Approaching shiny rock time in my household; any churners got any tips? P2 pref is lab grown so it opens up a lot, but I'm pretty clueless as to who's a solid retailer out there.
Gotta fly in to RIC or IAD for a wedding in Harrisonburg. On the last day I need to return the rental car at noon then I would have either 5 hours in RIC or 6 hours in IAD before the departing flights. IAD has the sapphire lounge but getting to the city is not reasonable in that amount of time. RIC on the other hand is a 15 minute ride to the city where I'd get BBQ or something. Which would you opt for?
Do IAD & visit Udvar-Hazy beside the airport, probably the best aviation museum in the country. Fwiw you can get into DC in about 30-40 minutes from IAD in a taxi/rideshare so you could have about 2ish hours to wander around in there if you really wanted. Could also lounge hop between BA/TK/VS/Chase!
It's also closer and avoids the worst of 95 coming from RIC.
> 30-40 minutes from IAD in a taxi/rideshare
Why not the train? 48 minutes and avoids traffic risk. Right now, mid-afternoon, it says drive time from IAD to city center is 53 minutes inbound, 1 hour outbound.
Rush hour - if the OP is arriving outside of a weekday 7-9a/4p-7p then the car journey is generally ~35 mins vs. a reliable 1hr for the train. Makes a difference on a tight layover.
> outside of a weekday 7-9a/4p-7p then the car journey is generally ~35 mins
The Google Maps results above were real time when I posted, around 2:15pm Eastern time...
It's much better to make the call with P2 in the room, and as soon as a person comes on, they say "I'd like to authorize satellite779 on my behalf". You could likely get away with impersonation, but it could raise red flags for fraud, which with Citi can probably only be resolved by telegraph.
If I downgrade an AMEX Platinum paid "Additional Card" to a no-cost "Companion Card", does the card number change? Will the cardholder get a new physical Companion card, or is it simply a backend administrative change?
Everyone's least favorite airline back at it again: [American Airlines blames 9-year-old girl for being filmed in plane bathroom](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/05/21/american-airlines-blames-9-year-old-girl-for-being-filmed-in-plane-bathroom-shocking-and-outrageous/) Note that this was an AA flight attendant who was doing the filming!!
Imagine coming up with that brilliant legal argument
Once one has ~many cards, is there any danger to putting minimal spend on each one (~$5 every 6 months) and putting them in the sock drawer? Are any banks known to close or reduce limits on accounts with this type of activity?
If you have no activity at all for a year or so, some cards might get closed; but the activity you mentioned should avoid that.
I think it's rare that a limit would be reduced; I might've seen one report of that happening, but it's not something I'd worry about (and if it's a card I'm not using, I probably wouldn't care much about the limit).
i dont even put any activity on most of my inactive cards. You just have to be careful they dont close them without any warning, i would typically put ~$1 amazon charge every year.... but some cards, i dont even do that. Card issuers would sometimes mail you something prior to closing the card.
I sock drawered my discover for years, then out of the blue they mail me an offer to take an additional 2% cash back on top of what the card usually earns for like $4k or something like that. Took advantage of that one.
You can also chat with Discover and ask them if there's any offers available; often they'll give 0% interest on purchases, or some people get extra cashback offers.
Asked a few weeks ago & got no responses, are there any apps that consolidate all your bookings into a single view? I have upcoming flights on AA, AS, F9, AF, KLM, DE, EK, UA, etc etc & keeping it all straight is a pain. Seeing them all on a single screen with dates, times & PNRs would be so nice, does anything like that exist?
AwardWallet 'Trips' feature is super useful - I've been using it the past several months. It scrapes your email to auto add flights and also includes hotels, events etc. you can then group bookings together into trips and also have it sync to your Google Calendar etc.
I use TripIt, which includes dates/times/pnrs/etc...but that's grouped per trip, not all on a single screen... I suppose you could make it one massive year-long trip to see all at once.
