P2 and I diving with guitarsharks in Morrungulo, a remote town on the coast of southern Mozambique

Preamble

I’ve had the idea for this post rattling around in my brain for a couple of weeks, but I decided to write it down after the sad news posted on One Mile at a Time last week. 

It’s likely been awhile since you spent a ton of time reading OMAAT, but for me, it was a great place to start as a beginner. Additionally, you probably end up there every time you google “[Airline] [Plane Type] business class review” in anticipation of an upcoming award booking because Lucky is the review GOAT and has reviewed basically every product on earth. 

One thing I always thought was cool about OMAAT was how often Lucky endeavored to bring his loved ones on review shenanigans, often telling his father to just pack a bag and meet him at the airport for a surprise. I spent a lot of time daydreaming as a beginner about surprising my family like that.

He also covered the extensive travel he did with his mother after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. They were able to make the absolute most of her last years in a way that very, very few people get to do thanks at least in part to his expert knowledge of award programs.

The first thing I ever wrote about MS and churning was this MEAB guest post, and I feel even stronger now about how important it is to use some percentage of your earnings for experiences like this. MS and favorable award charts aren’t going to last forever, and neither are we. 

Whether it’s family, friends, pets, whatever, make space to do something cool with your stash of points, and bring someone along for the ride. Insert Anthony Bourdain quote here. 

Finding purpose in travel

The first time I ever traveled across the pond was a Spring Break study abroad when I was in college, visiting Lisbon and Porto in Portugal. I think 25% of my phone storage is still taken up by all the photos I took over a 9 day trip. Buildings, statues, food, water bottle labels, anything I saw I took a photo of.

I probably took more photos of one statue or building in Porto than I did in total over 3 weeks in Australia this summer.

I don’t feel bad or guilty about the fact that I wasn’t on the edge of my seat taking photos of everything like I was in Lisbon. Traveling more often (especially outside of a Western comfort zone) means that experiences that would once have been novel aren’t as stimulating.

And that’s ok – there’s nothing you can do about it. The more you travel, the smaller the world gets. And while a hobby involving amassing an absurd amount of points and miles does certainly help you travel more, this feeling is not at all exclusive to churners (albeit I will say that desensitization to the shock and awe of a premium cabin or luxury hotel is kind of a bummer).

My all time favorite writing of any kind on the internet is this frisson inducing post and top-level comment posted in 2012 on /r/IWantOut. While this is in the context of expatriation and vagabonding, it rings just as true for other types of travel and lives rent free in my head. 

“The more places you see, the more things you see that appeal to you, but no one place has them all. In fact, each place has a smaller and smaller percentage of the things you love, the more things you see.”

And while this comes across as solemn, I think it’s just a fact of life. Seeing something like a European McDonald’s or actually competent public transportation isn’t as fascinating the 100th time as it is the first. 

Once the pandemic subsided, P2 and I were chomping at the bit to travel internationally again like I’m sure many of you were. We decided to do a warm weather trip down to Honduras to try scuba diving and see if we wanted to get certified.

While it took some acclimation to truly fall in love, it has become 80% of our purpose for travel, maybe splitting 10% with food and 10% with hiking. For me, the staggering biodiversity experienced underwater was the key to feeling like a college student in Lisbon again.  

Additionally, the majority of the world’s best diving is disproportionately remote – sometimes, the truly unique interactions in far-flung parts of Mozambique or the Philippines or the conversations with fellow divers over lunch on Sipadan Island or a liveaboard in the Coral Sea are even better than the underwater life.

This isn’t scuba diving propaganda – you either love it or hate it. My advice is to find whatever your driving interest is, agnostic of geographic location. Whether it’s something manmade like art, architecture or food or a natural wonder like trekking or birdwatching, there is something out there ready to attract your attention to some unique destinations that wouldn’t be on your radar otherwise.  

If anything, you may quickly find yourself in a similar situation to the beginning of your MS fueled travel – you have the ability to experience the best the world has to offer at whatever drives you to travel, at a rate faster than many other people do. But speaking from experience, sometimes the “world’s best” lists leave off plenty of hidden gems.

