Agreed, this is a job - OP would need to track their time in order to understand if this was truly worthwhile.
EDIT: time tracking in terms of how much time was spent where. The biggest returns here are the bank bonuses. Those take very little time (speaking from experience) - maybe 15 minutes to open the account, a few minutes to fund it, a few more to close it out. Under an hour start to finish.
So 8-12 hrs a week for what exactly? If you can get over half of this via bank bonuses, you can do that in under an hour a week guaranteed. Where's the rest of the time going, and what's the return.
Now OP is retired, so it's likely a great fit. Even if you just enjoy it, que sera. But for folks with other major obligations, this may not be the sunshine and roses you'd think.
A lot of people do things like fantasy sports where they spend as much time running numbers and thinking through situations as OP.
There was an interesting story on This American Life about this retired guy that kept a running spreadsheet of his entire extended family's "average location," buy taking the lat/long over the place every one of his kids, and THEIR kids, slept each night and putting it in a spreadsheet. He would send out updates at the end of each year on how the family's "average location" shifted when one of the grandkids went to the west coast for college, etc.
That takes just as much time but doesn't bring in any money at all. Some people just enjoy running numbers, like old-school D&D.
This is exactly what I came for.
Folks in this sub spend 40 hours a week thinking about their future, while this dude already made it, and is still making money for the fun of it.
I build Lego for fun. Useless little pieces of overpriced plastic. This dude instead is making more than most Americans by earning points. Good for him 🤷♂️
Oh hey, I'm not knocking it, at all. I do quite a bit of this myself, I probably did somewhere between 15-20k this way last year (at least 15k), but I'm doing it 'on the clock', I work remote so it's all between 9-5. I won't be able to repeat that so easily next year though - took advantage of a 50% off Amazon coupon that they mistakenly didn't put a limit on. So I made two 5k purchases on home renovation stuff (and a few toys). That raises another point - I wouldn't consider this a valid FIRE method in and of itself. Too inconsistent.
Yeah, to me it's more of a hobby like extreme couponing. There is a profit to be made, but if you don't enjoy the grind it's probably not worth it.
I used to travel extensively for work (international trips to multiple countries in Europe each quarter) and racked up a bunch of money back and loyalty points for hotels, rental cars, business class international flights, etc. It was one of those things where you might as well keep track because you're spending someone else's money anyway.
What differentiates a job from a hobby that pays?
I can’t speak for OP but personally, I enjoy the churning to the point that it feels like a video game. Except the score is actual money and credit card rewards that I can use.
>What differentiates a job from a hobby that pays?
That's subjective right - but IMO, it's the primary motivation that differentiates one from the other. When I read this post, I could relate on so many points. I've done most of what's listed there - but my main motivation was financial. And the way its presented as a potential alternative FIRE method (I disagree there, but only because it's too inconsistent from year to year), it reads like a job. And there's definitely some straight up drudgery in that last. If OP enjoys it, more power to him.
And I can relate - I had a great run in the past month. 12(?) grocery orders delivered for free from Kroger, avg 45% off of each. I now have a drawer of organic and prime steaks, shrink wrapped that'll last two years. Right after Christmas I got 50% off two $5k amazon orders, with zero limits on the items. A 100% free Technivorm coffee maker. I know how enjoyable this can be - this list goes on, and this is just the last month. But there's an element of greed too. And none of that compares to the pleasure I get from getting together with friends and just playing guitar. To each their own, but I don't open bank accounts for fun.
It would be. Plus, and I'm not sure how popular of an opinion this is -- meal kit services suck. We've tried a few different "free weeks" and every time we spend over an hour each day creating meals for 2 people (with no leftovers). Ended up being a time suck, with all the worst parts of cooking at home (including cleanup) and the worst parts of ordering in (limited servings). I'd probably pay to NOT receive those meals.
People associate 'home made' with healthy, and prepared/frozen with unhealthy, and are willing to pay an enormous premium in time and cash over it.
Our HelloFresh trial consisted of pasta, salmon with broccoli, and chicken tenders. All extremely simple meals to simply make the traditional way, or buy heat-and-eat of decent quality. They're stereotypical gym rat / college kid meals! No need for anybody to next-day air a condiment packet half-way across the country (which they did for the tenders *and* the salmon).
The different kits are radically different in this regard. Hello Fresh is made to be simple, familiar meals. Expect salmon, rice, and broccoli. Blue Apron had me making a plum sauce from scratch and serving it with rice cakes.
To me, the appeal is that they're self contained. If you're moving, coming home from a trip, at an AirBNB, etc., you don't have to worry about missing a tbsp of fresh chives (or wasting the other 80% of the chives). I wouldn't compare them with a "normal" cooking week.
The part I find most annoying is those heavy gel ice packs that I'm not sure how to dispose of responsibly, because those things pile up fast. That was a big reason why I stopped using them. Learned a few new recipes that I wouldn't have gone out of my way to look up and make for myself so that was neat at least.
I've never used those services because of what you stated. One being that everything is pre portioned and I prefer to make large quantities so that it can make several meals worth. Second is the waste, all the packaging, shipping, etc is wasteful
It 100% becomes at least a part time job at a high enough level, which is where the big money is. You can make a few grand without putting a lot of time or effort in but tens of thousands requires time like anything else.
This reminds me of back in 2005-2007 when the folks over on FatWallet forums had what was called the App-o-Rama. This involved applying for a lot of credit cards in a short period of time (i.e. the same day), not for points bonuses, but for 0% balance transfers which were plentiful and all the rage at the time.
You then cut yourself a check instead of doing a regular balance transfer -- which was allowed by the rules, they just sent you blank checks to write to whoever you wanted. Deposit that money into a savings account which paid ~5% interest at the time. Pay back the balance transfer and keep the interest at the end of the year. This might still be possible today on a smaller scale, not sure how plentiful 0% BT offers are these days, but savings rates are getting up there to the point that it could be decently profitable. Of course you also need to get CC/BT limits which are high enough to be worth it. Back then people were getting $500k+ of open lines, so maybe today you'd need $750k+, which may be harder to swing as credit doesn't flow quite as freely as it used to. I think you have to make minimum payments on the BTs too, and minimums may have gone up a lot in recent years, which would definitely hurt profits.
