{"id":9175,"date":"2024-02-14T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=9175"},"modified":"2024-02-14T09:07:19","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T16:07:19","slug":"wednesday-interlude-sign-up-bonuses-moving-the-needle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/14\/wednesday-interlude-sign-up-bonuses-moving-the-needle\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Interlude: Sign-Up Bonuses Moving the Needle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: The feedback I\u2019ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I\u2019ve got a few posts left to publish, but I\u2019m running low. If you\u2019re interested in a guest post, please\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:milesearnandburn@gmail.com\">reach out<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the most basic level of credit card churning involves getting a new credit card with a sign-up bonus every time you hit the spend requirements on the last one, putting you into a state of perpetual 10%, 25%, or even 50% return on your spend. This is great until:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>You&#8217;ve gotten all the cards you can reasonably get<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Your monthly spend exceeds 3 to 4 times the average sign-up bonus minimum spend<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>When you hit the above, sign-up bonuses are interesting but they&#8217;re a small blip on a profit or return chart. As you spend even more, the percentage of your profits that consist of sign-up bonuses gets proportionally smaller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To illustrate, let&#8217;s assume that you signed up for the recent <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/13\/monday-quad-20\/\" class=\"ek-link\">200,000 Membership Rewards bonus American Express Business Platinum card<\/a> with $15,000 in spend, and all of your spend after that goes on a <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/06\/tuesday-interlude-the-1850-special\/\" class=\"ek-link\">2.625% cash back everywhere card<\/a>, and we&#8217;ll look at how much of the money you earn comes from the bonus. For simplicity, we&#8217;ll assume American Express points are worth 1.1 cents because that&#8217;s a generally available cash out price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table is-style-stripes\"><table><thead><tr><th>Monthly Spend<br>(USD)<\/th><th>AmEx Bonus<br>(1.1 cents per point)<\/th><th>Other Card&#8217;s Rebate<br>(2.625% back)<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>$15,000<\/td><td>Bonus: $2,200 (14.6%)<br>Regular: $165 (1.1%)<\/td><td>Regular: $0 (0%)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>$100,000<\/td><td>Bonus: $2,200 (2.2%)<br>Regular: $165 (0.165%)<\/td><td>Regular: $2.231 (2.23%)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>$500,000<\/td><td>Bonus: $2,200 (0.44%)<br>Regular: $165 (0.03%)<\/td><td>Regular: $12,731 (2.57%)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>$5,000,000<\/td><td>Bonus: $2,200 (0.04%)<br>Regular $165 (0.003%)<\/td><td>Regular: $130,856 (2.62%)<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dollar (Percentage) return on various levels of spend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Put succinctly, that sign-up bonus is nice, but after you hit $5M in monthly spend, even the large American Express Business Platinum bonus makes up a very small portion of overall return on monthly spend at just 0.043%; meanwhile one of our favorite Unsung Hero cards returns 2.62%, or more than 98% of the total rebate on your spend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The takeaway? As you advance your manufactured spend career, worry a little less about those sign-up bonuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have a nice Wednesday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"637\" height=\"440\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-7.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9176\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-7.png 637w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-7-300x207.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 637px) 100vw, 637px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Next up on Wednesday Interlude with MEAB: Does the second law of thermodynamics apply to spend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: The feedback I\u2019ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I\u2019ve got a few posts left to publish, but I\u2019m running<\/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-9175","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\/9175","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=9175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9181,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions\/9181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}