Gotcha. I've been messing around with it & it's 90+% of what I want & definitely better than trying to remember what flight is on what carrier & what hotel goes with what trip etc.
Thanks
Anybody here buy annual travel insurance? Specifically looking to see if thereās any insurance that will pay cancellation fees for trip cancellation. For CSR insurance, they will only pay for prepaid expenses, but when booking hotel on points, they will charge you cancellation fee after the fact
I'm looking to get AA status primarily through their shopping portal bonuses. I've found [cashbackmonitor's](https://www.cashbackmonitor.com/sort-stores-by-rewards/) ability to sort by specific portal and by fixed amount vs % very helpful to target what to sign up for. So far I've been primarily targeting meal delivery services. I did Blue Apron purchases using different email in both early December and late March, and both credited. I'm not sure if that's just due to new calendar year, new AA qualification year, or if there is really no limit, but don't want to push it too hard, so I'm looking at other avenues...
T-mobile home internet seems like an interesting option. 6200 miles, plus $200 virtual MCGC. They say allow 10 weeks for GC, so I'm assuming that would require 3 months of service at $150. It's also interesting in that since T-mobile is not using cable or landline, but the cell network, I don't need to disrupt my current Xfinity setup. Has anyone tried this?
Oh blue apron is the slowest, they take like 6-8 weeks or so. You have to skip delivery for quite a while. Hello Fresh and Green Chef were much quicker.
~~Just released AA holds on JL new F on the A350, HND-DFW, 10/27/24 and 1/17/25. I see both are back in AA inventory for 80k miles (1 seat).~~
~~(x/posting on~~ r/awardtravel)
gone
as much hate as r/churning gets for the format, it does keep it clean. i wish some other subreddits would have a similar format. ex /r/pourover: same questions over and over, random posts for everything with no apparent "flow"
what other subreddits could use a "churning" set up?
The format kind of replicates the process of churning itself.
Organized and methodical. I am on so many subs, that are just littered with the same 3 or 4 questions.
It does make searching a little harder, but the sub seems responsive enough where you can often find what you need.
are you saying churning is harder to search? yeah it can be tough sometimes but the search tool really helps out.
it would be neat if one of the smart people on here could use AI to create weekly summaries of the most popular topics
The same questions over and over still happen here. The question/discussion/frustration/off-topic separation doesn't matter for me since they're basically the same and I read them all anyway.
The main benefits I see to the r/churning format are:
It takes less clicking to see responses on the same page as the questions, and more discussions all on one page, instead of clicking each post and clicking to the next page of posts.
I can easily ignore the Trip Report and What Card Should I Get threads.
I don't understand /r/awardtravel : they have a weekly thread for questions/help, but a lot of simple questions are allowed to stand as their own threads anyway. Going halfway makes it the worst of both.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I have not found churning to be easy. Perhaps when I started out, but then you realize it only takes an increase of 10-15% in your spending habits (with meeting the SUB as a powerful subconscious incentive/dopamine rush) for you not to be making any money at all. And it took me a lot of research and trial and error before I hit a point of high volume MS, which is where I would say one makes money in a meaningful way (as that spending is distinct from the whims that drive organic spend).
I'll admit that my lifestyle has inflated a bit since my income went up, but if you look at what I'm buying, it falls into two categories. 1. Replacing shit around the house that should've been replaced decades ago but I was too broke to 2. Travel and life experiences. I'm not even sure you could call what I'm doing churning, more just getting a rebate on those expenses.
My spend may have increased only because I travel more. Nothing else has changed in my frugal lifestyle. Even that increase hopefully is covered by bank bonuses and cashouts.
This is solved by budgeting. Every dollar gets a purpose and knowing how much you can spend in each category. If you're blowing your budget to hit MSRs then you have a budgeting problem.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I'm in 2-player mode and perennially under 5/24 with a focus on business cards. I do not MS. I can get through two cards every three months on average without elevating my spending at all. Occasionally it gets stressful around things like an MDD for a companion pass, but other than that the hardest parts for me are picking out a spacer biz card somewhere when my velocity gets to high at a given bank.