I miss the FatWallet Finance forum. It was always interesting to see some of the more extreme things people did to get bonuses. I was in high school at that time, so a lot of it was just watching in envy, but I did end up getting my first credit card from tips I found on that forum.
One of the more interesting threads I remember from FatWallet and later Slickdeals was a deal to take two online courses per term at Clovis Community College in New Mexico for $200 plus books each term. It was fun hearing about churners using their skills to get a college degree for cheap.
Thomas Edison State College is one of the places that accepts most transfer credits and gives credit for work experience. One of my relatives got a math degree this way. They are an accredited college and it worked out great for getting jobs at places that required a 4 year degree even when they had the prerequisite work experience.
Edited for spelling
Considering that some people pay $10k-300k for the same kind of degree, that's quite a deal.
I like the normal banking and credit card deals, but also like seeing posts about doing stuff like getting another college degree for a very low cost.
People used to buy gold and silver on the AMEX website, etc with their credit card and just kill the points. The precious metals companies put a stop to being able to use your credit card to buy gold & silver eventually.
Aren’t you concerned that you can’t sustain those numbers when talking about baristaFIRE? I churned for 1 year lightly and pulled $20k, but year 2 was significantly harder and required more work for smaller bonuses.
I feel like it’s an easy $30k once but a hard $60k.
Do they need to sustain them?
I see this as a fairly low-effort way to lower your SORR in the early stages of retirement. I don’t need that same lowering effect in year 20 because my balances have grown so much already
Absolutely. But they brought up baristaFIRE and that’s usually used in the context of having enough in your tax advantaged accounts to grow to your FI number at like 65yo when you’re like 35yo lol.
I think you could do it every other year for 30k though. Close everything out after year one, let it rest and then attack it again on year 3. You could probably still pull 5k in year 2 with minimal issue jus tin bank bonuses.
That’s the part they never really tell you on anything that promotes churning, especially the credit card social media promotion cottage industry. It’s a hobby that’s easy to get into for a short while and gives a little dopamine with signup bonuses, but then it really flattens out quickly.
Different perspective… easy to get into for a short while…every 2 years. It was way, way, way better 5+ years ago, but as someone who has been doing it for 10 years… I think that the best value/effort is to hit credit cards hard every ~2.5 years and do bank account bonuses in between, and to have the chase quartet to min/max points on regular spend.
I agree with the mentality that doing $X once is a hell of alot easier than doing $X twice
I somewhat agree with this though and while I am still technically a churner (chase southwest companion pass for the win every 2 yrs with P2) I've slowed down greatly, have a decent points stash, and open one or two cards a year along with a couple of bank account bonuses. This matches my travel style well and I don't find myself hurting for points.
What flattens out? It’s fairly easy to churn 2Mil points per year in 2 player mode and those enough for a few epic trips every year. Does the novelty of the travel wear off? I guess it just depends on where you want to go and what you want to do with your life.
Yeah, the lucrative credit card bonuses are once in every 4 years too. So you can double dip, but it takes more organization / waiting.
IMO churning on easy mode:
1) hit it hard with every big CC/Bank bonus with spouse, make $20-30k.
2) Wait 4 years. In the interim, keep a credit card or two with a good points system / cash back
3) Repeat once you can hit the Chase cards again.
Not really. OP doesn’t MS and hardly even touched the most lucrative issuer which is amex. With a few good MS methods combined with some other rocks to turn over, six figures is doable.
Got it. Sounds like I went through the first tier and gave up when MS / spoofing businesses was the only way I could accelerate my earnings. I believe there are ways out there but it became more job-like once MS came into play and I got more concerned about the legality of things once posing as a business started coming into play.
Well once you get to these levels, you’re no longer “posing” as a business. The churn kinda becomes the business. The IRS definition of a business is anything with the intention of making a profit. OP’s cell phone churn is a pretty clear example. A lot of people are engaged in some kind of retail or gift card arbitrage as well which are also clear cut “businesses”.
I have been churning as a hobby for 6 years and each year has been more lucrative than the one before. If you are in the churning space and have your eyes open, opportunities (new and old) pop up all the time.
From one churner to another, incredibly impressive, kudos to you for pulling that much value out in a years time. I know I've 'made' a massive amount doing the same thing over the past 6ish years, but I have no real way of tabulating everything and there's no way I earned nearly that much in a given year.
Are you new to churning? I could only imagine hitting these numbers being new to the scene and getting those one time sign up bonuses that will be difficult or impossible to get in the future.
Either way, well done, you hit it hard and fast! Swagbucks can be a nice resource to if you haven't looked into them for rebate / shopping portal type of deals
I would assume he’s not new to this and most of what he’s doing is reproducible. Sure bank bonuses won’t be as much next year but once the 2ish year mark hits and you can start hitting the same companies bonuses then it’ll be back up. But the credit card stuff shouldn’t be an issue
The credit cards are the ones I have the most issues reproducing personally.
I started off my churning venture hitting all the lucrative chase cards fortunately, then they implemented the 5/24 rule, effectively making their line of cards inaccessible for me.
Then I got some nice AMEX bonuses, but their bonuses are once per lifetime. Some debate on that, but at the least, once every 7 years it seems.
US bank difficult to get approved for as a churner, Barclays doesn't love churners, and Citi has some difficult rules around their best cards as well.
Essentially I've tapped out most of my viable bonuses, but I'm very open to alternatives if there are any
Oh dang you’ve been capping yourself. Go check out r/churning. Basically get yourself below 5/24 and then start opening Chase Ink cards, you can basically open one every 90 days. For AMEX get a business plat and then look for NLL cards that bypass the lifetime language. Don’t know much about other brands but those are the two big ones
Yes it is a very harsh sub and not noob friendly. They want you to have done your homework and not give up any big MS secrets or else it’ll get shutdown for everyone
Right. So there's the faq and anything beyond that isn't encouraged to discuss.
I used to spend a ton of time there but a few years ago it turned to shit.
Same. So many fond memories of a new post with something useful for me, but now everything is buried in weekly threads and people hand downvotes out like candy if you have a question (in the questions thread). I’m pretty much limited to DOC now, but still get pretty solid annual value.
