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. 

Today, you will get a never ending barrage of referral-laden blog posts about how amazing the new Amex Platinum is, how it pays for itself 3x over, how it killed the CSR, how to use your Lululemon credit, blah, blah, blah. 

The changes released today are a big deal for folks that are primarily juggling annual fee vs card benefits, but there is another Amex benefit change effective today that will have a much wider effect across the churning and MS world. Especially if you are a travel agent that does not specialize in the route referenced in this post.

The market valuation (and I’m not talking about TPG valuations, lol) of certain miles and points can change overnight. While you may think that changes to award charts is what drives this, it’s usually something that seems tangential that moves the markets in this way (with Delta as a noticeable exception). 

Let’s look at some recent examples:

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan / Atmos

For a long time, Alaska was probably the most valuable mileage currency of the American domestic carriers. They had a unique lineup of partners that wasn’t constrained by alliance (until now, RIP) and an appealing award chart. Additionally, Bank of America issues their cards, and they must not pay as much to affiliates because they aren’t part of the big 3 that are pushed to beginners. 

This year, Alaska miles took a nosedive in terms of market value before soaring through the roof. What changes did Alaska make that drove these changes? It wasn’t anything partner or award pricing related (although losing SQ and LA is a big bummer) 

It was actually their merger with Hawaiian that drove both changes. There was a limited time window where you could convert HA to AS before the merger was complete. Since HA was a transfer partner with Amex, you could convert MR to AS at a direct 1:1. Therefore, AS fell to the market value for a MR transfer, which was much lower than the previous value.

Once that window closed and Amex couldn’t be transferred to AS, the market value rose above even its previous high. Why? They’re back to being difficult to earn at scale unless you know how, and there are still fantastic sweet spots like low cost domestic AA F that gives enough space for both churner and end user to find some margin.

Citi ThankYou Points

Here’s an example of a transferable currency that has fluctuated quite a bit over the last couple of years. Interestingly, while TYPs are more difficult to earn at scale for most people due to Citi’s aggressive KYC shenanigans, they generally have the lowest market value among the big 3.

The major reason for this is that they give zero incentive to book through their portal like Amex and Chase do – all of Citi’s market value is driven by their transfer partners. 

In perusing the list, there aren’t a ton that stand out. Citi obviously had a huge win earlier this year in locking in AA as a permanent transfer partner, but as you may know, booking anyone besides yourself and family with AA miles isn’t exactly the greatest idea unless you don’t want to keep your AA account.

They have a couple of interesting hotel options like Accor and Leaders Club for niche redemptions, but almost all of their airline partners are shared with other transferable currencies and not that exciting outside of transfer bonuses.

Except for one – EVA Air. At face value, it doesn’t seem exciting. EVA is a member of Star Alliance and can be booked with plenty of partners. They are also a transfer partner with Capital One. But there are two caveats. First, EVA is one of the very few carriers offering TPAC premium cabins that consistently releases multiple business class award seats at saver fare, and often only within their own Infinity MileageLands program. Second, only Citi transfers 1:1 – Capital One is 1000:750.

So why does a carrier based in Taiwan offering limited flights to the US drive the market for an American bank’s transferable currency? Well, the same agents mentioned above that will not be affected much by today’s changes have plenty of buyers for EVA award seats. They hit the sweet spot of dependable and affordable availability with a premium product to ensure demand is always high.

That doesn’t mean the Citi TYP market is steady by any means. In fact, it’s pretty much driven by how many hoops EVA makes you jump through to get points from the original earner to the end user. Not every TYP and EVA account is the same in this regard, and the market price moves accordingly. 

And in today’s news…

To come back around to where this post started – today, Amex will remove the 35% MR rebate on all business class flights booked through their portal. Instead, you’ll only get it on the airline you chose for your incidental credit. 

As a churner, this is annoying. Personally, I loved using it for cheap Aeromexico business fares when transferring to AM made no sense. 

As a “travel agent”, this is potentially very disruptive. If you’re only able to provide competitive pricing on 1% of the world’s airlines compared to all of them like you used to, you may be turning away a lot of business. 

I don’t have a crystal ball to tell you what will change today, but my guess would be a small drop in MR value, at least temporarily. But ultimately, unless United pulls out of Shanghai, everything’s not lost.

Since I started writing this blog a few weeks ago, I’ve had some really good conversations with readers. One of the common threads I’m hearing is that a lot of us are feeling kind of exhausted from staying on top of a game that has been particularly brutal to play lately. For the vast majority of us, the ROI and scalability hasn’t been the same as it was last year, or even a few months ago. 

I can’t help you not be exhausted when churning and MSing, and you shouldn’t take self care advice from me anyway. But there are some things you can do to take a step back from the MS grind and remember why you started this hobby in the first place.

I will admit that I have never read a FIRE blog or listened to a FIRE podcast, so this advice is coming squarely from the land of vibes accounting. But even if you’re strictly adhering to a path of financial independence, there is room to do something fun with your spoils. 

Sometimes, 99% optimized is good enough

This thought came out of a chat with my buddy capncrunch, a.k.a. Jim Lahey. We were sharing views on MSing your way to Hyatt Globalist if you were to utilize a particular low-cost lever that is also not particularly valuable for bonus categories.

He (correctly) pointed out that the smartest move is to not use a Hyatt card on this avenue, and to use a Chase Freedom Unlimited instead. 1.5 URs is obviously better than 1 Hyatt, both from an earning rate and relative value perspective. With this method, you could either transfer the larger haul of points to Hyatt, find a way to cash them out at a higher rate to pay cash, buy suite awards/Guest of Honor certs, or some combination of all three. 

