EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to Cashback Cowgirl for authoring this post and for her alternative viewpoints on churning. I’ll see you on January 1!

* Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice whatsoever. These are just my own opinions and personal preferences I am sharing. Tax implications vary by individual.

Most of us agree how important it is to have an emergency fund — it’s often one of the first recommendations from financial planners along with tracking all of your spending each month. A three to six month emergency fund recommendation is common. Some of us, including myself prefer a one to two year emergency fund, or more. It depends on a lot of factors: risk level, type of employment, number of dependents, personal preference, etc.

In the recent past, many of us who prefer a larger emergency fund have been concerned because that money was not getting much interest — just sitting there eroding. Just a couple years ago it was hardly getting anything as interest rates were near zero. So many of us opted to just put all we had into the S&P 500.

Today, at this time of writing 4%+ APY is fairly common — around 5% just a few months back. So things have changed quite a bit.

Well even better, is that if you are in the bonus hunting game, that emergency fund can also serve as a bankroll for the bonus hunting. It then becomes dual purpose: both a bonus hunting bankroll as well as an emergency fund. I call this the BHEF — the Bonus Hunting / Emergency Fund.

Bonus Hunting. For the purposes of this article, let’s define bonus hunting as any income activity related to:

  • Deposit account sign up bonuses
  • Brokerage account sign up bonuses
  • Credit card sign up bonuses
  • Cashback rewards — both credit and debit cards
  • MS related activities

Beating the Market. Personally, I am finding that I am beating the average market returns with the money in my BHEF — by quite a bit actually — often at 10-28% APY for large bank sign up bonuses and solidly 16-33% with MS related activities (IYKYK).

Size of BHEF. I have enough of a BHEF right now that in addition to it functioning as a bonus hunting bankroll it also functions as a 31 month emergency fund. My goal BHEF will perhaps end up functioning as 75 month emergency fund.

I am currently making my 31 month BHEF work for me getting 10-33% APY with it.

My BHEF is not too large, but large enough to simultaneously take advantage of the larger juicy bank account sign up deals — e.g. invest $20,000 for 60-90 days and get $1,000 (BofA Business Advantage Checking) & invest $30,000 for 60-90 days for $1000 (BMO) — along with plenty of MS.

So for me there is no penalty having this large of an emergency fund, since I am beating the average market returns handedly, tax implications included*. It’s very satisfying that no matter how the market performs or if I lose my income, I am good for several years.

BHEF Formula. I don’t count credit card float as part of my BHEF — whether that be introductory 0% APR float or the monthly 30-50 day float. However, even though I don’t count float as part of my EF, I still use it as a tool when I can as part of my bankroll gaining 10-33% APY on it.

For me my BHEF is the following simple formula:

Current Assets – Credit Card Debt = BHEF

Current Assets for the most part are very liquid and spans dozens of accounts. My Current Assets include Accounts Receivable, Certificates of Deposit, Checking accounts, Gift & Store Card Balances, Investments (Brokerage Accounts etc.), Money Market accounts, Online Payment Systems balances, Rebate App balances, Rewards Points, Savings accounts and Wallet Cash.

The following is a screenshot of my Gnucash bookkeeping tree. It shows the breakdown of Current Assets and Credit Cards. The credit card debt is divided into two sub-trees: business and personal. [It’s handy to separate the credit cards into these two sub-categories since only the personal credit cards show up on the personal credit report allowing me to quickly observe my total personal credit utilization (PCU).]

Accounts Receivable is never more than say $1500 (in short term loans only) and Accounts Payable is never really more than say $100 which I pay off each month — e.g. reimbursing boyfriend for buying something for me with his cash like at a grocer which only takes cash (Winco).

I can quickly see what my current BHEF is by looking at the two circled numbers below in my Gnucash software — a simple subtraction.

Security. This bonus hunting game for me has been a blessing. Not only do I beat the market, I have multiple years of security. I am good if I need to replace the roof or do some other major home repair. I am good if I have to replace a vehicle, etc. — paying for them in full, no financing.

