{"id":10315,"date":"2024-09-11T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10315"},"modified":"2024-09-10T22:07:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T04:07:24","slug":"wednesday-wisdom-the-cost-of-burnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/11\/wednesday-wisdom-the-cost-of-burnout\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Wisdom: The Cost of Burnout"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Background<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Loops in churning are powerful because you can stack earnings as a dollar flows from a credit card, to a FinTech, to another, to yet another, and eventually (hopefully) back to your bank account to pay off your credit card. Instead of earning 3x on a single purchase, a loop might push the net earnings on that purchase well above 3x.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if it&#8217;s good once, isn&#8217;t it better multiple times? Yes, but as you scale those loops across multiple cards, multiple players, and multiple charges in flight, tracking becomes a non-trivial load. Imagine keeping track of the following every day, knowing that any step in the chain might have a failure that needs manual intervention:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Buy a $499.51 sportsbook gift card<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Load the sportsbook gift card into a FinTech account intermediary<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Load the FinTech account&#8217;s funds into a sportsbook<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Play through at least $499.51 in funds<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Withdraw the $499.51\u00b1(profit\/loss) into a FinTech&#8217;s rewards account<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Use the FinTech&#8217;s platform to pay your credit card<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Great! Now do that again 10 times per player, for 15 players, each with different initial gift card amounts for tracking, every day. Also, don&#8217;t forget to run your other plays that aren&#8217;t sportsbook related for the day too. Finally make sure you haven&#8217;t lost something along the way; I hope you&#8217;re good at Excel, Beancount, SQL, or something else to track it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Brick Wall<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the best churners I&#8217;ve met eventually take a few months or more off because tracking takes time, dealing with <a href=\"https:\/\/direct.mit.edu\/books\/book\/5192\/SludgeWhat-Stops-Us-from-Getting-Things-Done-and\">sludge<\/a> when something goes wrong takes time, frozen accounts take time, and in net the mental load can push them to hit a brick wall and burnout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve burned out and stop manufactured spend, you earn exactly $0 per day, $0 per week, and since America Loves Math\u2122, $0 per month too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Lesson<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>A loop can turn 3x earning into 6x, but too much looping and tracking can eventually turn into burnout which earns 0x. So, <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/06\/weekend-wisdom-dont-forget-simplicity\/\">don&#8217;t forget simplicity<\/a> and don&#8217;t be afraid to skip most of the steps in a loop to keep yourself sane when the world comes running at you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"856\" height=\"940\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-7.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10316\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-7.png 856w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-7-273x300.png 273w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-7-768x843.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 856px) 100vw, 856px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Counterpoint: Sometimes brick walls are fake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Background Loops in churning are powerful because you can stack earnings as a dollar flows from a credit card, to a FinTech, to another, to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ms-hints","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10325,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10315\/revisions\/10325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}