, but you’ll have to find those on another blog that has at least four pop-up ads and two referral links for the Chase Sapphire Preferred™©®Ωµ® card.

Fin

Let’s end with a conversation I overheard:

Everyone else: “Ok poindexter, so what?”
MEAB: “Listen to everyone in the hobby, we’re a smart bunch. But, apply appropriate skepticism.”
Everyone else: “Boring! Where are the free flights and stuff?”
MEAB: “…”

Have a nice weekend friends!

The guy who already did the thing seven times this month’s home plumbing

Even though I play one on TV*, I’m definitely not a psychologist. I have, however, observed a few things about manufactured spenders:

  • They have a tendency toward being rather extra
  • Their intelligence is generally higher than average
  • Their social-skills tend to be focused on the short term, except for the next item
  • Their memory about being wronged lasts a long time

Taken together, there are a conclusions we can draw that seem to be accurate based on lots of observation in the space:

  • Friendly relationships need active work, or they fade somewhat quickly
  • The memory of when someone feels wronged lasts forever

Like a good credit union, working to maintain a relationship boosts profitability and longevity. Also like a good credit union, nuking the thing isn’t going to help you at all. Instead, you end up blacklisted by your target, their inner circles, and probably by plenty of casual observers too. Is there a time and place for that sort of thing? I’m not sure, but if you’re going to do it be deliberate about the time and the place, like the Bikini Atoll I guess.

Have a nice weekend friends!

*This is a lie. I don’t play one on TV. Once I pretended to though. No, that’s a lie too.

Churners are good at jokes though.

There are more articles about how to optimize your daily organic spend with the right credit card portfolios then there are people on the planet (citation needed). I think you should ignore all of them. Why? Since you’re here, I’m going to assume you fall into one of two buckets, each with its own reason.

Bucket 1: The Players

As a churning player, you’ve got at least an intermediate understanding of manufactured spend and its execution. You probably know how to spend many thousands of dollars a week, a day, an hour, or maybe even more frequently, and those thousands of dollars mean at least many thousands of points earned in the same time frame.

On the other hand, your regular spend just doesn’t matter much in comparison. Even if you had a magical 10x card, your $15 lunch would earn you 150 points, which isn’t worth thinking about unless it’s purely for entertainment value. Those 150 points probably represent much less than a tenth of a percent of your earning, so don’t stress it. Any card will do.

Bucket 2: The Dreamers

If you’re not yet a churning player, you’re probably dreaming of becoming one (again, otherwise I don’t think you’d be reading this). If so, I’m sure it’s tempting to analyze which of the major bank cards are best for your lunch dining spend. Maybe it’s the American Express Personal Gold that earns 4x on dining, the Citi Strata Premier that earns 3x, the Chase Sapphire Preferred that earns 3x, or the Wells Fargo Autograph Journey that earns 3x? Well, maybe it’s one of those, but:

  • they have different annual fees
  • they have different transfer partners
  • they have different cash-out values
  • they have different ancillary benefits

So, which is best given that they’re all different? Maybe you need to build a spreadsheet, list your common expenses, the current point valuations from BigBankBlogger™, the coupon credits each card offers, the sign-up bonuses, when you can cancel the cards and still get an annual-fee refund, whether the card makes sense next to your quarterly 5x earning card capped at $1,500, and a dozen other factors. That’ll be a cool spreadsheet! But, you’ll sink hours into that sheet, it’ll go stale in months, and you’ll find that you’re still a dreamer.

So instead of optimizing your small organic spend, consider spending your would-be spreadsheet time figuring out how to move from dreamer to player. I guarantee you’ll make more points by doing so than the incremental bump you’ll get from an extra 2x when you go out to lunch.

The Big Picture

Optimizing your organic spend is almost certainly a poor investment on your time, unless it’s done purely for entertainment purposes, or because it makes people like MEAB annoyed, or maybe both.

Happy Thursday!

From the page where I got the statistic about the number of point optimization articles on the internet.

Bilt is back in the Churn-o-Tron 5000 news cycle, this time because they sent a bunch of “oops, my bad, I guess we do actually need customers” emails to existing card holders that had been soft or hard denied for conversion to the new Cardless versions of the card.

That’s positive when taken at face value, but it also illustrates a critical point in churning:

Simplicity beats complexity, unless the complexity is really, really valuable
– MEAB tome of apocryphal wisdom

I’m going to wager that you can’t find a churner who can argue that the new version of Bilt has any heir of simplicity with a straight face. Assuming that’s true, you’d better find a metric ton of value in the new Bilt ecosystem before you decide to join.

If a metric ton of value isn’t obvious though, maybe consider that your time will be better spent by using a Citi Double Cash card, Venture X card, American Express Blue Business Plus card, or Chase Ink Unlimited card and looking for other plays instead of taking hours learning the ins-and-outs of the most complex credit card program ever invented for the possibility of good returns before Cardless axes you. With all of those non-Bilt cards:

  • You’ll earn 2x on all spend (1.5x for the Ink Unlimited)
  • The annual fees are simple
  • The programs all have valuable transfer partners
  • You don’t have to spend hours learning how to use the card
  • Richard Kerr won’t be watching your plays in real time

So naturally the follow-on question is: Well, is there a metric ton of value in the Bilt program?

I think generally the answer is absolutely not for a whale, maybe for a dolphin, and possibly for a shrimp. But, you do you friends, and obviously what you know is different than what I know. Let me leave you with a new word, courtesy of Chris from All the Hacks: Bilted, which (I’m definitely paraphrasing and editorializing his words) means “So much complexity that you want to give up and laugh, but maybe there’s a good deal behind it all.”