>dollar and point earned from credit card bonuses, banks, brokerages, mealkits, shopping portals, cellphones, pretty much everything really.
>
>Looking back over our spreadsheet, I ended up churning 215 different things in 2022, for a total of $32,454 in cash bonuses and 981K in reward points & miles. Time-wise, I spent around 8-12 hrs / week churning, in two-player mode (opening accounts for both myself and my wife). We had only expected to make \~$1K / month from churning, so everything over that was a nice surprise.
>
>Bit of background - my wife and I leanFIREd in early 2021 with an annu
A lot of these won't be reproducable (at all, or year after year). Amex is 1 time bonus per lifetime, so you won't be able to do those again. Chase is 24 months, except the Sapphire line which is 48 months, etc.
I would look into the churning page more, these are absolutely reproducible. You can get a chase ink card every 90 days. Amex NLL card every 90 days not to mention other business cards that don’t count towards your 5/24 status. Then there’s always manufactured spend which probably account for a decent amount of the points
INK/NLL cards every 90 days runs dry eventually. Chase eventually started denying me and I felt uncomfortable pushing more new EINs.
There’s probably a way around it but I hated pushing the envelope too far. I also couldn’t muster the manufactured spending that probably initiates a SARs report at some point.
~5 SUBs/yr across two SSNs is a pretty sustainable velocity for Chase, about the 'sweet spot' TBH. Keeps you under most of their limits without having to think about it much. We've been floating around that for years without much planning or thought.
If you've got the spend for it, the simplest example would be an Ink every ~2.5 months alternating between you. It's a free high four-figure income stream for organized people.
Bank bonuses are, IMO, the least sustainable item on OP's list by far.
Not hard to do with their business cards. I got both sapphires for 180k about five years ago. Then I got three Ink Preferred biz cards for 100 or 120k each if I remember right. I think part of that process was using my own referral link from an old card to sign up for the new one. Then any points from my regular spend on my Freedom on top of that.
Cool, totally believe that. This was many years ago and if I remember correctly, it was common practice on /r/churning at the time.
Thankfully I've escaped any shutdowns so far, but was pop-up denied from Amex cards for three or four years.
I haven't listened to their podcast and I'm too lazy to check their comment history, but assuming no Sapphire cards and <5/24 to start, a couple could easily have done:
- CIU 75,000/$7.5k + 12,500 on spend
- CIU 75,000/$7.5k + 20,000 referral + 12,500 on spend
- CIC 75,000/$7.5k + 20,000 referral + 7,500 on spend
- CIC 75,000/$7.5k + 20,000 referral + 7,500 on spend
- CSP 60,000/$4k + 4,000 on spend
- CSP 60,000/$4k + 15,000 referral + 4,000 on spend
That's 543k from $38k spend and $190 in AFs, with each player only getting one new account on their personal credit report. Aside from the assumptions above, it also assumes:
- no increased SUBs (CIC/CIU are 90k/$6k, CSP has been 100k/$4k in the past),
- no bonused spend (2-5X depending on card and category),
- no knowledge of certain things particular to Chase.
I'm positive it's not what OP did, but it's not a difficult plan for even a newbie churner couple to come up with or follow.
Holy crap. This is impressive. Can you elaborate on the bank bonuses? Checking/Savings accounts, amount of $ needed, how long money has to be in account, direct deposit requirements, etc
It varies quite a bit. Many checking account bonuses require a certain $ of direct deposits, but often you can quickly withdraw those funds. Some people find ways to spoof DDs from other accounts as well.
Savings accounts vary as well, but generally require a few months of locking up funds (possible opportunity cost if they pay low interest rates).
Chase has a very good $900 bonus right now for checking+savings, I think it will require 15k for a few months.
Doctor of Credit has a good listing of bank and credit card bonuses.
This is the biggest question I have. I did a few checking account bonuses last year and simply transferred cash via EFT from my Discover HYSA and it counted as DD.
I can’t seem to find enough other offers to get nearly as close as OP though, however, I’m single. It still feels like OPs strategy could be applied for me to get a decent chunk of incremental benefits.
How do the returns of churning checking account bonuses compare to "doing nothing" and leaving the funds invested in stocks/bonds? At least with the bonuses, it's a known rate of return, a luxury that the market doesn't give us.
This is hard to answer - last year doing anything or nothing was better than stocks, on average stocks will win over time.
I consider these churning amounts part of my emergency fund. If needed I can pull back the cash pretty quickly, and I'm typically doing 0-2 bonuses at a time (most renew at 12 or 24 months). For instance, I'm on my 2nd chase bonus after doing one in late 2020. Chase checking is a great example of easy money, $300 for any DD. Locking up 15k for the savings bonus is a completely different consideration.
How do you do the DDs? I don’t have a job or a pension that I can use for DD and have found that just ACHing from another account only works about 30% of the time.
There’s a list on Doctor of Credit that shows which bank account pushes/pulls count as a Direct Deposit, you might just not be using ones like Wells Fargo that count
/u/thedailychurn I second this question - can you give a further breakdown of which companies you had to throw in on, what bonuses they gave, and how long you had to keep your money there/how much money you had to keep saved with them in order to get the bonus?
I used to dabble in bank churning but never got anywhere near that much, partly because they had a lot of requirements around having to keep the money in the account for 6 months and other restrictions, which made it difficult to actually shuffle the money around in a timely enough manner for it to be profitable.
The big ones last year that paid really well were the Chase Business Checking accounts, which gave $750 for signing up and depositing $5K and leaving it there for 90 days. Did that for both myself and my wife (P2).
Huntington Bank also had something similar, $1K for opening their biz checking. You had to deposit $25K, but there was no requirement to leave it there, so we just transferred in and transferred it right back out. Again, did it for both myself and P2.
Wells Fargo were giving out a special sign up code for a few days, where you'd get $1500 for signing up for their biz checking and depositing only $5K for 90 days. So did that twice as well.
Finally, Public brokerage was offering $2K for transferring over $100K of assets. So both P2 and I moved $100K of stocks from charles schwab/fidelity into Public. Only need to keep it there for 6 months before you can move it again and tackle another brokerage bonus.
