8 ms·

I spend more time than I should in the churning/FF communities (all of which are centered around FlyerTalk). It's fun. Ben's blog is one of the few I follow,

by saryant 11y ago

I spend more time than I should in the churning/FF communities (all of which are centered around FlyerTalk). It's fun. Ben's blog is one of the few I follow, most aren't that great. Frequent Miler is a solid resource, as is Wandering Aramean, but nothing beats being active on FlyerTalk itself. In the last five years I've managed to earn and spend about 1.5 million miles and points, with maybe 50k airline miles from actual flying and ~400k points from actual Hilton stays. Between churning, manufactured spend and promotions I'm able to do 1-2 international trips a year in first class, staying at good hotels. I mostly travel to Asia and get great value out of free flights on Singapore, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines. It's an awesome hobby if you: a) have time to kill b) are single and c) have an insanely flexible schedule. I used US and BA miles earlier this year to fly to Malaysia and Thailand for free (well, plus taxes) in first class, spending five weeks between Hong Kong, Penang, Koh Lanta, Beijing and Tokyo. Drinking $300 champagne at 35,000 feet on a flight you didn't pay for is a rather fun feeling...

ljk 11y ago
do you sometimes feel like you're spending more money in order to get the miles?
- ngoel36 11y ago
  Not if you participate in manufactured spending - i.e., buying money...like purchasing Visa gift cards (must be done carefully at the right places / times)
  - saryant 11y ago
    Well, you are spending money on those. Each card has a fee. But if you're doing it correctly you should realize far more value than you end up spending.
    - fastball 11y ago
      Fairly certain all cards dont have fees.
      - saryant 11y ago
        Which Visa gift cards don't have fees?
      - fweespeech 11y ago
        Except for rare promotions, they have $4-$7 in per-card and/or per-month fees. If you know a year-round supplier of $0 fee cards, let us know ;)
      - ethbro 11y ago
        > Fairly certain all cards dont have fees. While I don't deny the possibility that you're right, if you're not involved in the community I'd consider it far more likely that people have already found the most effective manufactured spend techniques. As an example, CC charge -> Amex GC w/ cashback from rewards site -> Visa GC w/ PIN -> ATM or money order to withdraw is a fairly "simple" MS chain. The convolutions that people have discovered past that get pretty byzantine. But even <1% adds up when you're churning 5 figures. The lengths of some of the schemes are entertaining in their own right.
  - nogridbag 11y ago
    I didn't know there was a term for it. I gave it a shot one or two years ago buying $500 gift cards at grocery stores with a 6% cash back card (amex cash preferred). With the activation fee and taxes, I think each gift card purchase essentially returned ~$22. Surely not the most efficient - but it was simple. Each time I bought a $500 visa gift card I had that uncomfortable feeling like I was doing something illegal - the cashier calls out some code on the intercom and the manager shows up 5 minutes later to allow the purchase to go through. It wasn't worth the hassle - at the end of the year I might have made $150 - whoopty doo. At least I made enough money to pay off the annual fee for the card ($75).
    - saryant 11y ago
      The payoff comes from doing it to hit signup bonuses. If you needed to spend $5000 on a card, you could buy Visa gift cards and spend $59.50, but get 105,000 miles from the bonus. Essentially a round-trip business class ticket from the US to Asia.
      - dublidu 11y ago
        And what do you do with the $5000 of gift cards?
        robzyb 11y ago
        They were visa gift cards. He could use them like a regular credit card.
        saryant 11y ago
        There are various methods that you can use to unload the cards back to either your checking account or directly to the credit card you used to buy them. Buy gift card with credit card -> Unload gift card back to credit card. Repeat. Send the same $5000 around in a circle (less fees). I'm simplifying of course. Bluebird, a prepaid debit card from Amex and Walmart, has been one of the big methods for some time but I'm not sure if that one is still viable.
        BorisMelnik 11y ago
sbuccini 11y ago
Any recommendations on how to get started?
- saryant 11y ago
  I'm not quite sure these days. This hobby has gotten far more complicated than it was when I started. Ben's blog and The Points Guy are probably the best intros. I'm not a fan of TPG but he writes a lot of articles on the basics. I've been active on FlyerTalk for about five years—after being in that deep for so long, it's hard to step back and figure out where to guide a beginner. Plus, lots of it is based on your own financial situation. Available funds, credit score, travel profile. I would argue that the vast majority of people are best served getting 1-2 cards with bonuses they spend in (I use the Amex Everyday Preferred and Chase Sapphire Preferred) and focusing on those. Especially if you have multiple people to bring along, you're better off with one of the flexible points currencies from Chase or Amex (or Citi, theirs is improving) rather than chasing airline-specific miles. The exception to the multiple-people advice is hotels, as those redemptions are obviously per-room and not per-person. Hyatt offers the best value IMO but Hilton points are stupid easy to earn. Depends on where you want to go as they have very different footprints.
  - ngoel36 11y ago
    reddit.com/r/churning has a great guide
    - saryant 11y ago
