While there’s what essentially amounts to perpetual chatter about shutdowns in 2026 on the private side of churning, there hasn’t been quite as much public discussion since some of the big waves from last year.

That changed last week when Greg at Frequent Miler shared that he had been shutdown by Citi. It’s worth a read if you haven’t, and if you read between the lines, it isn’t hard to guess what happened. 

I’ll refrain from speculating about it because there’s enough out there, and I don’t think it was anything that is particularly exotic to this audience anyway. Hell, I wrote a post about this play not too long ago – plenty of us in the community have succeeded at it without adverse action.

But it’s been interesting to see the discussion happen openly vs. a private group because everybody needs to be a little more coy. I’ve seen a lot of beginners posting and speculating to make sure they aren’t doing something that will endanger their Citi accounts. 

Nobody wants to openly say what happened, so there’s a whole lot of “if you don’t know what he’s talking about, you don’t have anything to worry about,” which is tricky in its own way because it encourages further speculation. 

Shutdowns are interesting as a blogger because they bring people out of the woodwork like few other things do. As any of us in a private group can attest, even the sleepiest of chats explodes when there’s a shutdown data point to share. 

It’s difficult as a blogger to walk the tightrope of being useful when others are concerned about their own accounts while ensuring you don’t share anything that doesn’t need to be shared. For what it’s worth, I always appreciated that FM was at least transparent enough to admit that MS existed and was something they did, even if the references were veiled. 

The venn diagram of churning and MS blogs that have a big enough following to warrant affiliate partnerships and those that talk about in MS in any capacity is extremely small, and I think that’s what made a lot of people take pause. Does having a partnership with an issuer protect you from being shut down? Perhaps not.

I thought about writing a post that talked about my shutdowns, but most of mine are the opposite of Citi – smaller things that are firmly in the “not to be talked about publicly” camp, regardless of how small my reach is. As always, I’d rather that readers get to keep hitting sensitive things instead of talking about how they’re burnt for me.  

I write pretty niche things to a very finite audience, and gain exactly $0.00 for more traffic when I write about shutdowns, so it’s not like I’m going for clicks. But I totally understand that people will have questions when a prominent member of the community gets the axe like that.

In the end, a Citi shutdown isn’t the huge deal that it used to be. Things can always come back from the dead, but this one is murky at best. 

Between changing math and negative TYP changes (i.e. combining rewards and changing award ratios), it’s harder and harder to care too much about the program. While I know that’s likely small consolation for the people that have been shuttered, it beats some of the potential alternatives. 

I do think it’s noteworthy that a shutdown of this profile occurred, but I think it’s more a continuation of patterns we’ve been seeing all year vs. a net new type of occurrence. But I’ve been caught off guard a few times in 2026 already, so what’s one more to add to the pile?

Buena suerte amigos, and don’t forget that you do have a palatable option if the KYC reaper comes for you (if you’re lucky enough to actually speak to the reaper pre-adverse action, of course)

Tsiɛɛs! 

Pictured: one of my favorite meme pulls from my friend smugdog and the conversation I have with myself every time I post