Low Risk. In my opinion, there is virtually no chance for me to lose money with the BHEF unlike with investing in the stock market, which could have gigantic losses / corrections at any moment. 10-33% year over year annual returns with very little chance for loss on an EF is quite appealing! *

Too large of BHEF. At some point though the BHEF gets large enough to where it makes sense to perhaps use the excess to say fast pay a mortgage or perhaps invest in something like an S&P 500 ETF. It all depends on one’s financial goals. After I have reached my BHEF goal, I’ll be investing the excess into S&P 500 ETF. We’ll see after I reach my 75 month BHEF goal how well I can make it work for me — if it beats the market handedly who knows I may increase the size of my target BHEF.

Plans. I plan on never having to touch the money I put in the S&P 500, having my BHEF to fall back on. My personal plan is to keep my BHEF topped off, continue bonus hunting for the rest of my life, and put all the monthly excess blindly into the S&P 500 completely ignoring the market news and never selling it unless I need to harvest capital gains (or losses) to reduce tax liability.

I might consider buying dips in the market, if I am feeling cute and my BHEF is maxed out, but I’d have to weigh the risk of reducing my emergency fund during a recession in that moment. I personally will not risk more than say one third of my maxed out emergency fund when buying a large dip.

Summary. A large emergency fund perhaps isn’t a bad idea at all if you can make it work for you, for example with the bonus hunting game. (I also plan to max out my 401k/IRA as well each year.) A BHEF also perhaps makes MS a bit easier having a bit more flexibility when managing float.

Afterthoughts. A portion of a very large maxed out emergency fund could also be useful sometime in the future as part of a down payment on a home — if the occasion arises and there is real need for it.

Clarifications. When I say I am getting 10-33% on my BHEF with bonus hunting, I am referring to the large chunk of assets that would of otherwise gone into say the S&P 500.  I am not including the gains from say very active MS loops which alone (with just float) can result in obscene amounts of % annual return.

– Cashback Cowgirl

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to shredder05 for a compelling origin story. I’ll see you on January 1!  If you’re interested in writing a guest post, please reach out!

I stumbled into the world of credit card churning almost a decade ago while still in grad school. My partner and I were strapped for cash, but I wanted to travel. With minimal expenses, I had to quickly learn how to manufacture spend.

My first big play was getting two SPG cards at the same time, each with a $7,500 spend requirement. Back then, Visa gift cards easily loaded to Venmo, and my genius plan was to run all $15,000 through them in $500 increments. I was quickly banned. I wasted those points as a grad school graduation present to myself at Atlantis in the Bahamas. But those SPG points and a shutdown from Venmo marked the start of realizing the potential of credit card churning.

I finished the SPG spend requirements by grinding out one $500 money order at a time, when I probably should have been studying. I realized it was a viable way to generate cash. After graduating, I decided to focus on churning full-time. Over the years, I’ve managed to turn it into a respectable income. Throughout those 10 years, I have lost many “plays,” but I have continued to find new ones.

I moved on from money orders and figured out ways to mostly manufacture spend (MS) from home, even with shutdowns from multiple banks. RIP Chase, Barclays, SoFi, PNC, and Capital One. And I’ve survived the death of many plays, including buying money orders with credit cards, honeymoon funds, Plastiq, PPK, credit card debit codings, and countless others. Every time a play dies or I get shutdown, I think it’s the end. But after those few days of grief, I think I love the pressure and search of finding a new play the most. Those are the best days in this hobby. There is always something else.

Sometimes I get insecure about doing this full-time. It’s easy for people to question and judge, and it’s not a job my parents can brag to their friends about. I’m grateful for my partner who provides my health insurance and has always been my biggest supporter of doing this. And I’m grateful for the friends who have helped me along the way; there have been many. Through hitting milestone statuses and plays dying, I’ve learned that the key to success in credit card churning is resilience, creativity, and fostering relationships. There’s always a new opportunity around the corner, and the thrill of finding the next great play keeps me motivated. Most importantly, there is always someone who is willing to help you. I don’t recommend sharing plays with large groups of people, but message that person you occasionally talk to and brainstorm together. This might not be a conventional career path, but it’s one that brings me joy and has led me to have meaningful, lasting relationships. And ultimately, that’s what matters most.

