I started writing this post a couple of days ago on a flight back to the US from Edinburgh by way of Geneva. Up until right before arriving in Edinburgh, we were supposed to be flying home from Malta via Paris instead. 

A week before, I was at Pijana Wisnia in Krakow having a cherry liquor with my P2. We met a veneered lad named Robbie while chatting on the outdoor patio. In between big clouds of cotton candy vape juice, he told us how his lads group of 20+ had chosen Krakow over their usual annual destinations of Lanzarote and Tenerife. 

When I asked him why, he just shrugged and said he wasn’t sure, because it was harder to get drunk in Krakow (although I beg to differ, because it was 9pm and he said the rest of his crew was already asleep at the hotel). And just like that, his phone buzzed, and he said his Mcnuggets were ready for pickup and he had to go. 

Robbie was actually a really nice guy, vape flavor choices aside. But after a few more days of being outnumbered by stag and hen dos in Krakow and seeing the real feel in Malta reach 105+ in the days before arrival, P2 and I started thinking about going somewhere cooler and with less lad holidays and saving Malta for the off season.

These days, the litany of resources available to churners makes it so easy to pivot quickly. I found new flights home from Geneva with way less YQ, which paid for cash flights to and from Edinburgh. I found a very nice Hilton in Edinburgh that had standard award availability. And most importantly, everything we wanted to change was fully cancelable. The entire process took about 45 minutes over a coffee. 

In a way, it brings back the best part of being a young backpacker – not worrying about planning every second, save for maybe some placeholder flights for flexibility. And believe me when I say that the bed at the Caledonian was much more comfortable than the average hostel bed. 

A lot of you are already evangelists for this style of travel – I know plenty of people who book most of their trips on a week or two’s notice. For anyone reading who finds the idea stressful, I really recommend giving it a try. Many of us were raised by (or are) airport dads, so I get it, but it’s just fun to be able to switch things up mid-trip based on what happens.

But you already knew all of this about award travel flexibility – it’s not exactly a secret. Where things get more interesting is on the cashback side of things. MS provides you an extreme amount of financial flexibility. And I don’t just mean “extra income = more flexibility”, which is obviously true, but isn’t the point.

Let’s take a hypothetical scenario. You’re doing well at MS (and possibly your W2) and you’ve saved more cash than is needed for you to feel comfortable as an emergency fund (or you already follow Cashback Cowgirl’s idea of the BHEF)

Let’s say you also recently got a mortgage at the prevailing market rate of ~7%. What’s the best way to deploy this excess cash?

The conventional personal finance logic would likely be one of these options:

• Keep it in a HYSA for flexibility and earn somewhere around 3.5-4%
• Invest it in an index fund and likely earn more than the HYSA, depending on how you feel about the AI bubble popping
• Put it towards the principal on your mortgage and lock in the guaranteed 7%

These are all solid options, but they all have downsides. The HYSA is a relatively low return. Investing carries risk (especially if you need liquidity during a market downturn). Putting money towards your mortgage requires a HELOC or cash out refinance if you ever need access to it, which aren’t exactly the quickest processes.

As a MSer, the calculation could be different. Even the most boring broad-market funds like VTI and SPY have been extremely lucrative the last 10 years. But as a MSer, the unit of measure you’re using isn’t APY – it’s more like DPY (or at least WPY). That kind of turnover adds up quickly, and you’re also free to deploy cash whenever things come up. 

Anyway, insert “I am not a financial advisor, this is not financial advice” copy/paste here. I’m not recommending that anyone liquidate their brokerage for MS. These are advanced strategies, and the flexibility I talk about goes completely up in smoke if you end up with frozen funds. I’ve had it happen before, and it’s not a good feeling. 

This is just a suggestion to think outside of the box and use the flexibility afforded to you by this hobby. Whether it’s avoiding an army of Cisk-pounding lads in Malta or having cash on hand to move quickly when an opportunity presents itself, the ability to change your mind without taking a financial hit is one of the best parts of the hobby. It’s worth remembering how valuable that flexibility is. 

Saħħa!