If you read enough MS related writing, you’ll find that there’s often cryptic (or semi-cryptic) references to finding new ways to try certain things to get them to work better. Much like “always be probing”, it’s one of those things that is kind of hard to wrap your head around until you understand what you’re looking for.
Matt wrote an insightful post that explored this train of thought this week through the lens of the Whoop credit on Sapphire cards.
The learning here is less about getting a Whoop for free, unless giving your health data to a third party is your jam. Instead, it unpacks what actually happens when you pay using a mobile wallet.
It would be easy as a beginner or intermediate churner to think that using a mobile wallet just randomly greases the wheels of the transaction, but that’s not what’s happening. Using the mobile wallet obscures the real card number, and there’s a lot of utility in that feature.
While using a mobile wallet (or wrapping in PayPal) is the most classic MS example of “this seems random, but works”, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to random quirks. It’s prudent to note breadcrumbs that call out the potential of something not being like what it seems.
Payment options might be obvious, but here are some other things to think about that may (or may not) make a difference:
What VPN you’re on
What version of the platform you’re using
What WiFi network you’re on
What account login you’re using
How your intended target is receiving funds
Where your card is
There’s no promise that tinkering with a factor that seems unlikely to change things will make a difference. Sometimes, it really may be santeria. But I’ve never regretted giving it a try.
For every modern fintech that is built to best-in-class standards, there’s an old legacy FI that has an infrastructure made of swiss cheese (and sometimes, those best-in-class fintechs aren’t so best-in-class on the backend).
There’s no way to know if there’s an angle until you try. Test some adjustments to some variables, but don’t forget to channel your old grade school science class. Adjust them one at a time to establish clear cause and effect, because accidentally identifying the wrong one can be a costly mistake. Ask me how I know.
I originally started writing this a few weeks ago, but life got in the way. That might have ended up working out, because it’s as topical as ever this week.
While the community is focused on another, much higher profile nerf, there’s another one worth acknowledging that is more like death by a thousand cuts.
Unless you live under a churning news related rock, you are aware that the sign up bonus on the Chase Sapphire Reserve is now up to 150k URs.
At face value, it’s kind of interesting, especially since Chase has long been reluctant to follow Amex into the giga-offers that have accompanied the large increases in annual fees on both issuers’ flagship cards. To me, it feels like too little, too late, and I’m really struggling to see where Chase fits into my plans.
For ages, Chase was the darling of the churning world. They had a suite of transfer partners that were especially easy to use in the US, it wasn’t difficult to use the credits associated with Chase cards, and most importantly, they had the 5/24 rule.
By ensuring that they were the first issuer that the vast majority of us started with in deference to said rule, Chase was assured the most prominent spot in many a credit card YouTuber’s thumbnail.
Pictured: the only YouTube thumbnail worth sharing
And for a long time, they deserved that top of mind spot. Whether you were chasing SUBs or one of the biggest whales out there, Chase had an interesting angle for you.
On the award travel side of the house, Chase had quite a bit to offer. They were the key to earning the legendary Southwest companion pass (I openly admit that was one of my first big wins) and was the only way to top up your WN balance to continue utilizing it.
They had a very unique and useful transfer partner in Korean Air Skypass. They had a very solid Star Alliance partner for both domestic and international redemptions in United. And perhaps most importantly, they had the most vaunted transfer partner of them all – World of Hyatt.
And on the shenanigan-y side of things, they also had a lot of unique opportunities that provided outsize value for whales over the years. Whether that was partnerships with other brands, generous liquidation options during the pandemic, or the recently lucrative Points Boost, there was lots of room for cetacean maximizers to do what they do best.
But times have changed – quite a bit. Elliott Management ensured that the things that made Southwest unique fell by the wayside in the name of shareholder value. Chase lost Korean Air as a partner in 2018 and utterly failed to replace them with an exclusive partner of similar value. United has hacked their award chart to shreds over the last few years.
Perhaps most timely is Hyatt’s across the board award devaluation, but I don’t even see it as wildly consequential in the grand scheme of things. After all, Hyatt isn’t exclusive to Chase anymore. Neither is United.
For what it’s worth, I’m not even angry at Hyatt. They held out way longer than anybody expected, and with reimbursement rates for award bookings going through the roof, I’d imagine it wasn’t wildly sustainable.
On the MS side of things, things aren’t much better. Most of the aforementioned opportunities are dead for being too fun, and their most recent interesting addition is essentially dead on arrival as well.
It’s especially tricky because Chase’s whole justification for axing the longstanding differentiator of 1.5x redemption in the UR portal via the CSR was adding Points Boost. If you decide mere months in to nerf the benefit, fine.
But there’s a lot of $795 fees that are going to be hard to justify now that we shifted from easy 1.5cpp redemptions and advantageous United fares to cheap cash fares on…Turkish?