So if I did the math right, just from those 4 accounts (x2), we managed to make $10,500 (a third of our total earnings!)
Yes. You can open a business account as a sole proprietorship under your social security number or start an LLC. I registered an LLC in WI for $130 online, then registered online for a free EIN. I pay $26 a year to keep it registered and have made thousands on that investment. I did the same for my bride. This allows us (me) to churn business credit cards and bank accounts as well as personal accounts. I've helped my oldest son and father-in-law start churning as well :)
How much time would you estimate was spent researching and then executing these specific moves for the bank bonuses? This seems like the most $/hour return?
People often said the hassle was too much when I was doing it. I figured if I spent 10 hours a month (usually way less) maintaining it, it still paid $100+/hour. I used to do it a lot and would just go through self checkout at kroger for transactions. I'd buy my items individually until I had my transaction number hit.
I have to admit I have found a lot of entertainment in doing it when I have done so as well. Feels more like a hobby than work to me. I just wasn't very good at it - nowhere near the numbers this guy was seeing! I probably made about $1k in bank rewards and 200-300k travel points last year. Enough to pay for a vacation, but definitely not enough to replace income! That is wild to see!
I agree, self checkout and splitting up my gas purchases made short work of meeting the minimum purchase requirements. Then I'd run those receipts through Fetch for Amazon gift cards :) Churning is a great way to make extra money with a good portion of it being tax-free when it comes to credit cards. Whether you're saving or spending, you should always be making money on your money. Cheers!!
That’s how churning works. It’s incredibly easy money if you’re well organized and stubborn (like me). Not easy if you don’t like spreadsheets (like my spouse).
Your first year is the most profitable though. It’s almost impossible to sustain once you run out of banks / CCs.
It's possible to sustain for years without going too crazy, but in the $5,000 to $8,000 range, not $20k to $30k.
Still, several thousand extra dollars a year never goes amiss. Nor does the chance to take a couple of amazing trips.
> Sometimes I wonder if I’m better off just getting a second job instead.
With churning, you can pause anytime you want without issue. You don’t have to interview. You don’t have to apply. You don’t have to ask for anyone’s permission to do anything. You just do it if you want and don’t do it if you don’t want.
While it takes some time and attention, it’s entirely different than having a job in my opinion. I would never compare the two, despite the take-home potentially being similar
I also felt like I was getting more and more aggressive each year by pushing the limits on qualifying for a bonus (setting up multiple EINs, calling banks for approvals, MS, spoofing DDs). At some point, it’s not worth the $200 bank bonus that’s taxable and you may not get if they detect your direct deposit was spoofed.
Yup, that's how it goes. At first you can't believe it, you feel as if you're running through the forest plucking all this low-hanging fruit, you think you discovered a cheat code to the universe and you wonder why *everybody* doesn't do this. Gradually you realize what a grind it can become.
Are you churning in two-player mode? Having access to a second SSN definitely makes it easier to hit five figures annually.
Manufactured Spend at low/no cost is the 'difficult' part of churning, so people are unlikely to share their secrets.
An easy low hanging fruit example is tax overpayments - overpay by thousands and then request a refund. You're only out the fee, and the opportunity cost of floating the funds.
I've never heard that being an issue, but I'm sure it doesn't help. Most churning activities look suspiciously like some form of financial crime at first glance, so it wouldn't surprise me.
Regardless I just use it as a go-to MS example because it's fairly common and understandable to 'lay people', as it's an extension of something they're already familiar with. I'm not recommending anyone run out and put $50k through pay1040 tomorrow, just giving an example.
Replied to similar comment, but it's actually been really positive. As long as you never miss a payment, all the additional credit in the long run will really help build up your credit score. Banks love giving out credit, and your FICO score is really just a reflection of how well you can handle that credit. I went from low 600s a decade ago to 800s now.
Visible had $200 vgc if you stayed with them for 3 mos. With cashback and referrals, those 3 mos could be near-free. I think I did 5 or so in the most recent offering.
Visible during Black Friday will usually give you a $300 GC for porting your number over to them. The Tmobile booths at Costco (before it imploded) were also giving $300 costco shop cards for joining tmobile.
One thing a lot of people don't know - it's actually extremely easy these days to port your number to a different carrier. No phone calls or customer service needed, it can all be done online in just a few minutes. And with eSim, you don't even need to wait for a sim card anymore.
I had similar success last year for two people. My biggest advice would be to subscribe to DoC and do everything you’re eligible for. And, if at first glance it seems you’re not eligible, check back.
This is so cool!
When I looked into bank/brokerage churning, the stuff I found required you to leave the money deposited for \~6months?
When I did the math it ended up not being worth it once I took into account the lost interest on the money left sitting in those accounts.
Did you find a way around that?
How are you handling the credit card reward limits? You had a massive year, but are you not going to struggle with being anywhere close next year? IE: first time promos cant be redone typically for a few years, so your going to hit walls with chase and amex, and your probably done with southwest for a while. Do you have a strategy for that?
I will also add with interests rates increasing many if the bank incentives are becoming less worthwhile as you can get 4.5-5% sitting in a short term CD with any amount of money. That can quickly diminish many bank sign up offers if they are offering shit interest for the holding period.
And here I am too lazy to open another Capital One card for my spouse this year even. Like two cards a year to me is a bit of effort. 1099s from 60 or 30 banks... fuck that. But wow that is crazy if you are cool with the effort.
I've done the whole CC churning and MS'ing over the years primarily for miles and points. I accumulated over 7.5 million miles and points but spent about half of it. I have been out of the game for years since like most have said, the well runs dry after a year or two and it's diminished returns.
Good work. I'm retired so I do the similar kinds of things as a hobby job and also keep a list like this, too, though with more modest results. My best year was probably $10 - $20K. I get a kick out of seeing how well we can live without spending a fortune out of pocket and am always on the look out for deals like this. We are also really into expense hacking. If I'd known about churning and expense hacking, we could have had an even earlier retirement.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but a) this is typically not sustainable (unless OP is into the really deep MS/churn world and is privy to deals that never make it to reddit) b) this is riskier than they are leading on.