I hope you’re able to find whatever that passion is for you.

“None of this is to suggest that one should ever reduce travel. It’s just a warning to young travelers, to expect, as part of the price, a rich life tinged with a bit of sadness and loneliness, and angst that’s like the same nostalgia everyone feels for special parts of their past, except multiplied by a thousand.”

Hey, if you made it this far, leave one of your favorite travel memories in the comment. I’d love to hear them.

This post will be less cryptic than usual, because it’s discussing a play that everybody reading this was at least aware of (and hopefully, you’ve been using it for the last few years). 

It’s time for the weekly reporting on the 2025 war on happiness, as Citi has finally decided to (likely) kill off the legendary Shop Your Way card, a bizarre partnership they had with all but defunct retailer Sears. 

I say likely because the card is discontinued and current cardholders will have theirs converted to some type of Citi Mastercard on November 3rd. However, nobody is 100% sure if the lucrative spending offers will continue or not. 

They have stuck through previous iterations of the card product, but the axing of the Shop Your Way program in general leads me to believe somebody at Citi that actually has a brain started looking into the P&L on these offers.

In case you didn’t have the card, the big draw was a never-ending parade of spend related offers that all stacked and mapped nicely to common MS categories. This past year, most of us with the card had multiple year long offers offering between 5x-10x cashback each month in certain categories, with 1-2 ad hoc offers per month that were generously open categories (i.e. “online shopping”) that stacked nicely with the year-long offers. 

If you had the card at the start of this year and qualified for the two yearlong offers, you likely profited somewhere between $5-$6k depending on how low you could get your cost and number of ad hoc offers qualified for.

It wasn’t a huge scalable play that will pay for your lime green Aventador, but it was essentially as easy as finding $5k on the ground, and especially spicy if you had multiple players. 

For a lot of us, the speculation isn’t “why did they kill it”, it’s “how did it possibly take this long?” – the offers were so generous, widely targeted, and again, stackable. It wasn’t uncommon to be earning 20% back on spend, which simply isn’t sustainable when the card had even become the darling of /r/creditcards. 

There was a theory that financially illiterate folks who were still clinging to Sears’ existence and carrying a balance on the card is what kept it afloat, but who knows – as of this post, there are only 5 Sears left in the entire world and even the most financially misinformed people know it ain’t coming back. 

Anyway, if this is the end, R.I.P. Shop Your Way card, a true unsung hero. 

But I promised that there would be hope for the future in this post too. As much of a bummer as it can be to conduct the autopsy on a dead play, the SYW one is kind of fun because it is the perfect example of what to look for in a lucrative play and illustrates some of the points I’ve made in what to look for in the past:

• A product involving an archaic legacy consumer brand? ✅
• A backend that seemed to be an even jankier version of an already janky backend? ✅
• A baffling mismatch between the motives of the marketing team creating the promos and the finance team responsible for the portfolio’s P&L? ✅
• Hell, even a little boost in +EV (via SYW points) that allowed you to treat yourself every once in awhile? ✅

While it looks like this may be the curtain call for a play that punched seriously above its weight, It’s a great example of what to look out for when probing in the future. I can think of a couple of live plays that share some of these characteristics, too. 

Until next time, y’all!

Back when I was a doe-eyed fresh college grad, I got my first 9-5. The job entailed a certain duty that required an end-of-year post mortem as part of the review process. At the end of that first year, I remember chuckling at my one-year-ago self for thinking I was good at the job. I felt even stronger about it at the end of year two, looking back at the first.

By the end of the third year, I’d learned that measuring self-worth in how efficient I was at generating stakeholder value wasn’t the greatest approach. But I had also learned that even activities without a measuring stick like school or sports can be measured in continuous learning, and it’s not a competition that you’re having with yourself. 

I think about that in the context of churning and MS now. If you asked me 3 years ago (or 2 years ago) if my current scale qualified as whale, I would easily say yes. Today, I don’t feel that way at all. The more you learn and the more people you meet, you realize what is possible.