– Shredder05

Screenshot of Shredder05’s phone, circa 2017.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to Graham, the author of the TC Tailwind Blog, who candidly shares his story on the dark side of credit card churning for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1!

tl;dr: If you have multiple players with different tax situations, being smart about who earns taxable referral or bank account bonuses could more than double your post-tax earnings. Or it could make no difference at all. Calculate the difference it would make for you, by punching in a fake 1099 to last year’s TurboTax file.

Credit card sign up bonuses and points from spend aren’t usually considered taxable, but referral bonuses, checking account promos, and plenty of other kinds of rewards are. This tax treatment means that if you’re a high earner, you could be paying up to half of the bank-assigned value of your points in taxes. For some pathologically high points valuations, this could even result in owing more in taxes than what you think your points are worth. These facts make it worth doing what you can to optimize the tax treatment of your points.

In investing, Asset Location is the concept of putting assets with poor tax treatment into tax advantaged accounts (eg. holding bonds in your 401k to avoid paying annual taxes on the dividends). In the churning world, those of us with multiple players can practice a similar concept, by locating our taxable earnings with the player with the most favourable tax situation.

How much of a difference can this location strategy make? Let’s run a few scenarios. In each scenario, we’ll assume that:

  • We’re going for a $900 Chase checking bonus (while SideShowBob233 howls faintly in the distance).
  • It is equally convenient in our churning plans for P1 or P2 to receive the bonus.
  • There are no special tax situations, such as ample capital losses that one player or the other could use to balance out their earnings.

Here are a few scenarios:

  • The Best:
    • P1 is a very high earner in California and would be subject to a 37% Federal, 3.8% NIIT, and 12.3% State tax on the bonus, for a total of 53.1%.
    • P2 has no income, can take the standard deduction, and will be subject to no state or federal tax.
    • Results: P1 would pay $477.90 in taxes, keeping only $422.10 of the bonus. P2 would pay $0 in taxes, and keep the full bonus. Earning the bonus with the right player would more than double your earnings from $422.10 to $900.
  • The OK:
    • P1 and P2 live in Florida, and would be subject to only a 24% and 12% Federal tax respectively on the bonus.
    • Results: P1 would pay $216 in taxes, keeping $684 of the bonus. P1 would pay $108 in taxes, keeping $792 of the bonus. Earning the bonus with the right player would moderately increase your bonus earnings by $108 from $684 to $792.
  • The Wash:
    • P1 and P2 are married and file their taxes jointly, meaning they share a tax rate.
    • Results: It doesn’t matter who gets the bonus, it will increase their joint taxes.

Does taxable bonus location matter to you? Taxes are complicated, so it’s hard to know for sure. You might be able to eyeball the impact by looking at the above scenarios and seeing which looks closest to your situation. For an even more exact estimate, boot up last year’s TurboTax (or other tax software of your choice). Try punching in a fake 1099-INT with $900 in Box 1, for P1 and then for P2. That will tell you how much more each player would have paid in taxes last year, if they’d gotten this Chase bonus.

P.S. If you’re interested in more nitty-gritty financial optimization content like this, check out my blog. There’s a subscribe box at the bottom of every page, if you’re interested in seeing new content as it comes out. And if you think I’ve missed something, gotten something wrong, or should write future posts on a particular topic, please drop me a line.

– Graham

SideShowBob face-planing while howling in the distance.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to James, the host of the Churn and Burn podcast, who candidly shares his story on the dark side of credit card churning for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1!

Some of you may remember that almost one year ago, I wrote a guest post with a simple plea:  stop inflating the value of your points and start considering more carefully how you value said points and what they cost you to make.  Today’s post is a followup to that one.  But instead of looking at C.P.P. (cents per point), I’m going to ask you to look at a different, yet closely related metric: R.O.I.  The true R.O.I. of spend can be absolutely incalculable.  Yet still, it’s worth doing.