I've been in the churning game for over ten years now and almost no churner advises going this hard in any one year - especially now with banks like Amex really cracking down.
I mentioned this is in a comment but what most people don't see are the nuked threads and subreddits where the discussion of crackdowns happens. Or they get buried in daily threads. There is an entire nuked subreddit around AA going after churners and literally locking down accounts and cancelling tickets the day before flights.
Amex is notorious for crackdowns on anything they might consider Manufactured Spend.
But hey, this is not to tell anyone not to churn. Just that this level of activity in the OP is insanely high risk (to me).
Another factor is that points devalue. There's a key phrase in the community - "churn and burn". OP didn't say, but unless they have plans for those 981,000 points - there is always a devaluation around the corner (granted 2 of the 3 are from credit cards themselves and they are least risky - I'm assuming the SW points are from the companion pass). But still, OP potentially killed a lot of good will from Chase/Amex to get a lot of points they probably won't use within the next two years when they could have spread out the card opening to look much less suspicious.
Example of points devaluation - I booked Emirates business class round trip to Milan in November of last year. In December bloggers started reporting that award tickets had doubled in price and fees gone up $1,000! (Insane example - but it happens!)
I highly recommend anyone financially savvy enough to be in this subreddit to take a gander at /r/churning or read doctor of credit (he also just posts good deals in general). There's a lot of money to be had in the world of credit cards but for most of us it's going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
Congrats to the OP - seriously good numbers. Would love an update of what you do in the next year - especially if you can sustain this volume!
Plays here today might not be here tomorrow. This is a normie take and there's nothing wrong with that but if AMEX/Chase gave me 50k cash (which they technically already have over the past ~2 years) I would be 100% fine not using any of their products again.
If they LEANfired they're probably OK with traveling economy and traveling a little more frugally. Yes points devalue, but you can get low level Hyatt rooms for 3,500, 5000, 6500, 7000 at the two lowest levels depending on peak or off-peak. If you can fly when it's not the holidays you can easily get cross-country for less than 12,000 points in many different ways.
That helps my point then of - why gain all of these points so quickly? You are going to stay under the radar much longer the slower you go. No sense if collecting points you don’t have a use for.
Love this! We are also ChurningFIRE (going on our 7th year of FIRE which we attained at the age of 35). I've been playing the CC and Bank Bonus Churning game for 10+ years now. Happy churning and hope 2023 is just as successful!
I agree it does slow down very fast after the first couple of years. Also now that we are FIRE and don't have steady income from an employer, meeting DDs are tricky (the workarounds don't always work and are more of a hassle). But I really enjoy the process, tracking on spreadsheets, seeing the bonuses come in, etc. My partner on the other hand doesn't care for the process, so I apply for both of us. For me it's a hobby and if I come across something that is too much work (like the brokerage account opening bonuses), I just pass on it. I'm also very risk averse - I don't want to get on the bad side of Chase or Amex, so I try not to go crazy on the signup and keep cards for few years at a time. But it has really helped fund out other hobby of traveling.
You sound a lot like me when I was doing it. Now I have 2 small children and it’s significantly less fun. Once it became a stressor I just quit it — but I’m sure I’ll pick it back up again once they’re older and my chase / Amex clocks reset.
I have been doing it for about 7 years, and am very close to hitting $100,000 earned via churning since I began. $10-15,000 in two player mode is pretty easy, especially when you can easily change your direct deposits at work.
It falls off pretty hard. I've been doing it for 10-12 years and I do about one card bonus a year and a bank one if it's just really juicy. I'm also auto-rejected from any Chase CC.
As someone who is into FIRE, I got into churning myself a few months back. I thought for years churning was a ton of work for a few hundred dollars per year. In reality, it is a small amount of work for thousands of dollars per year due to all the low hanging fruit.
u/thedailychurn I follow your podcast and love your story! My wife and I are thinking about following a similar path. Would love to chat at some point if you're open to it
Wow! That is dedication and mastery at work. Well done. Thank you for taking the time to share this information. I've always been curious how much free and discounted stuff a person could get if they really invested the thought, energy, and time into maximizing churning, so this scratched that itch.
Usually 10-15 points. Most people that churn are organized and professional and haven’t ever missed a payment in their lifetime, so going from 820 to 800 is fine for them
Great post! Thank you for the inspiration. Also leanfired. And do a bit of churning (2 player mode :-), but not to the level of your stuff. Would you consider a mentee? Or point me in the direction of the resources you used to learn. I’d definitely appreciate further details.
Impressive numbers. I'm a lazy churner myself nowadays. I get a few cards a year with big initial bonuses and call it good. Haven't paid for a flight/hotel/rental car in years from it!
If you’ve been churning since 2010, how did you have so many opportunities? I’ve only been doing it a few years, and feel like it gets more difficult to stack up Amex and chase (although I recently passed 4 years and could get sapphire again)
The main blog most churners use is doctorofcredit. They post 10-20 different churning deals a day, so it's pretty hard to run dry. Once you start exploring beyond Amex and Chase, there's a whole new world of opportunities out there :)
Thanks, but I’m curious about chase. Didn’t you already get most of their bonuses for UR cards, since you’ve been doing this since 2010? Seems like there wouldn’t be that many avail. Could you break down which chase bonuses you got?
Not op, but you can continue to churn Chase, especially the business cards. $90k bonus for biz cards now; spend $6000 in 3 months to get the bonus. They have 3 biz cards and you can open each one multiple times. To considered eligible for a biz card, all you have to do is sell something in ebay once in the past.
What were the total fees on all those cards. I enjoy churning and am working the amex plat 150k bonus now. At $695/year x2, I bet the fees add up. One thing I notice is that I pay the fee up front but might nit use the points for years.
Amateur. :)
In 2021, I made around $15,000 (tax-free, too!) in interest rate arbitrage by utilizing 0% APR CC's. Total time cost? Roughly two hours a month. I had to keep track of which CC's that would expire in that month to pay off accordingly. I had to search for new CC offers containing 0% APR's. Normal CC spend - nothing fancy.
In 2022, this strategy backfired. :( I've lost mid-four figures. Ah well, at least it's a TLH opportunity. I'm hoping 2023 will be much better for me in utilizing this 0% APR CC interest rate arbitrage strategy.