Unlike my job example, there are clear metrics you can use to measure in churning and MS. But it’s not like there is some magical threshold of spend, profit, premium cabins booked, or combination thereof that automatically grants you access to the super secret upper echelon in the same way that a 4.0 GPA or 4.3 40 does.

In my eyes, the goal you should be shooting for is growth. Whether that means an increase in balances, efficiency, or something else is up to you. 

Taking inspiration from the heavy hitters you know is smart, but comparison is the thief of joy. Everybody’s situation is different, you should go at your own pace, and there may be some other things hampering you.

Here are some difficult to circumvent reasons that may leave you unable to keep up with your cetacean brethren, and not for lack of trying:

• You’re in your early to mid 20s, and banks don’t want to give you big credit limits for lack of credit history
• You don’t have a built in roster of extra players willing to let you scale horizontally
• You don’t live near any of the important brick and mortar stores for street MS
• You live in a state that hates fun, entertainment and/or diversity of crypto platforms

Ultimately, you’ll likely have your best luck finding some friends operating at a similar scale with similar capabilities so that you can scale up together. That’s not to say that you can’t learn a ton from a whale if you aren’t one yet – just that your possibilities might be different. 

Before I go, I’ll leave you with this rather absurd real world example of continuous learning so that you can have a laugh at my expense.  

Having more than one phone is fairly common in the churning and MS world. There’s a myriad of lucrative horizontal scaling reasons to have one that I won’t touch on here, or it could be as simple as having a separate phone to avoid bothering your P2. 

Well, I bought a second phone for a much more frivolous “MS” reason a few years ago. You may remember the “excitement” when AA became the first airline to give you a fairly straightforward path to elite status solely through MS. 

Yours truly wasn’t exactly a heavy hitter back then, and I spent some time in the ol’ AA Loyalty Point Hunters Facebook group. It was a group of people that were spending quite a bit of money to earn status on an airline they rarely flew, and I was no better.

Verizon was offering some trivial amount (8k?) of AA miles through the portal if you signed up for a new plan, and a bunch of folks were recommending a certain refurbished flip phone. The first one I bought was a lemon, and the second one didn’t have the ability to be used on that plan. I took multiple trips to the UPS store and wasted a bunch of time reading for a burner that is probably still collecting dust in the closet somewhere and a grand total of zero (0) AA miles.

Different plays, same tools – all a result of learning more. Stay curious and happy humpday.

I originally had a fun, light-hearted post planned for a weekend bonus. However, the churning news from the last week has been rough, so I thought I’d discuss that instead and offer some positive reframing.

The 2025 war on happiness continued this week, as a couple of banks made the decision to axe a relatively wide swathe of churners. This was significant for two reasons: first is that both banks have a built-in advantage in the cost vs revenue equation, and the second is that the yardstick they used for “abuse” is a lot smaller than some of the shutdowns we’ve seen this year. 

First off – if you were affected, I’m sorry to hear it. Getting shutdown blows, but getting shutdown by banks with the aforementioned advantage that you weren’t even hitting all that hard in the grand scheme of things blows even more. I’m seeing a lot of folks say that this was their first “real” shutdown that wasn’t a random fintech, and it isn’t a good feeling, even if it doesn’t really matter.

In full transparency, I wasn’t shut down (this go around), but that is because said issuer believes that I deserve the credit limit of a high schooler working 10 hours a week at McDonald’s and the juice was never worth the squeeze. 

It’s easy for me to say from my perch where I don’t have enough credit limit with this issuer to buy a new iPhone, but I don’t think this is the end of the world for a lot of us.

First – this issuer doesn’t mind if you’ve decided that the relationship isn’t over yet. Just go ahead and lob in an application for the card that was shut down, and it will be like nothing happened (outside of the lost points, which does suck). 

Second – this issuer shares a similar portfolio of bonus categories, advantageous methods of bill payment and utter disdain for personal card cycling with another major issuer. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather “杀全家” by the issuer who boasts major partners like QVC and Mattress Firm and issues a “Sewing & More” card than the one that has American Airlines, EVA and Qatar as transfer partners. But that’s just me.

