|
Residency Evil posted:Someone's gotta be playing the manufactured spending game and/or figured out a way to buy pudding to fund their Roth for millions. Whatever lender they tried to do that through would notice and shut them down long before they became even remotely worthy of the IRS's time. MS is more or less dead. Legitimate rewards are fine, though
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 04:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 15:49 |
|
|
Residency Evil posted:Someone's gotta be playing the manufactured spending game and/or figured out a way to buy pudding to fund their Roth for millions. Just do it the Thiel way and stick a bunch of pre IPO equity in your Roth and pretend it's only worth par.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 13:28
|
|
|
Unsinkabear posted:Whatever lender they tried to do that through would notice and shut them down long before they became even remotely worthy of the IRS's time. MS is more or less dead. Legitimate rewards are fine, though I'm out of touch and had no idea MS was not longer a thing. SlapActionJackson posted:Just do it the Thiel way and stick a bunch of pre IPO equity in your Roth and pretend it's only worth par. I've already funded my Roths for the year, but if someone wants to sell me pre-IPO shares for pennies, will take Amex, and then I can transfer them over to Schwab, I'm all in. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 15:04
|
|
|
MS is still a thing. It's just a lot harder to do at any major level. It's mostly just for hitting bonus requirements. The main ways are: - Every so often, some websites will have fee-free pre-paid debit cards for sale. You can use those to get basically 1:1, but they always have limits. - Gift cards. - Some banks will let you fund a checking account with up to $2,000 and it will code as a purchase for some cards. But, the days of ordering $10,000 in dollar coins with free shipping from the U.S. Treasury and paying with a credit card or reloading thousands of dollars through pre-paid debit cards/online wallets are basically over.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 16:27
|
|
|
Yeah, I had typed an addendum that I was being hyperbolic but I guess I never hit send on that, thanks for the correction. It's still rough even for hitting bonuses, though. Prepaid cards have their hangups when it comes to actually using/selling them and getting that money back (unless you know some tricks I don't), gift cards are more a way of front-loading your existing regular spends than manufacturing (which places a soft cap on how crazy you can go), and afaik most of the banks that let you do those large amounts of credit card funding have tightened down the limit or removed the option entirely (please join me in a moment of silence for the infinite loophole that was Evansville Teacher's Federal Credit Union  )Luckily a lot of bonus thresholds have also either come down or not risen with inflation, so even with my relatively low income I don't have problems hitting most targets with just non-manufactured spending. Two player mode helps, ofc, but still. Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jun 20, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 16:49
|
|
|
is churning still around or mostly dead? I'm going to be making a purchase of about $3700 soon, so wanted to get some sort of cash bonus or delta miles from a card. However I've already previously had the chase sapphire reserve, freedom unlimited, and some of the delta skymiles cards. am I going to be out out luck trying to get offers from these cards again? right now i only use one card for everything, which is the WF active cash which gives 2% cash back on everything. so $74 for that purchase.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 17:56
|
|
|
actionjackson posted:is churning still around or mostly dead? If you haven't applied to get more than 5 credit cards in the last two years or received a sign-up bonus from Chase in the last 4 years, then you can cancel your cards and get the sign-up bonus again. Otherwise, you'll have to find a different card issuer to try and get a good sign-up bonus from.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 18:20
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:If you haven't applied to get more than 5 credit cards in the last two years or received a sign-up bonus from Chase in the last 4 years, then you can cancel your cards and get the sign-up bonus again. I think the bonus clock from chase starts from when you last had the cards, not when you last got the bonus.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 18:38
|
|
|
The clock is based on when you last got the bonus specifically, is limited to SAPPHIRE bonuses specifically rather than all Chase bonuses, and you can only hold one Sapphire card at a time, so you have to close your existing to apply for the new one if you have one.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 20:13
|
|
|
The Citi Premier has a 75k citi points ($750+) sign up bonus for $4k spent right now e: $95 annual fee tho Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jun 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 20:29
|
|
|
Does anyone know of a Visa or Mastercard gift card that can have an AVS address set? It looks like some of the companies that used to offer it don't any more. Without being able to assign an address to the card you can't use it to order stuff from a lot of online merchants.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 21:14
|
|
|
Shear Modulus posted:The Citi Premier has a 75k citi points ($750+) sign up bonus for $4k spent right now that looks pretty good - it looks like you can redeem them for cash, confirm?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 21:32
|
|
|