In the Summer of 2023, I decided to make a push for Delta Diamond status after I realized that a certain card which was “Reserved” for me could be used to “Reserve” a lot of lucrative offers which were asking me to spend in increments of $1000 for a grand total of 5,000 Skymiles each.  Mind you, this was “back in the day” before Delta nuked their loyalty program.  Actually, I really need to thank Delta for that, because it ended up being one of the best things that’s happened to me in my recent award travel memory, but more on that later…

Real ones know that Delta Diamond used to cost less than the average Venezuelan starter home…Although said “home” might have been a prerequisite.

Yes, as a Skymiles account holder with a pathetic 3,000 MQDs to my name, I knew the only way I’d make Delta Diamond was by knocking out the mammoth $250,000 MQD waiver requirement for credit card spend.  For all of this spend, I accrued the following: 

  • 1,675,000 SkyMiles
  • 4 Regional Upgrades
  • 4 Global Upgrades (x2?!)
  • Oh, and the Diamond status.  That too.

I managed to parlay these upgrades into the following:

  • 2 Roundtrip Transcon tickets on the A350 for only 48,000 SkyMiles
  • 2 Roundtrip Delta One tickets to Rome for only 84,000 SkyMiles each.
  • 2 More roundtrip Delta One Tickets to Rome thanks to a banking error in my favor (thank you Delta IT) for only 92,000 SkyMiles each.

For your own convenience, I’ve already done the math for us. The $250,000 in spend was done in a very lazy manner.  You might say that I’d be called a floozy for doing so.  In point of fact, I incurred a loss of $7,500 in order to complete this spend.  So, what kind of ROI did my spend get me, if I value the above accrued items at fair market price?

  • 1,675,000 SkyMiles = $19,262 per my own personal valuation
  • 4 Regional Upgrades (RUCs) = $3,000ish in savings
  • 8 Global Upgrades (GUCs) = $24,000 in savings
  • A total of 6 measly first class Diamond Upgrades and obligatory premium economy = ????

You’re probably thinking that my valuations for the upgrades are insane. And of course, they are.  A more appropriate valuation would be for me to decide how many SkyMiles I would have paid for those upgrades over economy and then applying that value.  So let’s go ahead and assign a value of $1,400 and $8,400 to the RUCs and GUCs respectfully.  I’ll conservatively value the complimentary upgrades at a very round $2,000 figure.  Feel free to play mad libs with my math and fill in your own break point numbers. After all, it’s not my blog.  I don’t make the rules!  That gives us a grand whopping total of $31,062 in value after $7,500 in loss.  It’s a very, very respectable ROI, and I hope you can hear the sound of my shoulder dislocating as I reach around to pat myself on the back.  *Please clap*

But, as they say: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”  That brings us to the Fall season of 2023, when Delta announced (probably because of me) that they were gutting the SkyMiles program like a suckling pig at the Calala Island bonfire.  

Delta would later roll back several of these devaluations, but not before our friends at B6 (JetBlue) decided to lower an olive branch to all of us Delta Elite members who were jilted by our abusive partner and now found ourselves craving an illicit affair with our spouse’s trashier, broke neighbor.  And what better place to have that affair than at the Motel (B6)?  The offer:  “Be the first of 30,000 to open up a JetBlue Card in the next 30 days, and we’ll give free Mosaic 4 status for all of you dirty Delta Diamonds out there.”  At the time, this offer was largely ignored.  I am only aware of a couple of close friends besides myself who took B6 up on it.  What was promised seemed too good to be true, and maybe that’s why so many people didn’t bother.  For my infidelity against Delta, I was given a heaping treasure haul consisting of:

  • 6 “Move to Mint” vouchers
  • 4 Blade Helicopter Transfers in the NYC area
  • Unlimited non-mint upgrades on B6

These were all awarded to me fairly quickly after a successful match, and I used them to great effect:

  • 3 one way Mint upgrades from JFK-EDI
  • 2 Mint upgrades from PHX to JFK
  • 4 Helicopter rides from JFK to Manhattan  
  • 5 B6 flights in the past year where myself and “P2” were treated to “front of plane” upgrades for free.