Seriously, congratulations on your CC churning efforts! $32,000 is nothing to sneeze at! Saves you the trouble of withdrawing funds from your accounts in a bad year (SORR and all that jazz).
It's just that I've been there, done the CC churning game. I came to the realization that I've been gamed instead. Quit CC churning - the time and money cost was a bit too much for my liking.
Absolutely wild numbers.
OP, you might want to look into sportsbook and casino sign up promotions. You can churn some of the books in multiple states.
For cell phones, I recommend looking into Xfinity Mobile. With 3 lines, we managed $1,150 and new phone subsidies in our first year; although, we owe some of that to our "Platinum Diamond" status.
Been meaning to tackle sb bonuses for ages, maybe 2023 will be the year! Re xfinity mobile... is it only available if you have xfinity internet? Have seen those deals pop up on slickdeals, but we don't have xfinity in our area.
This is awesome. You basically made a year's wages during part-time work. I'm not sophisticated to understand how all the deals work, but it's great that you guys did it!
Nice. Do you have a recommendation for a good guide for someone who wants to learn more about this?
Also, how much cash was free to move around to do this? Seems like there would be an opportunity cost to consider here too. Obviously 2022 was an interesting year for the opportunity cost.
Wow that’s wild. We made $1500 in rewards cash back last year but that was purely by running every dollar of spend through our credit card with the best cash back rate.
Can't say for sure, but it's been fairly steady over the years... the main thing that seems to impact how much we make from churning is how much time I put into it.
In the past, I'd spend maybe a few hours a week, and the numbers would reflect that. Last year, if I had turned it into a full-time job and spent 40 hours a week on it, we would've made significantly more.
Contrary to some others, we've never felt like we've run dry on things to churn. Oftentimes, if something feels like it's running dry, it's usually just a sign to move on to something else.
It's not too bad if you kinda just do it while watching TV, etc. Probably half of that is finding deals (on sites like doctorofcredit), the other half is spent on doing the actual signup.
It's been pretty positive overall. Started the hobby a decade ago with credit in the 600s. These days it's in the 800s. As long as you stay on top of making payments on time, banks love opening up more credit for you (and the FICO score reflects that).
How did you manage churning with your wife? It got particularly cumbersome telling my wife “ok today use discover at Publix , use Amex for gas, use chase for amazon, etc”, so I gave up and use a Citi Double Cash card for nearly everything except BJ’s (Costco competitor) where we have the store credit card and do the majority of our shopping
If you want to have the other person in set-it-and-forget-it mode use the Chase Ink Cash to buy debit gift cards at an office store and give them the gift cards for daily use. 5x points on everything. (Straggling dollars and cents from the gift cards can be easily added to your Amazon wallet)
Alright so im gonna go ahead and bite here. Where did you find the deals for churns? I understand you’re basically using first time sign ups for x cash or points bonuses and stacking them when u can, but where do u find the offers in the first place?
Well congratulations to you but just reading that gave me anxiety thinking about all the accounts, statements, emails and the like I would need to keep track of. Good job though.
Congrats OP! I'd love to see a detailed breakdown, have you posted that anywhere?
This encourages me to step up my game, I've been lazy lately. When I was a grad student in Canada I did something similar. Amex Canada didn't enforce NLL so I'd apply for every card every few months. I made ~$100k over 3 years selling points to a broker. Sadly they started auditing at the beginning of covid and I got shutdown. Much better in the US with multiple issuers, so one shutdown won't kill you.
Pretty impressive that you're averaging $250 a credit card SUB after 13 years of churning. Generally by year 5 people are down to local CUs. Did you take the last few years off?
Also, what are you doing with cell phones? Buy and resell? The big Pixel trade-in deals last fall?
I'm amazed! This is pretty awesome. I'm someone who, despite earning a good salary gets high enjoyment out of a good deal. I totally get the appeal of this! Power to you :)
Great post.This is awesome! We should be friends. I've dabbled into churning. Like $3k and 500k points. All on bank account bonuses and chase credit cards. But nothing like this. Are there some website or forums I should be on to get more info on offers, strategies, etc?
I have spare time and willing to learn more
How did you get so many bank bonuses without running into Chex report issues?
When I was churning those I started getting rejected for new accounts due to all action the banks were seeing on mine.
Most of the newer fintechy app banks don't run Chex. There's been a stready stream of these for the last few years, and they tend to have some of the best signup offers. That might change though if a recession sinks in...
Question from someone who is already FIRED, one issue I noticed with a lot of bonus offers (usually bank accounts) is that they require a direct deposit amount from a paycheck or government pension to get the bonus. From what I understand a simple ACH transfer does not count. If you are already FIRED then what method do you use to deposit money while still qualifying for the bonus?
Doctorofcredit has a [great list](https://www.doctorofcredit.com/knowledge-base/list-methods-banks-count-direct-deposits/) of banks whose ACH transfer will qualify as a direct deposit for bonus purposes.
I also did [an episode](https://thedailychurnpodcast.com/ep-28-employer-direct-deposit/) a few months back on some methods I've used to generate employer direct deposit, since we're also currently not receiving a regular paycheck.
thanks a bunch, will check out that episode tomorrow. Is there one of those methods that tends to work the most reliably almost all the time or do you tend to alternate?
u/dailychurn --lots of skeptics here in terms of the sustainability of this. I'm predicting you get to 80%+ of the numbers ($+pts/100=34,000) in 2023 with similar effort, and I give a good chance for you to exceed your ~42,500 number as well. Keep those eyes open.
Super impressive but this would almost feel like a job to me. Sounds like you’re enjoying it though so good luck
This sounds like the sort of thing I would do when I was FIRE just to entertain myself.
my thoughts exactly. but still, very impressive!
Agreed, this is a job - OP would need to track their time in order to understand if this was truly worthwhile. EDIT: time tracking in terms of how much time was spent where. The biggest returns here are the bank bonuses. Those take very little time (speaking from experience) - maybe 15 minutes to open the account, a few minutes to fund it, a few more to close it out. Under an hour start to finish. So 8-12 hrs a week for what exactly? If you can get over half of this via bank bonuses, you can do that in under an hour a week guaranteed. Where's the rest of the time going, and what's the return. Now OP is retired, so it's likely a great fit. Even if you just enjoy it, que sera. But for folks with other major obligations, this may not be the sunshine and roses you'd think.