actionjackson posted:that looks pretty good - it looks like you can redeem them for cash, confirm? I had typed up a whole loving wall of text and I somehow closed it.  Can confirm, I actually just did this. It's a great option. But in your situation I would recommend doing one (and eventually both) of the two Chase Ink Business cards, because they're worth the same amount but have no annual fee (so they'll net you more overall and don't need to be closed), don't count against your 5/24, and can be repeated because they don't have the same cooldown rules as the Sapphire and Southwest cards. They should be easy for you to get since you already have a relationship with Chase. You can loop back to Citi later, by which point the bonus may have come back up to 80k. And to respond to your original question, churning is the opposite of dead. You can't manufacture spending willy-nilly anymore but targets are still easy to hit, especially if you share bills with a partner or make white collar money. And the value proposition is stronger than it's ever been, because the alternative avenue of just trying to min/max small percentages on your spending categories keeps getting weaker. Most of the genuinely solid cards for that have had their long-term value lowered. The ones that are just a flat 2/2.5% across the board on all spending are still a solid simple option, but for everything else, if you have even a little interest in churning, it's going to bring in way more money for the same effort. We actually do have a churning thread here, albeit not a super busy one because only a handful of us do this actively and you can only do so many new cards per year: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4017817 Fake edit: somehow this became a completely different but equally dumb wall of text. I literally can't write a short post. Please send help. Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jun 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 22:19
|
|
|
thanks - there's four ink business cards, two of them have too high of a spend for me though. the others are 6k/3 months, which i'll probably hit just because of the bike. otherwise while I'm make pretty good money, i'm not a big spender. is me not having a business an issue? the application asks for all sorts of detailed business info, and i don't want to get into trouble outside of a few big purchases, I really only spend maybe 1500 or less a month on my card. i suppose the advantage to citi is that i would get my money right away, instead of waiting until i've spent the 6k which would take all three months actionjackson fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jun 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 23:10
|
|
|
Unsinkabear posted:The ones that are just a flat 2/2.5% across the board on all spending are still a solid simple option, but for everything else, if you have even a little interest in churning, it's going to bring in way more money for the same effort. Can you elaborate on which ones these are? I have had a tragic Credit Incident* recently and would like a high-return card that's just a general jack-of-all-trades, good, solid, no-nonsense, zero-effort card. If I do decide to start considering churning as a hobby, that's probably a year+ down the road. * I'm still using the very first card I got when I was like 16 with tiny limit; some months I end up having to pay it off 2 or 3 times if I'm spending a bit. A few weeks ago I noticed that my credit score started with a 7 instead of an 8; digging into that revealed that what tanked my score was my "credit utilization" so welp I should probably just get a Big Boi and use my old, tiny one issued by my first-ever bank to just pay a Netflix subscription or something. The points on it kinda suck anyway I think. Ideally, the card I would be looking for would have: • No annual fee • As high a rate of return across any/all categories as possible • A good cash-back or "apply your returns to pay off your statement" or whatever because I'm lazy as poo poo in this area right now and not a frequent flier I guess However, if the absolute best possible card in this category was in a tier of its own above everything else and didn't have a cash-back option but did have some sort of really easy way to turn the returns/rewards into hotel or flight stuff I guess I could just start traveling more . . . Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 01:30
|
|
|
Zarin posted:Can you elaborate on which ones these are? The thread favorites are Alliant's Visa Signature for 2.5%, and Fidelity's Rewards Visa Signature for 2%. There are many other 2% options, however (including some local banks and credit unions), so if anyone else knows better please correct me. They flat rate cards are hard to keep tabs on because there's so many and the only trustworthy card-tracking site we know of is a community-driven effort that is very churning-focused. They don't maintain an up to date list of all the various ~2% cards out there, and almost every other rewards min/maxing site out there is corrupt as fuuuuck. If it's a name you know and it turns up on the first page of google, yes, them too. Alliant's 2.5% one is the highest as far as I know. It has some hoops to jump through that basically amount to "use their checking account," but can be automated even if you don't. The payoff is the extra 0.5% along with some benefits like no foreign transaction fees and warranty extension that are pretty unusual to see on a fee-free card. Fidelity's card lacks those afaik, but is easier to set up and use. Literally just set and forget. Alliant's is almost as easy, but still requires you to have a checking account and go push the redeem button every once in a while. Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jun 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:21
|
|
|
