{"id":11940,"date":"2025-07-01T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=11940"},"modified":"2025-07-01T06:40:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T12:40:04","slug":"churning-and-travel-hacking-are-neither-binary-nor-absolute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/01\/churning-and-travel-hacking-are-neither-binary-nor-absolute\/","title":{"rendered":"Churning and Travel Hacking are Neither Binary nor Absolute"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Travel hacking and churning have lots of incompatible answers to the same question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p>[Q]: Are two one-way bookings cheaper than a roundtrip?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Is a round-trip booking cheaper than two one-way bookings?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Is booking for two cheaper than booking for one, on a per-passenger price?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Is booking for one cheaper than booking for two, on a per-passenger price?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Is the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card the absolute best card to get?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Is the American Express Business Platinum the absolute best card to get?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Will Hertz throw me in jail if I rent with them?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Will I have no issues renting through Hertz?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Will Chase shut me down if I ramp my spending by 10x in a month?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Will Chase let me continue if I ramp my spending by 10x in a month?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Q]: Is SideShowBob233 a real person?<br \/>[A]: Yes<a href=\"#a-ymmv\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#a-ymmv\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you&#8217;re collecting datapoints or asking for advice, don&#8217;t forget that absolutes are almost never there. Instead, we see trends and patterns. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"a-ymmv\" style=\"font-size:14px\">*: <em>Sometimes It&#8217;s either route specific, destination specific, airline specific, bank specific, person specific, or card specific. Or maybe just specific specific. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"958\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-2-1024x958.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11942\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-2-1024x958.png 1024w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-2-300x281.png 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-2-768x718.png 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-2.png 1264w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">MEAB in a nutshell, sometimes the &#8220;may&#8221; is absolute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Travel hacking and churning have lots of incompatible answers to the same question: [Q]: Are two one-way bookings cheaper than a roundtrip?[A]: Yes* [Q]: Is<\/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":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11940","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=11940"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12091,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11940\/revisions\/12091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}