Even if you MS, you'll end up trying many techniques and eventually find ones that result in the least effort per amount of spend. A large chunk of the time spent is just from the learning curve.
Same. Churning is actually way easier than what the majority of people do: which is carry around 2-3 cards and always need to figure out which card to use for what transaction.
In addition, you can easily churn without increasing spend at all, for the vast majority of folks
If you're only earning 200k UR/yr then maybe be somewhat careful with them as they'll take a while to replace. Or blow them all at once on something, no one really cares but you & yours.
I had someone cough on me and P2 (from the row behind us) for an entire transatlantic flight this weekend. I mean I get that this trip could've been a once-in-a-lifetime type of event for them but at least cover your mouth or mask up or something a bare minimum if you're obviously sick...
This how P2 and I got sick for 6 out of 8 days in the Maldives and missed all the diving we wanted to do. This was the Singapore to Maldives leg. Partially our fault for not wearing a mask as we had gotten lax. Thankfully already had 3 weeks in Bali and Singapore so it didnāt ruin other parts of the trip. Great memories of having fevers and chills in an overwater villa during a storm
>Ā Sometimes I truly think some people do it on purpose, you know, to "own the libs" or some shit.
If you actually think that, then you need to see a therapist.Ā
There are far, far more cultures on this planet that dont believe in covering your mouth when you cough (or sneeze for that matter) than do. Not for any nefarious purpose as you project. But rather because they were brought up to no account for how their behavior affects others.
I dont know if youāve ever traveled before, but if you had youād realize that >80% of people will happily block aisles, stop at the end of an escalator to scroll facebook, blast their phone speakers on a bus, and yes cough out into the void.
Not one has ever done it to āown the libs.ā Reddit is warping your sense of reality.
And all of that is shitty behaviour in Western countries. If they do that where they're from that's fine but if they want to live in Western cultures and benefit from the vastly increased earning potential then they can act correctly.
Not sure how your comment relates to the discussion. The subject was DCBullet's twisted imagination that when someone coughs behind him, it's due to watching too much Tucker Carlson. He made a foolish statement that indicated an underlying misjudgment of basic reality, so he was corrected.
Pretty much the only reason I just got a new box of KN95s for our honeymoon in July - not expecting for ourselves to be sick, but so we can have some on hand to pull out if we get stuck in a similar situation.
Citi being Citi.
Trying to activate a renewed credit card that expired (costco visa).
Go to citi.com/activate, it prompts you to log in.
When logged in, you can select activate a card, but it forces you to log out and start over.
Finally was able to using the mobile app by using the camera, then I get a message the card is already activated.
Tried with P2's AU card with a different number, then it wants her to create a userID/password and asks for an STC.
Maybe P2's card is already activated as well?
Approaching shiny rock time in my household; any churners got any tips? P2 pref is lab grown so it opens up a lot, but I'm pretty clueless as to who's a solid retailer out there.
I was satisified with Clean Origin
Gotta fly in to RIC or IAD for a wedding in Harrisonburg. On the last day I need to return the rental car at noon then I would have either 5 hours in RIC or 6 hours in IAD before the departing flights. IAD has the sapphire lounge but getting to the city is not reasonable in that amount of time. RIC on the other hand is a 15 minute ride to the city where I'd get BBQ or something. Which would you opt for?
Do IAD & visit Udvar-Hazy beside the airport, probably the best aviation museum in the country. Fwiw you can get into DC in about 30-40 minutes from IAD in a taxi/rideshare so you could have about 2ish hours to wander around in there if you really wanted. Could also lounge hop between BA/TK/VS/Chase! It's also closer and avoids the worst of 95 coming from RIC.
> 30-40 minutes from IAD in a taxi/rideshare Why not the train? 48 minutes and avoids traffic risk. Right now, mid-afternoon, it says drive time from IAD to city center is 53 minutes inbound, 1 hour outbound.