While Chase is taking all these steps in the name of the enshittification of their card portfolio, their competitors are actively getting better. Wells Fargo is adding transfer partners. Bilt is adding transfer partners. Capital One is adding transfer partners. Even MS institutions are adding transfer partners (and some interesting, unique ones at that). Meanwhile, Chase is too busy adding coupons and axing truly useful features to worry about that.
This isn’t to say that there is no use for Chase. There’s some level of value, but it’s much harder to extract. On the bright side, I’m excited to potentially have less competition at the Blackhawk rack at my local Staples, I guess?
For me, this is yet another nudge towards a focus on cashback. With less outsized redemptions available, it’s easier to focus on the exact property you want, regardless of award affiliation or redemption chart.
Personally, I’m kind of looking forward to being freed from defaulting to Hyatt due to a psychological need to get a good deal. There’s a lot of otherinterestinghotelpointsprograms out there, and that’s before just…paying cash.
I’m grateful for all the good times I had with Chase. Those SW companion pass redemptions are some of my favorites. So was booking the legendary Andaz Papagayo for 15k UR/night. But those times are long since in the rearview at this point, and we’re better off focusing on what’s ahead.
Today is the day that a lot of us in the community have seen coming for awhile. While its time was up, I don’t think the harbingers really need to spend any time claiming a victory lap. After all, it was a shell of its former self.
While the ending was much more squeak than bang, that doesn’t discount what it was. And I think when you have a good thing in MS for awhile, it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking it’s going to stick around forever. Avoiding the napkin math exercise is hard.
I’ve seen too many of my friends in the community save for houses, pay tuition, and help loved ones to have too many jokes today, so I’ll spare you the rant. I’ve been critical of it, it wasn’t sustainable, but that doesn’t invalidate the very real effect it had on people’s lives.
So instead of anger or sadness or schadenfreude, today I’m going to reminisce on a truly interesting time to be in the game. And maybe a feeling of happiness that nobody is on the phone all day in $200/$250 increments anymore.
Today is a good reminder that even the comically long running things eventually die in MS. Finding a new play is an adrenaline rush, but plan around it being a forever play at your own peril.
As Kenny Rogers (TIL actually written by someone named Don Schlitz) famously said, there’ll be time for counting when the dealing’s done.
Pictured: an interesting thought exercise from Google – but if you have to ask, you can’t afford it
From the very beginning steps you take in this hobby, there’s an implicit sense of urgency. The big sign up bonuses that fuel your first redemptions require spending on a certain timeline, generally 90 days.
While most of us unfortunately have adult obligations that make offers like $4,000 of spend in 90 days a breeze, larger requirements like the Amex Business Platinum or Capital One Spark charge card seem daunting at first.
Over time, as you progress, those $20k-$30k requirements start to feel simple too. Once you have a proven method to knock out spending, it’s easy to think back to the beginning of your churning career and laugh at the requirements you used to worry about.
Of course, comparison is the thief of joy, wherever you go, there you are, or insert your own favorite cliched way of saying that it’s all relative.
I also think it’s better for you to not lose that sense of urgency. While SUBs get easier with time, the need to carefully consider the timing of debits and credits only gets more complex. In a way, the retro /r/churning example of properly timing Southwest SUBs for a companion pass is the beginner version of what I’m about to talk about.
Somewhere along the way from fish to dolphin to whale, you’re moving a lot of money around, and the velocity of that money will have an effect on your profits.
While we all dream of that one unicorn that is an instant in and out loop, those are few and far between. Instead, you’re likely to be constrained by all sorts of things. Limits related to timeframe, transfer speeds, what day of the week it is, shipping speeds (and all the external factors that can affect that), etc. etc.
These things are inevitable, especially in a world where real-time payments are going to take a very long time to be fully adopted. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things you can do to mitigate the effect as much as possible.
For example, there are many loops out there that have velocity limits that stop you from running your daily limit 7 days a week. If you can, running them on weekdays (and ideally not even Friday) helps ensure your liquidity is ready to loop again the following Monday.
It’s also a chance to spend money to make money. For example, some buyers groups will let you pay a nominal fee to expedite your shipping, while shippers will do the same to allow you to schedule a pickup. If either of those things means an expensive package is paid out a day earlier, the math very likely maths.
In isolated cases, it can even be worth it to pay the fee that many fintechs will assess for a RTP deposit. A lot of us are running it up right now. Between shipping quirks on both ends, posting times, liquidity hurdles and market volatility, this plane is a lot harder to land than a Southwest companion pass. Netting 0.3% out of a transaction now vs. 0% a few weeks from now might make sense.
I’ve always been upfront that this blog was heavily influenced by Matt and MEAB. And before there was MEAB, there was MileNerd. Somewhat of the progenitor of the “not a mouthpiece for major banks” genre of churning blogs, Paul at MileNerd held down the much-needed succinct update side of the blogosphere for quite awhile.
