I’ve written a lot about how things change as you progress from shrimp towards whale. Your perception of risk changes. Your perception of scale changes. But it’s not just how you think that changes. It’s what you know, too. 

Early on, a lot of us allocated all of our brain power to things like historical SUB numbers, organic categories, credit amounts and transfer bonuses. That makes sense as a beginner because all of those topics are the perfect place to work in a never-ending array of affiliate links. 

As you start to travel and do cool things as a result of this hobby, your friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, etc. begin to notice and want to know more. It’s only natural as reward cards are a part of the cultural zeitgeist these days.

At a beginner and intermediate level, you’re in the perfect position to help your loved ones put together a churning plan. After all, the surface level of churning knowledge is fresh in your mind, and you recently walked this path yourself. I used to love helping my friends develop a strategy to maximize their earnings with minimal effort. 

But as you become more advanced, you spend very little time thinking about the aforementioned topics. The math on a new card is just SUB – fee + credits that don’t involve going to a random Hilton. Even the non-SUB bonused spend gets boring quickly when the vast majority of issuers have learned an uncapped lesson. 

It’s similar on the redemption side of things. The importance of waiting on transfer bonuses or wading through complicated partner award charts becomes less and less important when your ability to earn wildly outpaces your ability to burn. 

And as you travel more and become comfortable with being flexible, you may find yourself booking a TT alert on a whim vs. a regimented T-330 approach to ANA J. Hell, you may find yourself booking cash when it makes sense.

These shifts in thought process aren’t necessarily good or bad – we all have limited mental bandwidth, and a lot of things in this hobby feel purposely convoluted (looking at you, EVA). But as your focus moves from optimization to scale, your ability to answer a simple question like “what card should I get” gets trickier, too.

I wrote this post because a coworker asked me that exact question. It was easy to answer because she has family abroad and wanted to fly with a particularly promiscuous transfer partner, but it got me thinking about how hard that question is to answer nowadays. 

What is the best card? I have no idea, because I don’t really pay attention to SUBs even when they’re being shoved in my face. What card allows the best redemptions? I have no idea – I don’t even remember if the T-330 window I referenced above is still the correct window for availability drops, and I’m leaving that (probably inaccurate) note to illustrate my point. 

I think most of us still do quite well for ourselves while glossing over the breathless proselytizing of a 100k SUB from an issuer that isn’t even exciting anymore. But with that does come some inability to help your crew out with certain things. 

For example, an advanced churner would answer “what card should I get to pay this $5k bill” very differently than a beginner. You’d also get some head turns for suggesting a card with a $30k SUB or $895 fee. But you’re obviously basing your math off of a different exercise than they are, which is ok. It’s a good thing that not everybody gets sucked in deep, because it’s not for everyone.

Anyway, for all of the exhausting parts of this hobby, let’s not forget how life changing it can be, even if you aren’t ever entering the deep end. Even the people you know that are least interested in far flung adventures have some sort of leisure that churning will help them accomplish. 

If you have people asking for advice while you’re deep in the throes of something that will look hieroglyphic to them, you can always open DoC and spend 5 minutes getting the current lay of the land. To kill two birds with one stone, you’d also be able to let them know they can get a free Krispy Kreme donut if they show up wearing Pokemon attire.

Jerammon!

Pictured: Some DoCheads who weren’t able to source authentic Pokemon attire and gave up on the free donuts