Have a nice Tuesday friends!

With the right you complexity you can drive in a river like churning legend Danny too. But should you?

We’ve had enough time in January to learn what works for the annual-fee-endowed American Express Platinum and Business Platinum card $200 calendar year airline incidental credits. So, how do we make those incidental credits worth something? The best quasi-cashout options seem to be:

  • United: Buy TravelBank credit directly. It expires in five years and can be used to pay for United flights. You can usually sell this for 88%+, and with a little trickery you can turn them into flexible credits good for other people and on other airlines. The situation sucks now, I guess buy yourself Economy Plus seats and pay for “seat selection fees”, then refund to a future flight credit [more info]
  • Delta: Buy airfare and pay partially with a gift card or travel credit, pay for the remainder with your card (don’t go over $200 though). Alternatively if you have a co-branded American Express Delta card and are eligible for Pay with Miles with, pay partially with miles and the remainder will be credited provided it’s less than $200 [more info]
  • Alaska: Buy a seat upgrade after booking and chat your “seat selection fee” doesn’t post, buy a flight paid partially with Alaska wallet funds and partially with your AmEx (less than $100), then refund to your wallet after 24 hours, or change a ticket to a higher fare as long as its less than $200 in additional cost [more info]
  • American: Buy cheap airfare, then change it to a flight that you really want that costs more and pay with your credit card (don’t go over the credit amount though). If you want to gamble, you’ve got roughly even odds that award taxes and fees will count [more info]
  • Southwest: Buy a flight less than $109, or book an international flight with taxes under $109 per ticket, then refund to a travel credit. Combine with the Choice Extra fare bucket to get around name-locking  [more info]
  • JetBlue: There aren’t new 2026 datapoints yet, but likely 2025’s version still works: Buy a flight less than $137 then cancel the flight after 24 hours and refund to your JetBlue wallet. For best results, $74 Blue Basic fares will have approximately $99 Blue fares (thanks to Brian C) [more info]
  • Spirit: Gutsy choice friend! I’ll be surprised if Spirit is still around by April, so make it quick. A Big Front Seat upgrade works, and airfare below approximately $60 also works [more info]

For bonus points, you’ve still got time to cash out your travel credits using last year’s selected airline, get reimbursed, and then change to a new airline online by January 31.

Have a nice Wednesday friends!

Haven’t had enough of 2026 style yet? Here’s 2026 fashion, apparently.

We talked way back in 2021 about loosey goosey language in Citi’s Terms and Conditions that let you double dip sign-up bonuses on some cards. A lot of things have changed since 2021 (duh), and Citi games have changed slightly too. Let’s pick a particular card, like the stupidly named Citi AAdvantage Globe Mastercard, and dive into its Terms and Conditions:

  • “bonus miles are not available if you have received a new account bonus from a [Citi AA Globe card] in the past 48 months”
  • “bonus miles are not available … if you converted another Citi credit card account on which you earned a bonus in the last 48 months into a [Citi AA Globe card]”

So, you can’t get a bonus if you had one in the past four years from the same card, effectively. With that in mind, let’s go over a couple of Citi’s application rules:

  • Must wait eight days between applications
  • No more than two cards every 65 days.
  • Bonus eligibility is attached at the time of application

With a card like the Globe, you’ve got four months to hit the spend bonus, which gives you time for apply for four cards within the first card’s bonus window. Specifically, you could apply on day 0, day 8, day 65, and day 74, and you’d still meet Citi’s application rules and have another 56 days before the bonus period on the first card is up. Once you’ve been approved for all the cards, which frankly is unlikely in-and-of-itself, you can hit the bonus spend on all four, and get the bonus four times. Wowza.

Now let’s talk about reality. Should you do this? Almost certainly not, because:

  • AA bans users with too many bonuses in a year, and this will probably trigger it
  • You’d have four new Citi accounts on your credit report in a couple of months
  • Citi fraud analysts won’t like what they see if they look
  • Other banks won’t like what they see if they look
  • A single Globe card is generally a bad option, four of them is four times as many bad options

Ok, so the concept is cool in theory and bad in practice, why talk about it? Citi isn’t the only bank out there, and you may find that your local LardLand Credit Union in Lubbock, TX has credit card bonuses that work the same way, but don’t necessarily report to the credit bureaus. Now you’re in business.

Happy Tuesday!

More bad ideas in scale.

There are lots of relatively obvious ways to scale your churning, like:

  • Multiple players
  • Multiple accounts
  • Multiple phone numbers

Let’s say that the fictitious FinTech, auspiciously named FinTechX, earns you $22 every time you move $1,000 through the platform. Let’s further assume that moving $1,000 takes you a couple of minutes each time, and that you’re limited to $1,000 per rolling 24 hours.

Great, you’ve found cheap money! But, watch out for things that will inevitably slow your earn, like:

  • Forgetting to load right when you can, pushing your next 24 hour window later and later
  • Fumbling through different profiles, possibly missing one in the process
  • Not spinning up even more accounts because it’s more hassle every day
  • Missing days altogether because you’re too busy

Automation fixes effectively all of those issues, and frees you up to do other things. Don’t ignore it! Quick, no-context options for (relatively) easy automation:

Happy Wednesday, and if you got booted from the ‘Kate Spade Portal Sadness’ Telegram group, please rejoin – it was a Telegram bug.

Another automation option, but it’s not cheap or easy.