{"id":14449,"date":"2026-10-20T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=14449"},"modified":"2026-10-19T23:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T05:45:10","slug":"tuesday-thought-opportunity-cost-can-hit-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/20\/tuesday-thought-opportunity-cost-can-hit-different\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Thought: Opportunity Cost can Hit Different"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

An infamous, “only in churning” lofty play is to earn quasi-lifetime Japan Airlines status and lifetime oneworld lounge access<\/a> via $450,000 spend on the FNBO JAL Mastercard. Don’t worry though, all of that spend will probably be at 1x, and you’ll pay 2,000 miles annually for the privilege. Oh, and more often than not it doesn’t go well<\/a> either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Response<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

When someone first hears about this play, they almost always (smartly) say something like: “Wow, what’s the opportunity cost on that, how much are you actually paying for that lifetime status?” With a followup of something like: “That’s $9,000 cash back on a 2% card.” Why wouldn’t you just do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They’re not wrong, but maybe they’re not right too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is There Opportunity Cost?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Let’s read from the fictitious “Bible of Churning, Chapter 6, verse 7”:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

1x spend has no opportunity cost if there’s no other credit line available to spend on.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Basically, yeah, $450,000 spend on a 2% cash back card is $9,000. But, what if you’re also already doing that and maxing out that 2% cash back card’s credit line? If you’ve got the spend capacity and you can make the numbers work, do both and don’t worry about opportunity cost from a fictitious credit line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good luck, and happy Tuesday friends!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PS: Thanks to everyone who reached out wondering if I had a medical event after at least three typos in yesterday’s post. I did have a medical event of sort, but strictly speaking a doctor might disagree. The condition: “AA WiFi speeds”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pictured: If AA inflight WiFi speeds were a car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction An infamous, “only in churning” lofty play is to earn quasi-lifetime Japan Airlines status and lifetime oneworld lounge access via $450,000 spend on the<\/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":[54,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credit-cards","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14449","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=14449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14452,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14449\/revisions\/14452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}