      There's a LOT of downright wrong information. There are some bad seeds there spreading FUD to keep newbies away or lead them down a dangerous path, especially around manufactured spend. The outright lies I saw people posting during the Redbird heyday were astounding. Avoid.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Honestly, I'd argue you are better off rotating through credit cards every 3 months for the sign up bonuses. 4 cards a year is few enough not to draw any real scrutiny, at least so far for me. I'm not sure how you'd get 25,000-50,000 points every 3 months unless your lifestyle is pretty expensive compared to mine. For example: https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/sapphire-preferred-card.aspx https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/sapphire-preferre... -> http://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/venture/ http://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/venture/ -> https://creditcards.chase.com/6000356?CELL=6WKP https://creditcards.chase.com/6000356?CELL=6WKP -> https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/southwest-premier-business-credit-card.aspx https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/southwest-premier... 180,000 points for $198 [the last one is a business card but this is HN so I suspect a bunch of people have ways of getting one of those] iirc, 180k points is ~$1800 Just realize this tears up your credit score so don't go getting large 5-6 figure loans for cars/houses while doing this.
misterbwong 11y ago
Good to see another FT'er on HN. I've earned/burned about the same volume of points as you and can attest that this hobby is awesome, with some caveats. For the beginners out there: 1. Be sure to read as much about earning miles as redeeming them. Both sides are equally important and redeeming is actually getting much more difficult. 2. Don't let the newbie blogs lure you into hitting credit cards too hard. Banks are starting to tighten the clamps on our hobby. Be sure to learn, start slow, and then start ramping up. Banks like to see a relationship, not just a high credit score. 3. If you're dipping your toe in Manufactured Spending (MS), start small then ramp up over time. Nothing worse than getting shut down for hitting something too hard. That said, MS is a great way to meet minimum spending without using too much money. 4. Don't let headline point valuations fool you into thinking you have to fly in Biz or First to get a good value on your points. Blogs use these kinds of numbers mostly to get you to sign up for CC's. Figure out your your strategy and go that way. A person looking for a lot of domestic flights is going to have a different strategy than someone looking to travel like saryant (and myself, incidentally). tl;dr; This hobby is amazing if you can figure it out and do the leg work. I too enjoy good champagne 35k ft in the air ;) If you have any questions, AMA! :)
- saryant 11y ago
  All of this is solid advice. There are countless stories on FT of people rushing in too fast (especially with MS!) and finding themselves burned. Blacklisted by banks, holding thousands in gift cards they can't liquidate, points in programs that aren't useful for them. Take it slow.
- ngoel36 11y ago
  Also - stay organized. Every credit card should be accompanied with a spreadsheet entry with all details (un/pw, bonus, etc.), entry into Mint, auto-pay, and calendar reminders (end of free annual fee, etc.). Very easy to slip and forget, or not keep track of getting your actual bonus. Of course - do not do this if you don't intend to pay your balance immediately. Any interest charges quickly undo the ROI. Just got back from a completely free trip to Japan (flights, hotels). So worth it.
  - 11y ago
sliverstorm 11y ago
I'm half-curious about the whole thing, and I would be good at it- I enjoy the finance maze- but I have always felt like churning was rather dishonest. I'll do it for fifty bucks to cover the "last mile" on this or that promotion, but churning five figures worth... There's a variety of justifications, such as "banks are evil anyway" or invoking Plunkitt, but they just never really sat with me.
qq66 11y ago
I'd add a criteria d): you truly enjoy flying. I know a person who does this and the thing that makes it work for him is that he truly just loves the experience of being in an airplane, and looking down and marveling at the incredulity of the experience. If you don't feel that way about flying, then the whole hobby becomes more of an unpaid job.
- saryant 11y ago
  When I redeem points, the flight is part of it, but it's really about the destination. A year ago I used my points to fly first class to attend ScalaDays in Berlin. Last November, Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong over two weeks. Earlier this year, five weeks in Southeast Asia. I would say you have to enjoy travel. If you don't like flying and don't care for international travel, yeah, it's not a hobby you'd enjoy.
  - qq66 11y ago
    Oh, I was talking about the activity of flying to a destination and immediately returning, just for the miles.
    - saryant 11y ago
      Yeah, I find that nuts. I don't do mileage runs personally, I just don't have time. Plus they're not nearly as profitable anymore.
Taylor_OD 11y ago
What do you do for work?
- saryant 11y ago
  I'm a software engineer.
arcticbull 11y ago
I got into this pretty late, about 4 years ago; I've managed to hit almost every airlines first class cabin (most of them many times). Just a few left; gotta catch 'em all! I always assumed people on HN would be all over this kind of thing, it's a total minmax optimization problem. Especially back when this was even more of a game, with the US Airways Grand Slam through 2011. The puzzle there is worth reading about. You'd get up to 100,000 bonus miles for completing 36 'partner activities' (bonuses are only awarded in groups of 4 activities -- 1,2,3 you get nothing and at 4 you get all the miles for that group -- and the number of miles awarded for each group of 4 increased from nominal to significant. I spent weeks optimizing and figuring the marginal cost. After minmaxing the hell out of your strategy, you execute; fill in surveys, buy the cheapest thing on Skymall (in my case, a toilet lock for a child I didn't have), book phantom rides on the super shuttle. Maybe spend a few bucks and splurge on a bamboo plan. Ended at 140K miles for $700 -- at the time just short of 2 round trip business class tickets from North America -> Europe -> Asia -> North America. Once you get into it, your average getaway is better than most peoples' honeymoons; I flew Etihad apartments to the Maldives for a weekend for 75K miles and $100. And that was just one of the many. Agreed, lucky is one of my favorites. I actually got started with The Points Guy but the quality has gone downhill so much, and the blog has become a shill for card signups even if they don't make sense. My other favorite is Matthew at upgrd and Efficient Asian Man.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