The blog still exists, but hasn’t been about churning in quite awhile. While I didn’t discover it until well after the format switched, I did go back and read Paul’s farewell series. There’s one post in particular that is really sad and difficult to read, and it speaks to his story as himself, not as MileNerd.
Because of that post, I always told myself if I ever started a blog, I didn’t want to wait until the final act to do a little bit of personal storytelling, even if that meant some people wouldn’t like it.
My writing style has always been kind of personal, and I’m not always the greatest at keeping it 100% objective. And in my eyes, churning and MS is quite personal. If being able to do the travel you’ve dreamed of while keeping you and your family financially secure isn’t personal, I’m not sure what is.
So today I’m going to tell the story of my friend Chelsea, who was also ironically the first churner I ever met in real life.
I met Chelsea when I was in college through a mutual acquaintance. It was weird that I never used to see her around, because we were both in a lot of the same classes my junior and senior year. Over time, I learned she was just kind of an unconventional person who wasn’t concerned with doing what everybody else was. In a way, she reminded me of the best parts of Phoebe Buffay from Friends. Smart, quirky, the life of the party, sometimes a bit aloof, but in the best way.
I remember going to a street festival with her a few years into our friendship when I had finally succeeded at convincing a bank to give me a card (Citi AAdvantage, my old friend) and going to grab a beer. She opened her wallet and started flipping through multiple flavors of Inks before landing on a CSR. I asked her how she had gotten into the game and she just chuckled and said her brother was huge into credit cards and helped her set up a “business”.
My P2 and I remained really good friends with Chelsea for a long time, even if we didn’t spend a ton of time together. She was the kind of friend you’d say the cliche line about calling once every few months and being able to pick up right where you left off. Our annual tradition was always going out for New Year’s Eve together, and when I think about an optimistic start to the new year, she’s always a part of that memory.
When P2 and I moved cross country, she made a similar move. We tried our best to spend time together, but as adult friendships go when you live in separate places, it wasn’t always the easiest. But whenever the three of us managed to get on the phone together, we’d laugh until our ribs hurt.
Around that time, she was starting to truly excel in her career, and that was reflected in a lot of work travel. One day, she was on a flight back from a client visit and her heart just…stopped. She was lucky that there was a firefighter on board that was able to administer CPR until they could divert and get her to a hospital.
She ended up recovering, but was diagnosed with a serious heart defect that required some type of internal defibrillator (sorry to the medical professionals for not using the government name, but just thinking about it gave me nightmares).
There were a couple of times that her heart faltered and the defibrillator got her back up. I remember hearing her describe it and thinking about how I wouldn’t have a second of peace if I were her. I’ve always had so much admiration for how casually she’d talk about something so frightening.
There were times I forgot she even had the condition because of how unbothered she was by it, to the point that she had a party on the anniversary of the flight where it all started. As someone that struggled mightily with my own health anxiety, it was almost impossible to comprehend not letting it bother you. That really made a difference to me, and I should have told her that.
This past weekend, my P2 and I were out with friends and somehow landed on the topic of Chelsea. We thought about how long it had been since we’d talked to her, and my P2 texted her. She didn’t hear back, but that wasn’t unusual – Chelsea was the kind of person who would just call you in the middle of the day 2 weeks after the text instead.
We never got the call, because she passed away two days later. If my P2 hadn’t texted her, leading to her family reading her phone and seeing it, we may not have had closure – she was way too busy living life to bother with social media.
If nothing else, tragedy allows for perspective and a reevaluation of priorities. I feel pretty stupid for spending more than one microsecond of brain power on being frustrated with the negative changes we’d have in 2026. We’re all fortunate to be where we are and some of these things are just…not a big deal.
This hobby is amazing and the benefits are very real, but it’s not the most important thing in any of our lives. I’m looking forward to what is clearly a much needed mental break from numbers and spreadsheets. If you have a drink this weekend, have a mimosa (or a bourbon margarita) in honor of Chelsea. She would have been 35 in August.
(apologies if this is your second time hearing from me today)
Today’s post will be pretty quick because it’s more about exciting things that aren’t happening on the blog (and I have a backlog of posts written by both me and others to get through anyway).
First, I joined my friend James for an episode of his Churn and Burn podcast this week and I wanted to make sure I highlighted how much fun it was and give his podcast some love. James is a great guy who is making fun content, so you should check out his podcast here and his Instagram here.
Second, some friends and I launched a new private churning group today called the Lion’s Share. If you’re interested in learning more and applying, feel free to check it out here. If it’s not your cup of tea, no worries, I won’t keep talking about it.
On a personal note, I’ve been overwhelmed (in a positive way) by the good feedback towards the episode and group (and blog itself for that matter).
When I created the blog, I had no real goal outside of having fun and making friends. It’s been really cool to see how that community has grown. On that note, thanks for reading, and your support!