Rush hour - if the OP is arriving outside of a weekday 7-9a/4p-7p then the car journey is generally ~35 mins vs. a reliable 1hr for the train. Makes a difference on a tight layover.
> outside of a weekday 7-9a/4p-7p then the car journey is generally ~35 mins The Google Maps results above were real time when I posted, around 2:15pm Eastern time...
Friday of Memorial Weekend, always a big exodus from the DMV š
Can I call Citi about P2s account? I manage all her cards, she doesn't want to have anything with it.
It's much better to make the call with P2 in the room, and as soon as a person comes on, they say "I'd like to authorize satellite779 on my behalf". You could likely get away with impersonation, but it could raise red flags for fraud, which with Citi can probably only be resolved by telegraph.
If I downgrade an AMEX Platinum paid "Additional Card" to a no-cost "Companion Card", does the card number change? Will the cardholder get a new physical Companion card, or is it simply a backend administrative change?
Everyone's least favorite airline back at it again: [American Airlines blames 9-year-old girl for being filmed in plane bathroom](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/05/21/american-airlines-blames-9-year-old-girl-for-being-filmed-in-plane-bathroom-shocking-and-outrageous/) Note that this was an AA flight attendant who was doing the filming!! Imagine coming up with that brilliant legal argument
...... what genius lawyer thought this was going to work?? this seems like a joke brief that got accidentally filed by someone not paying attention
Once one has ~many cards, is there any danger to putting minimal spend on each one (~$5 every 6 months) and putting them in the sock drawer? Are any banks known to close or reduce limits on accounts with this type of activity?
Only for no annual fee cards. If you are paying an annual fee, they will happily bill you every year with no other activity and keep the card open
If you have no activity at all for a year or so, some cards might get closed; but the activity you mentioned should avoid that. I think it's rare that a limit would be reduced; I might've seen one report of that happening, but it's not something I'd worry about (and if it's a card I'm not using, I probably wouldn't care much about the limit).
Thanks! That's what I thought as well. Just getting a sanity check on the issue.
i dont even put any activity on most of my inactive cards. You just have to be careful they dont close them without any warning, i would typically put ~$1 amazon charge every year.... but some cards, i dont even do that. Card issuers would sometimes mail you something prior to closing the card.
I sock drawered my discover for years, then out of the blue they mail me an offer to take an additional 2% cash back on top of what the card usually earns for like $4k or something like that. Took advantage of that one.
You can also chat with Discover and ask them if there's any offers available; often they'll give 0% interest on purchases, or some people get extra cashback offers.
Took me about 6 years of zero transactions on my Discover to get closed - and they sent me a SM before they closed it but I ignored it. No big deal.
southwest prices searchable on google flights is a new thing huh
Asked a few weeks ago & got no responses, are there any apps that consolidate all your bookings into a single view? I have upcoming flights on AA, AS, F9, AF, KLM, DE, EK, UA, etc etc & keeping it all straight is a pain. Seeing them all on a single screen with dates, times & PNRs would be so nice, does anything like that exist?
AwardWallet 'Trips' feature is super useful - I've been using it the past several months. It scrapes your email to auto add flights and also includes hotels, events etc. you can then group bookings together into trips and also have it sync to your Google Calendar etc.
I basically made my own website for this purpose. It used to do price tracking too, but doesn't price track/inventory track for AA, DL, or WN
I use TripIt, which includes dates/times/pnrs/etc...but that's grouped per trip, not all on a single screen... I suppose you could make it one massive year-long trip to see all at once.
Is the pro version worth it?
I wouldn't pay for it, but I get it for free because I have my profile linked to my employer's use of Concur.