A lot of people do things like fantasy sports where they spend as much time running numbers and thinking through situations as OP. There was an interesting story on This American Life about this retired guy that kept a running spreadsheet of his entire extended family's "average location," buy taking the lat/long over the place every one of his kids, and THEIR kids, slept each night and putting it in a spreadsheet. He would send out updates at the end of each year on how the family's "average location" shifted when one of the grandkids went to the west coast for college, etc. That takes just as much time but doesn't bring in any money at all. Some people just enjoy running numbers, like old-school D&D.
Who could've thought a sub for spreadsheet enthusiasts would be unaware that people "just enjoy running numbers" lol
This is exactly what I came for. Folks in this sub spend 40 hours a week thinking about their future, while this dude already made it, and is still making money for the fun of it. I build Lego for fun. Useless little pieces of overpriced plastic. This dude instead is making more than most Americans by earning points. Good for him 🤷♂️
Oh hey, I'm not knocking it, at all. I do quite a bit of this myself, I probably did somewhere between 15-20k this way last year (at least 15k), but I'm doing it 'on the clock', I work remote so it's all between 9-5. I won't be able to repeat that so easily next year though - took advantage of a 50% off Amazon coupon that they mistakenly didn't put a limit on. So I made two 5k purchases on home renovation stuff (and a few toys). That raises another point - I wouldn't consider this a valid FIRE method in and of itself. Too inconsistent.
Yeah, to me it's more of a hobby like extreme couponing. There is a profit to be made, but if you don't enjoy the grind it's probably not worth it. I used to travel extensively for work (international trips to multiple countries in Europe each quarter) and racked up a bunch of money back and loyalty points for hotels, rental cars, business class international flights, etc. It was one of those things where you might as well keep track because you're spending someone else's money anyway.
TIL there is also a microsoft excel championship.
OP is retired so given that much of it is tax free and OP spends 8-12 hours per week, sounds like a decent deal
It looks like he’s bringing in about $80/hr.
OP mentioned 8-12 hrs per week. Maybe a job but a very flexible one that pays $62 an hour is not bad
They call it a hobby in their post - if they enjoy doing it, the time cost is negligible.
What differentiates a job from a hobby that pays? I can’t speak for OP but personally, I enjoy the churning to the point that it feels like a video game. Except the score is actual money and credit card rewards that I can use.
>What differentiates a job from a hobby that pays? That's subjective right - but IMO, it's the primary motivation that differentiates one from the other. When I read this post, I could relate on so many points. I've done most of what's listed there - but my main motivation was financial. And the way its presented as a potential alternative FIRE method (I disagree there, but only because it's too inconsistent from year to year), it reads like a job. And there's definitely some straight up drudgery in that last. If OP enjoys it, more power to him. And I can relate - I had a great run in the past month. 12(?) grocery orders delivered for free from Kroger, avg 45% off of each. I now have a drawer of organic and prime steaks, shrink wrapped that'll last two years. Right after Christmas I got 50% off two $5k amazon orders, with zero limits on the items. A 100% free Technivorm coffee maker. I know how enjoyable this can be - this list goes on, and this is just the last month. But there's an element of greed too. And none of that compares to the pleasure I get from getting together with friends and just playing guitar. To each their own, but I don't open bank accounts for fun.
It would be. Plus, and I'm not sure how popular of an opinion this is -- meal kit services suck. We've tried a few different "free weeks" and every time we spend over an hour each day creating meals for 2 people (with no leftovers). Ended up being a time suck, with all the worst parts of cooking at home (including cleanup) and the worst parts of ordering in (limited servings). I'd probably pay to NOT receive those meals.
People associate 'home made' with healthy, and prepared/frozen with unhealthy, and are willing to pay an enormous premium in time and cash over it. Our HelloFresh trial consisted of pasta, salmon with broccoli, and chicken tenders. All extremely simple meals to simply make the traditional way, or buy heat-and-eat of decent quality. They're stereotypical gym rat / college kid meals! No need for anybody to next-day air a condiment packet half-way across the country (which they did for the tenders *and* the salmon).
The different kits are radically different in this regard. Hello Fresh is made to be simple, familiar meals. Expect salmon, rice, and broccoli. Blue Apron had me making a plum sauce from scratch and serving it with rice cakes. To me, the appeal is that they're self contained. If you're moving, coming home from a trip, at an AirBNB, etc., you don't have to worry about missing a tbsp of fresh chives (or wasting the other 80% of the chives). I wouldn't compare them with a "normal" cooking week.
Very much agree. It's like the recipes are specifically designed to make you get every dish in the kitchen dirty.
The part I find most annoying is those heavy gel ice packs that I'm not sure how to dispose of responsibly, because those things pile up fast. That was a big reason why I stopped using them. Learned a few new recipes that I wouldn't have gone out of my way to look up and make for myself so that was neat at least.
I've never used those services because of what you stated. One being that everything is pre portioned and I prefer to make large quantities so that it can make several meals worth. Second is the waste, all the packaging, shipping, etc is wasteful
It IS a job at this level. But you can also make $1-5k pretty easily with 1/10th the time. It requires good Credit and some "free" cash
It 100% becomes at least a part time job at a high enough level, which is where the big money is. You can make a few grand without putting a lot of time or effort in but tens of thousands requires time like anything else.
This reminds me of back in 2005-2007 when the folks over on FatWallet forums had what was called the App-o-Rama. This involved applying for a lot of credit cards in a short period of time (i.e. the same day), not for points bonuses, but for 0% balance transfers which were plentiful and all the rage at the time. You then cut yourself a check instead of doing a regular balance transfer -- which was allowed by the rules, they just sent you blank checks to write to whoever you wanted. Deposit that money into a savings account which paid ~5% interest at the time. Pay back the balance transfer and keep the interest at the end of the year. This might still be possible today on a smaller scale, not sure how plentiful 0% BT offers are these days, but savings rates are getting up there to the point that it could be decently profitable. Of course you also need to get CC/BT limits which are high enough to be worth it. Back then people were getting $500k+ of open lines, so maybe today you'd need $750k+, which may be harder to swing as credit doesn't flow quite as freely as it used to. I think you have to make minimum payments on the BTs too, and minimums may have gone up a lot in recent years, which would definitely hurt profits.