actionjackson posted:thanks - there's four ink business cards, two of them have too high of a spend for me though. the others are 6k/3 months, which i'll probably hit just because of the bike My bad, I could have written that more clearly. Those 6k threshold cards are the two you want, because those are the fee-free ones. The cards with higher minimums also carry annual fees, and there's really no reason to ever mess with those when the easy no-AF ones are repeatable. actionjackson posted:i suppose the advantage to citi is that i would get my money right away, instead of waiting until i've spent the 6k which would take all three months I hate to be that guy, but if how soon you get that money is a part of your decision at all, you should probably hold off on the card and bike until it isn't. Take whatever is going to make you the most at the end of the year. This stuff should never be part of your cash flow plan, because it's not guaranteed to work out perfectly every time. I like to think of it as a kind of quarterly commission bonus or something. actionjackson posted:is me not having a business an issue? the application asks for all sorts of detailed business info, and i don't want to get into trouble Reddit has a guide for this that's more thorough than I could ever hope to be, so instead of rambling further I'll just point you there: https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/b5di1x/step_by_step_guide_to_getting_approved_for_chase/ Edit: If you need any more tips it might be best to hit up the churning thread, I don't wanna flood this one with too many effortposts that folks aren't interested in Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Jun 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:32
|
|
|
pseudanonymous posted:Citi premier ... 1 year from now when the second annual fee posts then call them and product change to custom cash which has no AF. Coming up on this. Not immediate, but soon enough that I want to prepare. I already have a Citi Double Cash as my primary. I intend, like pseudanonymous said, to change the Premier to a Custom Cash when the annual fee posts. You obviously can't apply for more than one Custom Cash but you apparently can downgrade to one even if you already have one, so I was thinking I should apply for a Custom Cash soon, get the little signup bonus, downgrade the Premier to a Custom Cash in October, relegate them to separate categories, and have two 5% category cards for Citi, which is where all my spending currently is anyway. Does that make sense? Additional: I don't yet have a Citi Rewards+, either. I know that having one means I get a 10% rebate on ThankYou Points for all cards on the same account. Should I apply around the same time as the CC (maybe a month later to split up the SUBs), or will "give me a Custom Cash," "give me a Rewards+," "make my Premier another Custom Cash" in three or four months make Citi testy? Or is there something else I'm missing that makes it less worthwhile?
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:36
|
|
|
Couch MS is drying up, but in person MS is mostly alive and well. There are people in private groups that I'm in earning tens of thousands of dollars a year doing it, if not more. I hit it hard early this year but got burnt out on standing in line at Dollar General and Walmart customer service, and trying to find gas station clerks that don't think I'm committing some kind of crime buying a visa with an amex.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 08:16
|
|
|
Amex just offered a pretty sweet 55,000 MR retention offer for $4,000 spend in 3 months, which we took them up on.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 20:10
|
|
|
Cacafuego posted:Amex just offered a pretty sweet 55,000 MR retention offer for $4,000 spend in 3 months, which we took them up on.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 20:16
|
|
|
Josh Lyman posted:Do you have to threaten to cancel to get these? Feeling like my CSP might not be that useful after 1 year I told them the annual fee just posted and I was wondering if there were any retention offers on my account. They offered generic info about Amex platinum’s benefits and I said I was aware of them and we had some other cards that offered similar benefits, so we were deciding which ones to keep. They made the offer after that. No threatening necessary this time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 20:29
|
|
|
Chase did not try to stop me from downgrading my CSP at all lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 21:27
|
|
|
Shroomie posted:There are people in private groups that I'm in earning tens of thousands of dollars a year doing it, if not more. Assuming "tens" means at least $20k, how is this possible? Married couple + a few fake "businesses"? Or is this also people valuing non-cash benefits at retail price like lounge benefits / uber credits / hotel nights etc? $20k+/year cash-in-bank is serious money.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 21:51
|
|
|
drk posted:Assuming "tens" means at least $20k, how is this possible? Married couple + a few fake "businesses"? MS = "Manufactured" spend - which means generating points with no/limited actual net purchases. One way would be to buy cash-equivalent in gift cards, at a place where you'd get points credited for the purchase, and then later liquidating the gift cards for low/no loss, repeat. It seems like a lot of effort, some degree of trial and error, and a lot of vectors have gotten closed over the years as credit card companies close these loopholes. I never actually did it myself because  but it seemed like the next level beyond churning.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 22:55
|
|
|
drk posted:Assuming "tens" means at least $20k, how is this possible? Married couple + a few fake "businesses"? Two player mode. Amex giving out business card offers with no "once in a lifetime" clause like candy. Crazy offers to add 99 employee cards and get 5,000 points for each, and the phone reps will just put your name + roman numerals 1-99. Big Chase Ink SUBs. Massive Venture X Business SUBs. Bank and brokerage bonuses can be pretty juicy, as well.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 23:20
|
|
|
disaster pastor posted:Coming up on this. Not immediate, but soon enough that I want to prepare. I think Citi is pretty strict about new cards and you'll need to wait like 91 days between cards or soemthing like that. I got rejected last year for a card and they said the only reason was I had opened a new card like a month before.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 02:51