Perhaps the best part of all this is that I had already stashed around 100,000 B6 miles from a previous card signup offer, and the 2nd B6 credit card offer required of me for the status match accrued an extra 80,000 miles.  All of this was utilized in order to book flights that I would later shower with Move to Mint certs.  (As a brief aside, JetBlue knew they goofed with this campaign, because very quickly after this status match, the Move to Mint certificates were severely devalued.  I very fortunately booked most of mine prior to that.  Guess I’m just cool like that.)  Calculating the value of all this is hard.  Would I have paid out of pocket for all of those helicopter rides?  Unlikely.  So again, I’m going to apply the same math as before, and value these items at the price that I would have paid for them myself:

  • 3 one way Mint upgrades from JFK-EDI ($3,000)
  • 2 Mint upgrades from PHX to JFK ($900)
  • 4 Helicopter rides from JFK to Manhattan ($440)
  • 5 B6 flights in the past year where myself and “P2” were treated to “front of plane” upgrades for free. ($900)

It’s an additional $5,240 in value.  Bringing our total valuation to $36,302.  If we again consider our initial “investment” of $7,500” then we achieved a total ROI of 384%.

Enjoying my B6 Chopper ride over NY, which I apparently valued @ roughly $110?  Who knew Bond was such a cheapskate?

At this point, if you’re still with me after watching me blow smoke up my own tailpipe for several paragraphs, I’ll finally quit burying the lede.  There’s a few takeaways to be had, here:

  • Many times, one person’s devaluation is another person’s play of the year.
  • The true R.O.I. of a play is what you value it at, not the valuation of some person who doesn’t live in the same hub as you or frequent the same hotel chains.
  • You should, frequently and ruthlessly, reassess the R.O.I. of various “investments” you are making and ask yourself if there are more lucrative R.O.I. plays to be made elsewhere.
  • $250,000 of spend might sound like an astronomical amount for some of you reading.  But I assure you that for others, it’s just another Tuesday.  Something to think on.
  • As MEAB says: “Always be probing.”  You never know when a play will quickly open a new door into a different play.  
  • People will often scoff at you for spending on cards that most people wouldn’t take a second glance at.  Trust your own compass.  Every dog (of a card) has its day.
  • The “noise” generated by a less lucrative play can often be used to arbitrage or “feed” another play.  Sometimes you need to find yourself rolling in some cash before you can wade through the muck.

– James

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s anonymous author, who candidly shares his story on the dark side of credit card churning for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1!

Opening a credit card a few days after I turned 18 was one of the stupidest financial decisions I’ve ever made in my entire life. (Partly because my dad saw it and took away the credit card he had given me – but that’s not the story I’m here to tell today.)

In December 2017, I opened the Discover IT card. The sign-up bonus was only $50, but it was also still eligible to be included in the first year double cash-back match promotion. In Q1 2018, the card’s 5% category was gas stations. I was in college and got my first taste of manufactured spend (MS) by doing midnight cigarette runs to get 10% cash back. 

The problems started with Discover’s generous offer of 12 months at 0% APR. I began to spend money I didn’t have with only vague plans how I could pay it back. I would never borrow money from a friend or relative like that, but somehow to borrow from the bank didn’t feel like I owed anything to anyone, and nobody knew about it either. 

I also had some friends in the credit card game that were making decent money, which to me seemed like an easy route out of my own credit card debt. Six months after opening my first card, I applied for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select. It was declined. I begged reconsideration, hand wrote letters describing in detail why they should give me the card, but never got an approval.

Discover has a practice of raising your credit limit whenever your card is maxed out for several months in a row, probably because there’s a good chance that they’ll earn 29% APR on your balances. I’m embarrassed to say that in 2019 when my promotional 0% APR ended with Discover, I was accruing big interest charges and I was scraping to make minimum payments. 

My great grandfather called his credit cards “The American Thieves” for good reason.

