{"id":8489,"date":"2023-10-31T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=8489"},"modified":"2023-10-30T11:28:39","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T17:28:39","slug":"the-evolution-of-the-spend-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/31\/the-evolution-of-the-spend-question\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of the Spend Question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Main Question<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>A common manufactured spend and churning question is, &#8220;how am I going to spend $15,000 in the next three months to meet my sign-up bonus?&#8221; This question is especially prevalent when you&#8217;re getting started, and focuses primarily on what methods you can use to meet your target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At some point, your capacity for manufactured spend may grow substantially with experience. When that happens the question often becomes, &#8220;what cards do I have that support $100,000 in spend today, and how can I pay them off tomorrow without fraud locks, <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/26\/weekend-wisdom-avoid-looking-like-a-kiter\/\" class=\"ek-link\">ACH kiting<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.occ.treas.gov\/topics\/supervision-and-examination\/bank-operations\/financial-crime\/suspicious-activity-reports\/index-suspicious-activity-reports.html\" class=\"ek-link\">SAR reports<\/a>?&#8221;  When you&#8217;re asking this question, you&#8217;re no longer focusing on methods to meet spend, but instead on how you can increase throughput and move money and credit lines to meet the demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When You&#8217;re Operating with Big Numbers<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The relevant follow-up questions for someone operating in the latter regime become:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>How do I cycle money through my accounts without kiting?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Which card issuers are going to be upset by this kind of spend?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What&#8217;s the best return I can get on a workhorse card?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The last question is interesting because it shows a big shift in how churning works. Realistically you can&#8217;t hope to get enough new cards with sign-up bonuses in a month to support even a few days of six-figure spend. So, the percentage of your profit from sign-up bonuses becomes small, and to an extent unimportant because the proportion of them that you can earn relative to your spend is negligible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s Your Point, Poindexter?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>When offers like <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/30\/american-expresss-q4-surprise\/\" class=\"ek-link\">99 bonuses of 15,000 Membership Rewards for $4,000<\/a> spend come around, several readers typically ask me why anyone cares. The question usually means that the reader hasn&#8217;t developed a huge manufactured spend volume, and that&#8217;s ok; not everyone wants or needs to hit that volume to be successful. If they do however attain big volume, then the reason becomes instantly clear: it&#8217;s a way to increase your return on large spend that&#8217;s repeatable 99 times, or maybe even 99*<em>n<\/em> times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have a nice Tuesday friends!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"842\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-18-1024x842.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8492\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-18-1024x842.png 1024w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-18-300x247.png 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-18-768x631.png 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-18.png 1282w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">The MEAB Tuesday morning coffee mug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Main Question A common manufactured spend and churning question is, &#8220;how am I going to spend $15,000 in the next three months to meet<\/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-8489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8489","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=8489"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8496,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8489\/revisions\/8496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}