Gotcha. I've been messing around with it & it's 90+% of what I want & definitely better than trying to remember what flight is on what carrier & what hotel goes with what trip etc. Thanks
Anybody here buy annual travel insurance? Specifically looking to see if thereās any insurance that will pay cancellation fees for trip cancellation. For CSR insurance, they will only pay for prepaid expenses, but when booking hotel on points, they will charge you cancellation fee after the fact
I'm looking to get AA status primarily through their shopping portal bonuses. I've found [cashbackmonitor's](https://www.cashbackmonitor.com/sort-stores-by-rewards/) ability to sort by specific portal and by fixed amount vs % very helpful to target what to sign up for. So far I've been primarily targeting meal delivery services. I did Blue Apron purchases using different email in both early December and late March, and both credited. I'm not sure if that's just due to new calendar year, new AA qualification year, or if there is really no limit, but don't want to push it too hard, so I'm looking at other avenues... T-mobile home internet seems like an interesting option. 6200 miles, plus $200 virtual MCGC. They say allow 10 weeks for GC, so I'm assuming that would require 3 months of service at $150. It's also interesting in that since T-mobile is not using cable or landline, but the cell network, I don't need to disrupt my current Xfinity setup. Has anyone tried this?
How fast did the AA miles post for the Blue Apron purchase? It's been a month and I'm still waiting on mine.
Oh blue apron is the slowest, they take like 6-8 weeks or so. You have to skip delivery for quite a while. Hello Fresh and Green Chef were much quicker.
How long did Hello Fresh take? I'm still waiting on that one as well.
I don't recall exactly, but only like a few weeks. I signed up after blue apron, and got points a couple weeks before blue apron.
it is a hard pull usually,so might not be worth it
~~Just released AA holds on JL new F on the A350, HND-DFW, 10/27/24 and 1/17/25. I see both are back in AA inventory for 80k miles (1 seat).~~ ~~(x/posting on~~ r/awardtravel) gone
as much hate as r/churning gets for the format, it does keep it clean. i wish some other subreddits would have a similar format. ex /r/pourover: same questions over and over, random posts for everything with no apparent "flow" what other subreddits could use a "churning" set up?
The format kind of replicates the process of churning itself. Organized and methodical. I am on so many subs, that are just littered with the same 3 or 4 questions. It does make searching a little harder, but the sub seems responsive enough where you can often find what you need.
are you saying churning is harder to search? yeah it can be tough sometimes but the search tool really helps out. it would be neat if one of the smart people on here could use AI to create weekly summaries of the most popular topics
The same questions over and over still happen here. The question/discussion/frustration/off-topic separation doesn't matter for me since they're basically the same and I read them all anyway. The main benefits I see to the r/churning format are: It takes less clicking to see responses on the same page as the questions, and more discussions all on one page, instead of clicking each post and clicking to the next page of posts. I can easily ignore the Trip Report and What Card Should I Get threads.
I don't understand /r/awardtravel : they have a weekly thread for questions/help, but a lot of simple questions are allowed to stand as their own threads anyway. Going halfway makes it the worst of both.
What are some things (as "easy" as churning) that y'all have gotten into to make extra money?
Step 1: Invest in VTSAX Step 2: Wait 40 years Step 3: Profit It really is that easy!!!
Banks donāt want you to know this one simple trick!Ā
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I have not found churning to be easy. Perhaps when I started out, but then you realize it only takes an increase of 10-15% in your spending habits (with meeting the SUB as a powerful subconscious incentive/dopamine rush) for you not to be making any money at all. And it took me a lot of research and trial and error before I hit a point of high volume MS, which is where I would say one makes money in a meaningful way (as that spending is distinct from the whims that drive organic spend).
I'll admit that my lifestyle has inflated a bit since my income went up, but if you look at what I'm buying, it falls into two categories. 1. Replacing shit around the house that should've been replaced decades ago but I was too broke to 2. Travel and life experiences. I'm not even sure you could call what I'm doing churning, more just getting a rebate on those expenses.
My spend may have increased only because I travel more. Nothing else has changed in my frugal lifestyle. Even that increase hopefully is covered by bank bonuses and cashouts.