In April 2019, I opened my first American Express card, a Cash Magnet. I hit the $300 sign-up bonus by paying my dad’s car insurance, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t touch the 0% APR offered with the card. Then, I paid off my Discover card, and the joy of making that final payment to clear my Discover balance is indescribable to someone who’s never been in credit card debt. Finally, I found a steady manufactured spend (MS) route and began to make a couple hundred dollars a month from 1.5% cash back opportunities and opened an Ink Preferred with an 80,000 point bonus. 

Somehow though, when 2019 ended I owed quite a bit of money to American Express, and unfortunately the credit line was considerably higher than my Discover.

So for the second time, I made the mistake of thinking that more credit cards were the answer to my problem. I opened an Amex Business Platinum with a 100,000 point bonus which was considered high at the time (wow times have changed). All was going well until a Financial Review froze me out of the bonus. I was out of options and ready to drop out of college to go to work and pay it off, but when my dad found out, he bailed me out but with a stern warning to quit the credit card game.

For the next couple of years, I stayed away from credit cards and out of credit card debt. Life is much less stressful that way. Then the Sapphire Preferred 100,000 point bonus came around, and was too tempting to resist. I followed shortly afterward by getting an American Express 150,000 point Business Platinum stacked with employee card offers. 

Unfortunately, the Business Platinum had a 0% APR and the debt cycle started again. I did manage to earn a few good bank bonuses with the money floated from the 0% APR offer, but when the year ended I was still short by several thousand dollars. I took a “My Chase Loan” at 8% interest (again times have changed!) I slaved and scrimped to make the payments on that loan.

I again swore to stay away from credit cards, but the Chase Ink 90,000 point offers broke my resolve fairly quickly, and the vicious 0% APR cycle started up again.

In mid-2024, I crossed the line from casual hobby MS’er, to MS as a side job. In Q3 and Q4 I’ve sold over 7 million points and used plenty for travel as well. (I know some readers are laughing at my low volume, and some jaws are dropping.) I can say that I almost definitely would not be in this position today if I hadn’t opened those first cards back in college.

Was it worth it? If I had instead invested all the money I spent on things I couldn’t afford, as well as the money I paid in interest payments, I would be a lot more financially stable than I am today. But would I have worked so hard if it wasn’t to pay off debt? Probably not. I did enjoy my college years by riding on credit card debt.  If I had never started with credit cards, chances are that by now I’d have a different side hustle and some more savings. A side effect of manufactured spend is that handling so much money that belongs to the banks but is revolving through your accounts greatly devalues your mental picture of money. I’d probably spend less in everyday life if my side job wasn’t manufactured spending.

In short, I got started with credit cards very early on in life and quickly fell into the 0% APR trap, resulting in many financially irresponsible decisions. I now make a solid profit each month off my credit cards. Was it worth it? I would say not. You can’t turn back the clock though. I hope my taking the time to write this posts saves at least one person from making the same mistakes I made.

– anonymous churner

Sometimes the churning cup of sunshine and rainbows leaks.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author who is infamous enough to not need an introduction but get one anyway, SideShowBob233. I’ll see you on January 1!  If you’re interested in writing a guest post, please reach out!

So it’s been about a year since my Chase post, which has been mostly well received.  I’m a year older, a year wiser (really you’re thinking, are you wiser SideShowBob233 – and yes you’re still saying the 233 part), have a lot more rakes behind me (but still too many in front of me) so do you still think Chase deposit accounts are a bad idea?  

The answer is yes.  After my post I continued to hear many people report shutdowns with deposit accounts, including quite a few shutdown within a couple of weeks of opening the account for a bonus.  Each one makes me want to put a rake in front of them and watch gleefully (which is how I do all my watching, sometimes with only my clown shoes on – get that image out of your head!) as they step on it.  Why people risk their Chase relationship over less than $1,000 is a mystery to me, as is how to walk past a rake without stepping on it.  