by saryant 11y ago

ljk 11y ago

do you sometimes feel like you're spending more money in order to get the miles?

ngoel36 11y ago
Not if you participate in manufactured spending - i.e., buying money...like purchasing Visa gift cards (must be done carefully at the right places / times)
- saryant 11y ago
  Well, you are spending money on those. Each card has a fee. But if you're doing it correctly you should realize far more value than you end up spending.
  - fastball 11y ago
    Fairly certain all cards dont have fees.
    - saryant 11y ago
      Which Visa gift cards don't have fees?
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      Except for rare promotions, they have $4-$7 in per-card and/or per-month fees. If you know a year-round supplier of $0 fee cards, let us know ;)
    - ethbro 11y ago
      > Fairly certain all cards dont have fees. While I don't deny the possibility that you're right, if you're not involved in the community I'd consider it far more likely that people have already found the most effective manufactured spend techniques. As an example, CC charge -> Amex GC w/ cashback from rewards site -> Visa GC w/ PIN -> ATM or money order to withdraw is a fairly "simple" MS chain. The convolutions that people have discovered past that get pretty byzantine. But even <1% adds up when you're churning 5 figures. The lengths of some of the schemes are entertaining in their own right.
- nogridbag 11y ago
  I didn't know there was a term for it. I gave it a shot one or two years ago buying $500 gift cards at grocery stores with a 6% cash back card (amex cash preferred). With the activation fee and taxes, I think each gift card purchase essentially returned ~$22. Surely not the most efficient - but it was simple. Each time I bought a $500 visa gift card I had that uncomfortable feeling like I was doing something illegal - the cashier calls out some code on the intercom and the manager shows up 5 minutes later to allow the purchase to go through. It wasn't worth the hassle - at the end of the year I might have made $150 - whoopty doo. At least I made enough money to pay off the annual fee for the card ($75).
  - saryant 11y ago
    The payoff comes from doing it to hit signup bonuses. If you needed to spend $5000 on a card, you could buy Visa gift cards and spend $59.50, but get 105,000 miles from the bonus. Essentially a round-trip business class ticket from the US to Asia.
    - dublidu 11y ago
      And what do you do with the $5000 of gift cards?
      - robzyb 11y ago
        They were visa gift cards. He could use them like a regular credit card.
      - saryant 11y ago
        There are various methods that you can use to unload the cards back to either your checking account or directly to the credit card you used to buy them. Buy gift card with credit card -> Unload gift card back to credit card. Repeat. Send the same $5000 around in a circle (less fees). I'm simplifying of course. Bluebird, a prepaid debit card from Amex and Walmart, has been one of the big methods for some time but I'm not sure if that one is still viable.
      - BorisMelnik 11y ago

