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>Redditors are frequently sophisticated with their spreadsheets; many of them could clearly earn three orders of magnitude more from the financial industry if t

>Redditors are frequently sophisticated with their spreadsheets; many of them could clearly earn three orders of magnitude more from the financial industry if they stopped thinking that the right way to monetize spreadsheet skill was in gaming credit card signup bonuses. It's a pretty decent outlet for having something complicated to work on. Another would be EVE Online with the added bonus that it's also an actual game. My guess is most of those people are just trying to min-max what the companies allow them, rather than trying to find an exploit in the system that prints money per spreadsheet CPU cycle. I am suspicious that anyone can get a job in finance with only churning (or EVE) spreadsheet skills. I have rarely found "well if you can do that hobbyist but seemingly proximal activity, you can walk into a decent-paying job" to be true in tech and I suspect it's true for finance too. Maybe the finance bros just need a leetcode-for-spreadsheets website to run their technical interviews to open the floodgates though.

kkukshtel 3y ago
I think churning is just a hobby for bored divorced guys and used as a proxy for developing any real (non-financialized) interests. Normal cash back for most cards is good enough for most people, and you aren't going to get big point kickbacks unless you already have a lot of money to spend.
hnuser123456 3y ago
Microsoft Excel World Championship 2023 - Finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGdPE_C9u8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGdPE_C9u8
ghaff 3y ago
At the end of the day, it's mostly a hobby and you either find keeping track of everything and making effective use of rewards worth it or not. Personally, I have a few cards for targeted use but mostly I just take 2% cash back on a free card and figure that's close enough.
sam2426679 3y ago
I was also intrigued by that quote and find it rather dubious. Coincidentally today, I and 5 other family members are boarding business class international flights worth ~$60k cash, paid for with signup bonus points. This doesn’t even include the other tens of $thousands of redemptions we’re doing on both this trip and the rest of the year. This is also just side hustle/hobby-that-pays-for-itself “money,” in addition to the (not) “three orders of magnitude” faang income. This was otherwise an interesting article.
- DrammBA 3y ago
  I find it hard to believe you're getting almost 6 figures of value out of signup bonus points and other card reward redemptions in a year.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    It’s totally doable. I got my wife into this when we met in 2001. We vacationed 6 weeks a year through these various schemes. If you have a source of business expenses, it’s easy. With regular consumer spend it’s more challenging but doable. We empathized time at destination. If you’re going for value, you target airline and other upgrades. Our focus being time, we usually targeted hotel redemptions. There used to be a path to “launder” AMEX points and convert to a multiple of Hilton points through airline programs.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Those $60k flights are almost certainly list/last minute pricing. It’s even mentioned in the article that the airlines love flight miles because they can play with the redemptions to sell unused capacity for what the customer sees as real money. It also encourages loyalty.
    - sam2426679 3y ago
      Not last minute, booked a year out when they were ~$10k+ per ticket.
MattGaiser 3y ago
I am pretty deep into the credit card hobby and most of the people in it are high-earning professionals already. The last meetup I went to consisted of half of software engineers. So we already have jobs that pay well for optimizing things.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  It’s hardly a difficult skill. I have a spreadsheet with the date , credit limit, money needed to spend to get the reward and a date to cancel the card. Wall Street better get ready for me
  - aaarrm 3y ago
    So are you essentially constantly swapping cards that you use once you cap out their bonus sign up amount, so to speak? If so, doesn't that cause the issue where your points are all scattered across various different credit companies?
- wil421 3y ago
  How does one get deeper into the credit card hobby? I optimize for cash back on gas and groceries but not much else.
  - MattGaiser 3y ago
    /r/churning is a good place to start. Lots of people doing cash back churning too, so even if you don’t want plane tickets, there is plenty for you.
    - kccqzy 3y ago
      /r/churning is notoriously unfriendly to newbies. They have absolute no tolerance for basic questions whose answer can be found via search. If anyone is reading this recommendation, just be a lurker there. When I first applied for my CSR card many years ago, I was rejected by the web app. But a perusal of /r/churning led me to some powerful phone numbers where human customer service reps can override such rejections.

kkukshtel 3y ago

I think churning is just a hobby for bored divorced guys and used as a proxy for developing any real (non-financialized) interests. Normal cash back for most cards is good enough for most people, and you aren't going to get big point kickbacks unless you already have a lot of money to spend.

hnuser123456 3y ago

Microsoft Excel World Championship 2023 - Finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGdPE_C9u8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGdPE_C9u8

ghaff 3y ago

At the end of the day, it's mostly a hobby and you either find keeping track of everything and making effective use of rewards worth it or not. Personally, I have a few cards for targeted use but mostly I just take 2% cash back on a free card and figure that's close enough.

sam2426679 3y ago

I was also intrigued by that quote and find it rather dubious. Coincidentally today, I and 5 other family members are boarding business class international flights worth ~$60k cash, paid for with signup bonus points. This doesn’t even include the other tens of $thousands of redemptions we’re doing on both this trip and the rest of the year. This is also just side hustle/hobby-that-pays-for-itself “money,” in addition to the (not) “three orders of magnitude” faang income. This was otherwise an interesting article.

DrammBA 3y ago
I find it hard to believe you're getting almost 6 figures of value out of signup bonus points and other card reward redemptions in a year.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  It’s totally doable. I got my wife into this when we met in 2001. We vacationed 6 weeks a year through these various schemes. If you have a source of business expenses, it’s easy. With regular consumer spend it’s more challenging but doable. We empathized time at destination. If you’re going for value, you target airline and other upgrades. Our focus being time, we usually targeted hotel redemptions. There used to be a path to “launder” AMEX points and convert to a multiple of Hilton points through airline programs.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Those $60k flights are almost certainly list/last minute pricing. It’s even mentioned in the article that the airlines love flight miles because they can play with the redemptions to sell unused capacity for what the customer sees as real money. It also encourages loyalty.
  - sam2426679 3y ago
    Not last minute, booked a year out when they were ~$10k+ per ticket.

MattGaiser 3y ago

I am pretty deep into the credit card hobby and most of the people in it are high-earning professionals already. The last meetup I went to consisted of half of software engineers. So we already have jobs that pay well for optimizing things.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
It’s hardly a difficult skill. I have a spreadsheet with the date , credit limit, money needed to spend to get the reward and a date to cancel the card. Wall Street better get ready for me
- aaarrm 3y ago
  So are you essentially constantly swapping cards that you use once you cap out their bonus sign up amount, so to speak? If so, doesn't that cause the issue where your points are all scattered across various different credit companies?
wil421 3y ago
How does one get deeper into the credit card hobby? I optimize for cash back on gas and groceries but not much else.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  /r/churning is a good place to start. Lots of people doing cash back churning too, so even if you don’t want plane tickets, there is plenty for you.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    /r/churning is notoriously unfriendly to newbies. They have absolute no tolerance for basic questions whose answer can be found via search. If anyone is reading this recommendation, just be a lurker there. When I first applied for my CSR card many years ago, I was rejected by the web app. But a perusal of /r/churning led me to some powerful phone numbers where human customer service reps can override such rejections.