What really gets me mad (about this – I’m not talking about my anger over Bart and definitely not about my anger over people who spell “lose” as “loose”) are the people who argue with me that it’s fine and that I’m making a big deal over nothing.  Some people took issue with my characterization that you are more likely to get shut or that you will get shutdown, which is a fair argument if you take my posts as fully serious, which is something only a clown would do.  

When I say you will get shutdown I’m talking odds, but with odds there’s never a guarantee.  However, my trusty buddy Chad ran the numbers for me and there is a 420.6969000000000012% increased chance of being shutdown by Chase when you have a deposit account (I believe Chad had some assistance with his calculations from the Fluz interns).  Now that doesn’t mean you will be shutdown, but I don’t like those odds (OK maybe I like parts of the odds, but not all together).  And again $1,000 is nice (I could get a gold-plated rake!) but you can get that from a single Ink card bonus so why risk it?  Not to mention Chase deposit accounts report every penny to Early Warning System (EWS).  

“So SideShowBob233” you’re thinking (let’s face it you’re not thinking that you’re saying it out loud and your family is wondering whether your meds have worn off and you’re talking to your imaginary friends again), what if I haven’t heard of a single Chase shutdown ever caused by this?  To that I say you need to get out more, especially out of the rubber room they keep you in because it happens often, both to people who know better and to people who don’t know better but should (and even to random people who don’t churn at all, because Chase really doesn’t care if they screw you over for no reason).  Even if you don’t hear about them, I hear about them, and if you dig enough you will too (or they’ll restrain you for trying to dig in your rubber room, if that happens definitely don’t mention the clown with the orange hair and rakes, it won’t help your case).  

I’d like to end this by pointing out there are tons of banks and credit unions (and I weighed them all to confirm there are in fact tons, not just metric tons) all of which are not Chase, do not report to EWS, and also have bank bonuses.  So please stay away from Chase (and Citi) bank bonuses.  There are even some lovely fintechs that are not banks and for a fee (but often for free!) will lose your money for good.  

Now I’d really like to end this (and I can hear you muttering SideShowBob are you ever going to really end this, but you left off the 233 this time because the elf on the shelf told you to stop saying it because it makes you sound crazy) by suggesting you use a business bank account for anything you can, especially one that does not report to EWS (some do, like BOA business checking for some sole prop businesses). Stay tuned for more.

– SideShowBob233

SideShowBob233 (pictured) dictating this article to MEAB (pictured?)

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author, a hilarious demi-whale with a penchant for writing, irieriley for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1!  If you’re interested in writing a guest post, please reach out!

If you’ve managed to find your way to this little corner of the Internet full of award hackers, manufactured spenders, degenerate gamblers, and various other scallywags, chances are you’re drinking from an uninterrupted firehose of information. 

There is just so much content and media to consume (and that was even true before the era of AI slop), even in the churning space, that it can be difficult to stay on top of what’s going on.

Between public blogs, private groups, reddit, neverending Doctor of Credit comments sections and hundreds of pages of Flyertalk discussion on the proper Maldives soundtrack when flying to Conrad Rangali, it’s impossible to read everything.

I don’t think you should, either. If you only get your share of churning news from one source, you’re in the right place. Matt is very good at getting the point across succinctly (unfortunately, I am not), and understanding some references here requires reading between the lines. Some of the plays shared here and elsewhere aren’t spelled out 100%, whether for brevity, sensitivity, or both.

Due to this (and the general deluge of noise in the space), you likely find yourself skipping past posts and comments talking about cards you don’t have, airlines you don’t fly, and plays you aren’t playing. 

In some cases, that makes sense. I care much less about Kroger than someone in Ohio. But when there isn’t a clear geographic or similar barrier to something, you’re likely making a mistake by not taking the time to understand the play. And sometimes, even geography doesn’t matter – as long as you “live, work, or worship here”. 

Pictured: Vincent “irieriley” Adultman explaining his local business to a CSR at a credit union in Twin Falls, Idaho

Things change really fast in manufactured spending, and some of the most profitable things don’t last long*. The amount of plays I decided to ignore over the years because I wasn’t already doing it are up there with my penchant for calling my very-not suave self  “Rico Suave” in high school in the annals of irieriley’s regrets. 

