{"id":14573,"date":"2026-11-13T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=14573"},"modified":"2026-11-12T21:40:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T04:40:52","slug":"weekend-wisdom-that-which-you-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/13\/weekend-wisdom-that-which-you-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Wisdom: That Which you Lose is More than you Think"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A common adage in manufactured spend is &#8220;<em>Don&#8217;t float more than you&#8217;re willing to lose<\/em>&#8220;. Astute readers will note that there are a lot of asterisks here, like maybe <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/21\/wednesday-wisdom-the-kelly-criterion-for-resellers\/\">the Kelly method<\/a> is a slightly better model, or perhaps that floating $100,000 at Wells Fargo isn&#8217;t the same as floating $100,000 at CraptoCrypto LLC. But, the wisdom is generally accepted as sound and is, in fact, sound at a first-order approximation. The players in the space generally understand this adage and abide by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a problem though: generally churners and manufactured spenders <em>don&#8217;t<\/em> think of points sitting in a loyalty account in the same vein as cash sitting in a FinTech, even though it&#8217;s a perfect analog. Yesterday showed examples of why it&#8217;s true for points too, specifically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>American Express shut down at least a handful of serial gamers yesterday, and points were forfeited almost immediately<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Citi routinely shuts down gamers a few weeks or months after KYC calls, but often gamers assume that it won&#8217;t affect them (<em>Narrator: It will.)<\/em> I know of two such KYC shutdowns just yesterday. When the shutdowns occur, <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/05\/credit-card-shutdown-what-happens-to-the-points\/\">ThankYou points are zeroed by the end of the day<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How do we safeguard against losing points from a shutdown? Well, <em>don&#8217;t float more than you&#8217;re willing to lose<\/em>. American Express could come knocking tomorrow, and if they do, every single Membership Reward point will be lost unless you&#8217;re really, really quick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good luck, and have a nice weekend!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"431\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/image-6-1024x431.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14574\" style=\"width:420px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/image-6-1024x431.png 1024w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/image-6-300x126.png 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/image-6-768x323.png 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/image-6-1170x494.png 1170w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/image-6.png 1174w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Next up: Self shutdown for fun and profit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A common adage in manufactured spend is &#8220;Don&#8217;t float more than you&#8217;re willing to lose&#8220;. Astute readers will note that there are a lot of<\/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-14573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14573","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=14573"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14577,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14573\/revisions\/14577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}