|
|
|
pseudanonymous posted:I think Citi is pretty strict about new cards and you'll need to wait like 91 days between cards or soemthing like that. I got rejected last year for a card and they said the only reason was I had opened a new card like a month before. Good to know, thank you. I'll work on getting a Custom open ASAP so I'm not wasting one, and I'll hold on the Rewards+ until EOY-ish.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 13:37
|
|
|
Shroomie posted:Two player mode. Amex giving out business card offers with no "once in a lifetime" clause like candy. Crazy offers to add 99 employee cards and get 5,000 points for each, and the phone reps will just put your name + roman numerals 1-99. Big Chase Ink SUBs. Massive Venture X Business SUBs. Some of that seems a little over the fraud line.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 14:53
|
|
|
smackfu posted:Some of that seems a little over the fraud line. It's against the T&C for sure and the RAT will shut you down for it, but it's not fraud and the FBI isn't kicking in your door. The IRS has gone after people making six figures from it, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 16:39
|
|
|
Amex has a long history of clawing back those points as well.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 18:27
|
|
|
Yeah there's some murmurs right now about points being clawed back from giftcards dot com purchases and a certain app that sells gift cards. Historically it mostly only happens if you do heavy gift card purchasing during the SUB period. Beyond that they've placed limits on bonus categories to limit abuse to an acceptable level (i.e. the $25K limit on the personal Gold card). Also unrelated to Amex, but a bunch of people got their PayPal accounts shut down the other day for a popular MS play.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 19:18
|
|
|
Shroomie posted:It's against the T&C for sure and the RAT will shut you down for it, but it's not fraud and the FBI isn't kicking in your door. Opening up fake accounts with false names for non-existent employees to get cash bonus payments from the bank certainly sounds like textbook fraud to me
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 19:18
|
|
|
drk posted:Opening up fake accounts with false names for non-existent employees to get cash bonus payments from the bank certainly sounds like textbook fraud to me Idk where you're getting fake accounts opened with false names from. You don't need to lie to open a business card. The employee card bit seems kinda sketch, but when it's an Amex rep suggesting it to you on a recorded line, then I mean... *shrug*
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 22:07
|
|
|
I picked up the USAA Cashback Rewards Plus card last year mainly for the 5% cashback on gas and recently received an offer for 0% APR through January 2024 that I would need to activate by next week. The thing is, I already have a 0% introductory APR on the card through April 2024. Should I be concerned about having received the offer when I should have 0% APR for the entire duration anyway (e.g., could it indicate that there's some sort of mixup with my account information?)?
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2023 20:55
|
|
|
Atahualpa posted:I picked up the USAA Cashback Rewards Plus card last year mainly for the 5% cashback on gas and recently received an offer for 0% APR through January 2024 that I would need to activate by next week. The thing is, I already have a 0% introductory APR on the card through April 2024. Should I be concerned about having received the offer when I should have 0% APR for the entire duration anyway (e.g., could it indicate that there's some sort of mixup with my account information?)? Your credit union can answer that better than anyone here.
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2023 21:11
|
|
|
Yeah, I will contact them about it later this weekend when I can - was more just wondering if anyone here had seen anything similar. One possibility I was considering is that whatever system they have for sending out 0% APR offers like that - I've received them before from other companies after my usage decreased - might just not have a built-in check for that sort of thing; some people here go through way more credit cards than I do, so I figured if that was the case then someone else has probably had the same thing happen. (I also wouldn't put it past companies to send out offers like that as some sort of scheme where buried in the fine print is that if you activate the offer you're giving up any claim to the remaining months of the introductory APR offer. Not likely IMO but again if it were the case, I expect someone here would probably know more about it.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2023 23:58
|
|
|
New offer from Citi Costco Visa: Earn 5% back in statement credit on up to $500 in travel expenses through September 30 (activate by August 15). Includes Airlines, Hotels, Car Rentals, Cruise Lines, Travel Agencies and Travel Engines Showed up as a unique link in email to activate. Only represents $25 back maximum, but can still come in handy for anyone not min-maxing their travel expenses. And Costco's card earns 3% back on travel by default anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2023 21:04
|
|
|
Not sure if it was a targeted offer but I just got an email for 8% back at gas stations with my Best Buy Visa, only through 7/16 but hey, better than 2%
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2023 16:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 15:49 |
|
|
I’ve been having to remind myself a lot that it’s better to move in 93 degree weather in Atlanta than the original plan of moving in February. Dont ever move, but I’ll be a much more positive person next week when I’m there. If things are reasonably settled we’ll try to make it out!
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2023 20:05
|
|