This is objectively true and makes the CFU the obvious better choice. I do have a CFU, but I will continue to MS Globalist on my Hyatt card. Why? I get a lot of happiness out of being able to use GoH and SUA certs on stays for my family (and occasionally myself) and it’s much easier than explaining to them why some random person they don’t know is transferring one to them. 

This isn’t the most optimized choice – I am essentially buying Hyatt at an acquisition cost that 99% of us would be content with and the free nights, certificates and status is just an add-on. 

But running all of the boring, low hanging fruit loops creates enough profit that a slightly suboptimal play like this can be worth it when my parents are traveling and I can get them a bunch of valuable freebies without thinking twice. 

Regardless of which one of us you side with here, I think we can all agree that either method is significantly less exhausting than a good old fashioned mattress run (unless you’re doing a “mattress run”). As much fun as being told not to say my room number out loud at check-in because of a serious meth problem at the Hyatt Place Columbus or startling the hell out of my Uber driver who was taking me back to the train station 2 minutes after dropping me off at a different Hyatt, I’m glad that earning Globalist from my office is an option. 

Compartmentalize credits/earnings

This one is really difficult when you’re aware that pretty much any point, mile, credit, or absurd coupon can be converted to cash at market rate. But I think occasionally treating yourself with your churning spoils by doing something for yourself that you would never do normally can be quite beneficial for avoiding the inevitable feeling of exhaustion.

Here’s a couple of real life examples that you could apply:

• Try actually using things like Amex FHR credits on travel for yourself or family. Sure, you could broker them, but even outside of the occasional startling hijinks that result from doing that, sometimes it’s just fun to stay at a hotel that isn’t part of a giant American chain. 
• Sometimes lost in the shuffle of the never-ending stackable offers on everybody’s favorite store card is the fact that you do earn points that are redeemable for gift cards. Since the cashback offers are often correlated with high earning bonus categories, it doesn’t take long to build a somewhat nice stash of SYW points. Could you convert them all into VGCs to be liquidated back into your MS bankroll or VTSAX? Sure, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Personally, I use those funds as my “splurge” fund to indulge my sneakerhead habit (eBay certified pre-owned, of course) and it’s been helpful to not feel bad buying something frivolous. The SYW card is also not the only example of a relatively small rewards balance you could do this with.
• Perhaps most importantly – I think there is something to be said for “holding” some percentage of your monthly points hauls for actual redemptions. Whether that means booking travel or a little bit of extra splurging if you don’t want to travel, it’s almost like tax withholding on your earnings. For example, those of us that are currently eating well on the weekends might want to hold aside 25k or 50k each month for redemptions – there are plenty of good airline and hotel options even if you don’t transfer right away. 

Will doing any of these things fix the bummer that has been MSing in 2025? Unfortunately, no. But it might help frame that there is still plenty of value to be had, and that said value can extend beyond balances going brrrrrr. 

Take care of yourself out there!

(which is something cats aren’t good at)

A lot of MSers spend a majority of their time probing new fintechs, banks and platforms in an effort to find the next big play. This is a smart way to spend your time, since so many plays die quickly due to too many people hitting it, the scale at which people are hitting, or both. Finding something new means you may get to have an internal “no debit cards accepted” rule named after you.

That is never going to happen at a big, publicly traded company because all of us are already aware of them. But what big companies may lack in obscurity, they more than make up for in random product launches outside of their original specialty and pointless bureaucracy.

If one were to do the opposite of scouring the dark corners of the internet for a unicorn, where would the best place to look be? The Fortune 500, of course. 

It’s funny to scroll through the list and think about how many of the conglomerates featured on there are involved in churning and MS to some degree – whether as a key platform, a target, or even both. But it isn’t immediately obvious if you’re a beginner or intermediate MSer. Let’s discuss the companies on just the Fortune 100 through a MS and churning lens.

A beginner would definitely count 9 of the Fortune 100 – the six biggest churning banks and the three airlines. Maybe 10 if they really like buying Hue lights and include Dell. Perhaps even throw in Boeing since they make planes.

An intermediate level would probably name somewhere between 25-30 – outside of the previous 10, there are plenty of important companies to add for churners. FAANG companies like Amazon and Apple for buyers groups, gas stations and grocery stores for street MS, Costco for gold, etc. They’d also remove Boeing, because it’s not actually related.

An advanced MSer would say that more than half the list is involved in MS in some capacity. Here’s the big distinction between the first ~25 and the second ~25 – the first grouping is all about ways to increase your spend. The second grouping is primarily ways to increase your liquidation, hence why these angles aren’t publicly talked about. 

A handful are a little tenuous (after all, the GOAT credit card has been discontinued for six years), but most of these companies added in the advanced tier are very helpful for allowing you to score a lot of very small wins that snowball into quite a haul over time. 

And yes, even some of the companies on there that make products that only exist for you to waste your time have a liquidation angle to them – any time a company gets ambitious and starts adding random functionality to their platform a la an Asian superapp, there are opportunities to make money off of it. 

I chose the Fortune 100 for the sake of brevity, but if you continue further down the list, you’ll find plenty of important companies for MSers – some are obvious (PayPal, Dollar General, Synchrony, etc. etc. etc.) while some are not. 

If you don’t see the second batch of companies that are relevant, take a scroll through the list and think about your goal – liquidation of spend that already occurred, not an increase in spending. 

All that to say – the core of your next home run play may be a company that doesn’t even exist yet, but the old standbys that have stood the test of time for MSers are chilling at the top of the Fortune 500, too big to act swiftly on unprofitable activity from savvy customers. 

Happy searching, my friends