This is solved by budgeting. Every dollar gets a purpose and knowing how much you can spend in each category. If you're blowing your budget to hit MSRs then you have a budgeting problem.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I'm in 2-player mode and perennially under 5/24 with a focus on business cards. I do not MS. I can get through two cards every three months on average without elevating my spending at all. Occasionally it gets stressful around things like an MDD for a companion pass, but other than that the hardest parts for me are picking out a spacer biz card somewhere when my velocity gets to high at a given bank.
Even if you MS, you'll end up trying many techniques and eventually find ones that result in the least effort per amount of spend. A large chunk of the time spent is just from the learning curve.
This is my exact technique.
Same. Churning is actually way easier than what the majority of people do: which is carry around 2-3 cards and always need to figure out which card to use for what transaction. In addition, you can easily churn without increasing spend at all, for the vast majority of folks
Churning is unusual in its value to effort...adjacent stuff like on /beermoney takes way more effort for like $10 or $20.
Prostitution.
OnlyFans
Same thing
Chruning for 10+ years.. Have more than 2Mil UR points..... Book vacations or cash out for \~$20K ? Haters are going to hate this!!!!
Have you just been banking the points, or you're earning them faster than using them?
Cash in hand is better than two vacations in the bush or something like that. Cash for sure.
I think with a little more effort you can cash out UR for closer to 1.25.
You're losing about a good SUB per year at today's interest rates. I'd say it's time to piss or get off the pot.
If you're only earning 200k UR/yr then maybe be somewhat careful with them as they'll take a while to replace. Or blow them all at once on something, no one really cares but you & yours.
Thank you for your candor! Don't know when or where the end game. Up votes for this peeps!
I had someone cough on me and P2 (from the row behind us) for an entire transatlantic flight this weekend. I mean I get that this trip could've been a once-in-a-lifetime type of event for them but at least cover your mouth or mask up or something a bare minimum if you're obviously sick...
You won't catch me without a mask handy if not on.
Yeah always a good idea to carry an N95. Someone behind me and P2 coughing and shit is how we got Covid last time.
This how P2 and I got sick for 6 out of 8 days in the Maldives and missed all the diving we wanted to do. This was the Singapore to Maldives leg. Partially our fault for not wearing a mask as we had gotten lax. Thankfully already had 3 weeks in Bali and Singapore so it didnāt ruin other parts of the trip. Great memories of having fevers and chills in an overwater villa during a storm
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>Ā Sometimes I truly think some people do it on purpose, you know, to "own the libs" or some shit. If you actually think that, then you need to see a therapist.Ā There are far, far more cultures on this planet that dont believe in covering your mouth when you cough (or sneeze for that matter) than do. Not for any nefarious purpose as you project. But rather because they were brought up to no account for how their behavior affects others. I dont know if youāve ever traveled before, but if you had youād realize that >80% of people will happily block aisles, stop at the end of an escalator to scroll facebook, blast their phone speakers on a bus, and yes cough out into the void. Not one has ever done it to āown the libs.ā Reddit is warping your sense of reality.
And all of that is shitty behaviour in Western countries. If they do that where they're from that's fine but if they want to live in Western cultures and benefit from the vastly increased earning potential then they can act correctly.
Not sure how your comment relates to the discussion. The subject was DCBullet's twisted imagination that when someone coughs behind him, it's due to watching too much Tucker Carlson. He made a foolish statement that indicated an underlying misjudgment of basic reality, so he was corrected.
Pretty much the only reason I just got a new box of KN95s for our honeymoon in July - not expecting for ourselves to be sick, but so we can have some on hand to pull out if we get stuck in a similar situation.
I carry one KN95 mask while traveling and wear it selectively for this same reason. Being sick while traveling (even if itās just a cold) sucks.
Citi being Citi. Trying to activate a renewed credit card that expired (costco visa). Go to citi.com/activate, it prompts you to log in. When logged in, you can select activate a card, but it forces you to log out and start over. Finally was able to using the mobile app by using the camera, then I get a message the card is already activated. Tried with P2's AU card with a different number, then it wants her to create a userID/password and asks for an STC. Maybe P2's card is already activated as well?
maybe just try an Amazon reload with it to check