Outside of shutdowns, here is my positive thought for the day. This isn’t a self-help blog, and I am the last person you should be taking advice from anyway. But one thing I’ve learned over years of therapy is how powerful self-reflection can be for pushing through a bummer of a situation.

The other day, I was thinking about how well I’d be doing in the final 2025 tally if the loops that are currently “money printer go brrrr” were stacked on top of the loops that were alive as recently as 4 months ago. 

While this is true, it is what it is. Nothing stays alive forever in MS, and instead of moping about it, I decided to remind myself of some of the cool things I’ve done in the past thanks to this hobby. That led me to the original premise for this post that will come back around someday – experiences while traveling. 

Chances are, you’ve probably had some really cool experiences if you hit something hard enough to be shut down. Regardless if that means crazy travel or something like paying cash for home improvement, it changes your life for the better. 

While the banks can take away your ability to continue earning more points and miles via shutting you down, they can’t take away the amazing things you already did as a result of a MS. Someday, AI is going to kill all of the fun, but at least you’ll have one wild camera roll. 

祝大家周末愉快!

One aspect of traveling in Latin America I’ve always found fascinating is brujería, literally translated as witchcraft. Brujería is a melting pot of Indigenous, African and European beliefs and culture that influenced religions like Santería, Candomblé and Umbanda.

It’s a super interesting topic that is much deeper than this, but as a traveler, you may encounter it in tourist-y forms at places like the Mercado Sonora that is part of the greater La Merced market in Mexico City or El Mercado de las Brujas in La Paz, Bolivia. At these markets, there are all manners of potions, talismans, powders and more promising, among other things, good luck.     

I’d like to thank my good friend and close collaborator smugdog for the idea for today’s post. When we aren’t discussing Eastern European card dealers, we spend a lot of time unraveling the nuances of debit targets, especially a certain prominent one (don’t spend time guessing – if you’re reading this, you know the target). 

He mentioned that sometimes it feels like brujería to get this target to accept your card, and he is absolutely correct. It’s kind of funny that a hobby that is so constrained by systems, guidelines and structure can sometimes have a mystical element of luck to it. But in my opinion, there can be. 

Why is this target (and many others) tricky like this? Well, a lot of platforms in MS can be loaded in a lot of different ways. Between many versions of an app, a website that can be accessed by many different browsers, and many debit cards to use, there are a lot of combinations of access method + payment method for you to try out.

The vast majority of the time, they will all behave the same. But not 100% of the time. And not always related to those two variables, either. The genesis of this blog post was smug and I dissecting a weird occurrence with said target. 

While he has a perpetually working combo as mentioned above, I don’t. It doesn’t matter if I’m on mobile or desktop, mobile wallet vs. debit card, my transactions don’t go through. Until I leave my house, that is. 

All I have to do is head down the street to my local brewery, hop on their Wifi, and the transactions go through, all else the same. The bartender I’m friendly with that’s always there when I’m doing this is probably confused why I went from going there to relax with my dogs to hunched over my laptop, but hey, it pays for the beers. 

While it’s an interesting anecdote, this likely isn’t actionable insight for you. You (probably) don’t live in the same city as me or drink beers at the same small brewery. And on top of that, you could probably find a way to get this target working on your own IP address, because most people can. 

So why am I sharing the story? It illustrates some of the things that are important for success in MS and churning:

• The MEAB mantra of “always be probing” – there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and what works for someone else may not work for you
• The importance of building a network and befriending people with similar goals to collaborate (and gamble) with
• That sometimes things aren’t what they seem, and you won’t know until you try

I can’t tell you what winning combination will work for you on this, but I can say that keeping these ideas in mind will help. 

¡Mucha suerte con la investigación, amigos!

Housekeeping note: I enabled comments in case you wanted to leave one on a post. Don’t feel obligated to, but I’d love to hear your thoughts, even if you think I’m wrong (I frequently am). h/t to my friend Dave for suggesting this.