While I believe you should do your best to understand an angle, there are definitely levels to it. If the DQ thread on reddit is delving into a trivial change to an Amex coupon benefit or Doctor of Credit comments are discussing free Hawaiian BBQ sauce, you can probably safely skip learning more, unless you really like Audible (or BBQ sauce).

But if you’re in a smaller community and someone is discussing the intricacies of how to complete a fuel dump mistake fare or how a new fintech fits into a liquidation strategy and you don’t understand the conversation, you should be trying to figure out why. 

It may not even be a conversation – it could be an observation that you make yourself as part of probing and think to yourself why on earth does this need to be spelled out as company policy?

Some examples of things I’d probably want to look deeper into if I came across them and didn’t understand them:

  • Why, oh why is MEAB’s favorite credit card a Sears store card?
  • Why does a cash back fintech not pay out on certain vendors? And for that matter, why do they not pay out on a subscription to a churning podcast?
  • Why does the Android app store say everyone who downloaded a different fintech’s app downloaded the app of a random credit union in Lubbock?
  • Why are people talking so much about the timeframe for the 35% rebate on cash business fares booked with MRs via an Amex Business Platinum? I thought transferring was always the best value?
  • Why does the new group I’ve joined talk so much about Costco gold?

It might not necessarily even be some big, hidden secret. If the blogosphere is to be believed, the slowdown on Amex NLL offers and continued prevalence of pop-up jail was probably one of the biggest negative trends of the year for the hobby. 

But I’d argue that the most negative news of the year, especially for our friendly cetacean population, is the cap on Schwab cash out and subsequent cap on 4x dining MR points on the Amex Personal Gold. There’s not much to parse through here – no need for a SUB when you’re a whale that’s gonna whale. 

Ultimately, it’s up to you how much time you want to spend on this hobby. It can be like a full time job, but with the right knowledge, it can pay like one too. Sharing finds and data points and making friends in the community can go a long way towards finding your like-minded group of maximizers.

– ireriley

Pictured: a whale with a mentee regaling on the days when you could cash out $50k $44k of Membership Rewards points per week. No, I don’t know why it has both legs and a tail, and yes, I am extremely afraid of it.

*Footnote: While I am advocating for you to put more effort into understanding plays, I am not advocating for you jumping into a new play without doing your due diligence and assessing your personal risk tolerance. I regret missing a lot of plays, but I don’t regret missing Hardbody, The Plastic Merchant, etc.

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 18 and December 31. After that, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

By popular demand we’ll have at least a few guest posts during the break. If you’d like to write one, please reach out, I’d like to find guest posts for the whole break!

Echo Chambers

The internet is full of echo chambers in which opposing viewpoints mostly don’t exist because of something like: selection bias, moderation, “the algorithm”, or another reason. Because I know you need some examples, there are a few you may already be familiar with:

A recent FlyerTalk post titled “Any Success Stories of Living Off [Manufactured Spend]?” is a perfect illustration of how we can get stuck in echo chambers without realizing it. The thread itself is rather short, and if you read it in its entirety you’d think that maybe a couple of people lived off of manufactured spend in the past but it’s probably not happening much anymore and might also have weird tax consequences. Everyone in the insulated forum is reinforcing what they already believe, and it makes sense because it’s aligns with their world views.

On the other hand though, I personally know at least a couple of dozen people that live off of manufactured spend, and I’m sure there are plenty more that I don’t know of. Also, I’m not a tax guy and I’m definitely not your tax guy, but it’s not hard to account for and to pay taxes on your manufactured spend based earnings. Based on my personal experience, the FlyerTalk thread is naive at best and gate keeping at worst, and it illustrates a lesson that can take you a long way in churning and manufactured spend:

Sometimes the prevailing discussion in your echo chamber is wrong, and you can use that to your advantage.

– MEAB

Or, to rephrase in Michael Scott form:

“Trust but verify – Ronald Reagan“

– MEAB

Happy holidays and I’ll see you next year!

(I think it was actually John Quincy Adams, but ok)