sbuccini 11y ago

Any recommendations on how to get started?

saryant 11y ago
I'm not quite sure these days. This hobby has gotten far more complicated than it was when I started. Ben's blog and The Points Guy are probably the best intros. I'm not a fan of TPG but he writes a lot of articles on the basics. I've been active on FlyerTalk for about five years—after being in that deep for so long, it's hard to step back and figure out where to guide a beginner. Plus, lots of it is based on your own financial situation. Available funds, credit score, travel profile. I would argue that the vast majority of people are best served getting 1-2 cards with bonuses they spend in (I use the Amex Everyday Preferred and Chase Sapphire Preferred) and focusing on those. Especially if you have multiple people to bring along, you're better off with one of the flexible points currencies from Chase or Amex (or Citi, theirs is improving) rather than chasing airline-specific miles. The exception to the multiple-people advice is hotels, as those redemptions are obviously per-room and not per-person. Hyatt offers the best value IMO but Hilton points are stupid easy to earn. Depends on where you want to go as they have very different footprints.
- ngoel36 11y ago
  reddit.com/r/churning has a great guide
  - saryant 11y ago
    There's a LOT of downright wrong information. There are some bad seeds there spreading FUD to keep newbies away or lead them down a dangerous path, especially around manufactured spend. The outright lies I saw people posting during the Redbird heyday were astounding. Avoid.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Honestly, I'd argue you are better off rotating through credit cards every 3 months for the sign up bonuses. 4 cards a year is few enough not to draw any real scrutiny, at least so far for me. I'm not sure how you'd get 25,000-50,000 points every 3 months unless your lifestyle is pretty expensive compared to mine. For example: https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/sapphire-preferred-card.aspx https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/sapphire-preferre... -> http://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/venture/ http://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/venture/ -> https://creditcards.chase.com/6000356?CELL=6WKP https://creditcards.chase.com/6000356?CELL=6WKP -> https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/southwest-premier-business-credit-card.aspx https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/southwest-premier... 180,000 points for $198 [the last one is a business card but this is HN so I suspect a bunch of people have ways of getting one of those] iirc, 180k points is ~$1800 Just realize this tears up your credit score so don't go getting large 5-6 figure loans for cars/houses while doing this.

misterbwong 11y ago

Good to see another FT'er on HN. I've earned/burned about the same volume of points as you and can attest that this hobby is awesome, with some caveats. For the beginners out there: 1. Be sure to read as much about earning miles as redeeming them. Both sides are equally important and redeeming is actually getting much more difficult. 2. Don't let the newbie blogs lure you into hitting credit cards too hard. Banks are starting to tighten the clamps on our hobby. Be sure to learn, start slow, and then start ramping up. Banks like to see a relationship, not just a high credit score. 3. If you're dipping your toe in Manufactured Spending (MS), start small then ramp up over time. Nothing worse than getting shut down for hitting something too hard. That said, MS is a great way to meet minimum spending without using too much money. 4. Don't let headline point valuations fool you into thinking you have to fly in Biz or First to get a good value on your points. Blogs use these kinds of numbers mostly to get you to sign up for CC's. Figure out your your strategy and go that way. A person looking for a lot of domestic flights is going to have a different strategy than someone looking to travel like saryant (and myself, incidentally). tl;dr; This hobby is amazing if you can figure it out and do the leg work. I too enjoy good champagne 35k ft in the air ;) If you have any questions, AMA! :)