When I came up with the name of this blog, I didn’t really consider that Cetacean is a hard word to pronounce because I’d never actually said it out loud and didn’t think I would any time soon. 

However, my friend Kai over at the Daily Churn has been kind enough to shout me out multiple times on his podcast. In his most recent episode, he quipped that Chasing Crustaceans rolls off the tongue better (he is right), and would be a good blog name for a theoretical partner blog about more shrimp-y churning activities.

So in an ode to the shrimp, crabs, lobsters and others that make up the crustacean family, I’m going to zoom out a bit and talk at a high level about some of the soft skills that made a difference for me in moving from somewhere in the intermediate realm to somewhere in the advanced realm. I think they go in a somewhat sequential order. 

Being proactive

This is the single most important thing for a shrimp to do, full stop. Regardless of whether you’re able to finagle your way into a private chat discussing big plays, nobody is going to want to spoon feed you the answer to something you would be able to easily figure out on your own. 

You know what’s not a ton of fun? Reading through a backlog of months (if not years) of discussion on reddit, Flyertalk, or a private group. But you know what else isn’t fun? Losing a lot of money because your play died due to overexposure, someone calling the bank, etc. 

There’s a misconception that the community is unfriendly to beginners. That isn’t really true, but the perceived frustration comes from answering the same easily answered questions over and over again from people who weren’t proactive. 

I understand how this happens though – in the last few years, churning has exploded even more into the public eye and there are Instagram influencers everywhere writing what amounts to old school direct response copywriting to try and get you to open whatever card is paying the highest affiliate link. 

I feel for the people that are coming into this blindly and looking to get better at it – I’m just saying it will work out much better if you research as much as possible before asking a question. Most people like to help if they can tell that has happened. 

Finding your group

As a result of this newfound popularity, there are more places than ever to discuss churning and MS. However, while reddit used to be the main source of discussion, the need to keep things alive drove a lot of people away from /r/churning. Nowadays, the only time you’ll see the old heads there is something like the AApocalypse or the fall of Hardbody. 

There are plenty of smaller groups out there, both paid and not. As you can imagine, there’s a decent chunk of overlap between a lot of groups, especially on a big day. But each group does have its specialties, and varying demographics and knowledge levels means they will approach things in different ways. There’s also variation in culture – some stay focused pretty much exclusively on churning and MS, others allow banter and off-topic discussion. 

It might take you some time to find the one that’s the best fit for you – like I said, there is overlap, but you’ll eventually find one that fits best. After that, you can reduce paid subscriptions if you have multiple and mute the noise from unpaid groups that aren’t aligned with your goals. 

I think finding a group (or groups) of like minded people with similar knowledge but different specialties is a great way to network and collaborate on plays. Overexposure is a bad thing, but nobody has time to probe every single possibility. Strength in (small) numbers. 

Build your network

Once you’ve succeeded at building your knowledge of the various aspects of churning and MS you’ll encounter somewhere along the way from intermediate to advanced and found the right community for you to continue to learn and grow, it’s time to start networking. 

You’ll eventually find yourself in a situation where somebody:

• Drops a breadcrumb you know a bit about
• Asks an informed question about something you know the answer to
• Provides detail like physical location, day job, MS stack or similar that show you have something in common

When these situations arise, this is a chance to build your network even more. Whether it’s asking help for the final 1% of a puzzle, helping someone with a puzzle you’ve already solved, or just making a new friend, conversations that start outside of a larger group are often mutually beneficial.

I am friends with true whales, people at a similar Orca-esque level to me, and others that are content operating at a crustacean level. There’s true value in having a diverse network of different viewpoints of what scale is. 

It’s not just about the diversity of MS spend, either. Having friends in your backyard probing similar local things is awesome, but some of the people I collaborate with closest are across the country from me.  

Hopefully this is helpful for those of you that are trying to figure out some of the next steps. Make sure you’re operating at a level that you’re comfortable at, even if it tops out at shrimp.