saryant 11y ago
All of this is solid advice. There are countless stories on FT of people rushing in too fast (especially with MS!) and finding themselves burned. Blacklisted by banks, holding thousands in gift cards they can't liquidate, points in programs that aren't useful for them. Take it slow.
ngoel36 11y ago
Also - stay organized. Every credit card should be accompanied with a spreadsheet entry with all details (un/pw, bonus, etc.), entry into Mint, auto-pay, and calendar reminders (end of free annual fee, etc.). Very easy to slip and forget, or not keep track of getting your actual bonus. Of course - do not do this if you don't intend to pay your balance immediately. Any interest charges quickly undo the ROI. Just got back from a completely free trip to Japan (flights, hotels). So worth it.
- 11y ago

sliverstorm 11y ago

I'm half-curious about the whole thing, and I would be good at it- I enjoy the finance maze- but I have always felt like churning was rather dishonest. I'll do it for fifty bucks to cover the "last mile" on this or that promotion, but churning five figures worth... There's a variety of justifications, such as "banks are evil anyway" or invoking Plunkitt, but they just never really sat with me.

qq66 11y ago

I'd add a criteria d): you truly enjoy flying. I know a person who does this and the thing that makes it work for him is that he truly just loves the experience of being in an airplane, and looking down and marveling at the incredulity of the experience. If you don't feel that way about flying, then the whole hobby becomes more of an unpaid job.

saryant 11y ago
When I redeem points, the flight is part of it, but it's really about the destination. A year ago I used my points to fly first class to attend ScalaDays in Berlin. Last November, Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong over two weeks. Earlier this year, five weeks in Southeast Asia. I would say you have to enjoy travel. If you don't like flying and don't care for international travel, yeah, it's not a hobby you'd enjoy.
- qq66 11y ago
  Oh, I was talking about the activity of flying to a destination and immediately returning, just for the miles.
  - saryant 11y ago
    Yeah, I find that nuts. I don't do mileage runs personally, I just don't have time. Plus they're not nearly as profitable anymore.

Taylor_OD 11y ago

What do you do for work?

saryant 11y ago
I'm a software engineer.

arcticbull 11y ago

I got into this pretty late, about 4 years ago; I've managed to hit almost every airlines first class cabin (most of them many times). Just a few left; gotta catch 'em all! I always assumed people on HN would be all over this kind of thing, it's a total minmax optimization problem. Especially back when this was even more of a game, with the US Airways Grand Slam through 2011. The puzzle there is worth reading about. You'd get up to 100,000 bonus miles for completing 36 'partner activities' (bonuses are only awarded in groups of 4 activities -- 1,2,3 you get nothing and at 4 you get all the miles for that group -- and the number of miles awarded for each group of 4 increased from nominal to significant. I spent weeks optimizing and figuring the marginal cost. After minmaxing the hell out of your strategy, you execute; fill in surveys, buy the cheapest thing on Skymall (in my case, a toilet lock for a child I didn't have), book phantom rides on the super shuttle. Maybe spend a few bucks and splurge on a bamboo plan. Ended at 140K miles for $700 -- at the time just short of 2 round trip business class tickets from North America -> Europe -> Asia -> North America. Once you get into it, your average getaway is better than most peoples' honeymoons; I flew Etihad apartments to the Maldives for a weekend for 75K miles and $100. And that was just one of the many. Agreed, lucky is one of my favorites. I actually got started with The Points Guy but the quality has gone downhill so much, and the blog has become a shill for card signups even if they don't make sense. My other favorite is Matthew at upgrd and Efficient Asian Man.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]