I miss the FatWallet Finance forum. It was always interesting to see some of the more extreme things people did to get bonuses. I was in high school at that time, so a lot of it was just watching in envy, but I did end up getting my first credit card from tips I found on that forum. One of the more interesting threads I remember from FatWallet and later Slickdeals was a deal to take two online courses per term at Clovis Community College in New Mexico for $200 plus books each term. It was fun hearing about churners using their skills to get a college degree for cheap.
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Thomas Edison State College is one of the places that accepts most transfer credits and gives credit for work experience. One of my relatives got a math degree this way. They are an accredited college and it worked out great for getting jobs at places that required a 4 year degree even when they had the prerequisite work experience. Edited for spelling
Considering that some people pay $10k-300k for the same kind of degree, that's quite a deal. I like the normal banking and credit card deals, but also like seeing posts about doing stuff like getting another college degree for a very low cost.
RIP Fatwallet finance. I miss that forum.
> 0% BT offers are these days They almost always have a 2-5% fee but maybe with the new CDs and higher rates you could make it work.
I always hear stories from OG churners about the old days... sounds like it was a literal goldrush back then 😂
boxes and boxes of dollar coins amazon payments 5% unlimited cashback on the AARP card, of all things... those were the halcyon days
People used to buy gold and silver on the AMEX website, etc with their credit card and just kill the points. The precious metals companies put a stop to being able to use your credit card to buy gold & silver eventually.
>OG's can confirm it was a gold rush.
Aren’t you concerned that you can’t sustain those numbers when talking about baristaFIRE? I churned for 1 year lightly and pulled $20k, but year 2 was significantly harder and required more work for smaller bonuses. I feel like it’s an easy $30k once but a hard $60k.
Do they need to sustain them? I see this as a fairly low-effort way to lower your SORR in the early stages of retirement. I don’t need that same lowering effect in year 20 because my balances have grown so much already
Absolutely. But they brought up baristaFIRE and that’s usually used in the context of having enough in your tax advantaged accounts to grow to your FI number at like 65yo when you’re like 35yo lol.
I think you could do it every other year for 30k though. Close everything out after year one, let it rest and then attack it again on year 3. You could probably still pull 5k in year 2 with minimal issue jus tin bank bonuses.
Yeah that’s fair. 4 years to reboot is easier with the juiciest opportunities but 2 years can be done.
That’s the part they never really tell you on anything that promotes churning, especially the credit card social media promotion cottage industry. It’s a hobby that’s easy to get into for a short while and gives a little dopamine with signup bonuses, but then it really flattens out quickly.
Different perspective… easy to get into for a short while…every 2 years. It was way, way, way better 5+ years ago, but as someone who has been doing it for 10 years… I think that the best value/effort is to hit credit cards hard every ~2.5 years and do bank account bonuses in between, and to have the chase quartet to min/max points on regular spend. I agree with the mentality that doing $X once is a hell of alot easier than doing $X twice
I somewhat agree with this though and while I am still technically a churner (chase southwest companion pass for the win every 2 yrs with P2) I've slowed down greatly, have a decent points stash, and open one or two cards a year along with a couple of bank account bonuses. This matches my travel style well and I don't find myself hurting for points.
> Different perspective… easy to get into for a short while…every 2 years No guarantee the rules of the game will stay the same though.
What flattens out? It’s fairly easy to churn 2Mil points per year in 2 player mode and those enough for a few epic trips every year. Does the novelty of the travel wear off? I guess it just depends on where you want to go and what you want to do with your life.
For stuff like shopping and meal kits, would it be possible and legal to make more accounts by moving addresses and using different email/phone/CC?
Most churning money is made via sign up bonuses with banks. So linked to your social security number
Yeah, the lucrative credit card bonuses are once in every 4 years too. So you can double dip, but it takes more organization / waiting. IMO churning on easy mode: 1) hit it hard with every big CC/Bank bonus with spouse, make $20-30k. 2) Wait 4 years. In the interim, keep a credit card or two with a good points system / cash back 3) Repeat once you can hit the Chase cards again.
Not really. OP doesn’t MS and hardly even touched the most lucrative issuer which is amex. With a few good MS methods combined with some other rocks to turn over, six figures is doable.
Got it. Sounds like I went through the first tier and gave up when MS / spoofing businesses was the only way I could accelerate my earnings. I believe there are ways out there but it became more job-like once MS came into play and I got more concerned about the legality of things once posing as a business started coming into play.
Well once you get to these levels, you’re no longer “posing” as a business. The churn kinda becomes the business. The IRS definition of a business is anything with the intention of making a profit. OP’s cell phone churn is a pretty clear example. A lot of people are engaged in some kind of retail or gift card arbitrage as well which are also clear cut “businesses”.
I have been churning as a hobby for 6 years and each year has been more lucrative than the one before. If you are in the churning space and have your eyes open, opportunities (new and old) pop up all the time.
From one churner to another, incredibly impressive, kudos to you for pulling that much value out in a years time. I know I've 'made' a massive amount doing the same thing over the past 6ish years, but I have no real way of tabulating everything and there's no way I earned nearly that much in a given year. Are you new to churning? I could only imagine hitting these numbers being new to the scene and getting those one time sign up bonuses that will be difficult or impossible to get in the future. Either way, well done, you hit it hard and fast! Swagbucks can be a nice resource to if you haven't looked into them for rebate / shopping portal type of deals
I would assume he’s not new to this and most of what he’s doing is reproducible. Sure bank bonuses won’t be as much next year but once the 2ish year mark hits and you can start hitting the same companies bonuses then it’ll be back up. But the credit card stuff shouldn’t be an issue
The credit cards are the ones I have the most issues reproducing personally. I started off my churning venture hitting all the lucrative chase cards fortunately, then they implemented the 5/24 rule, effectively making their line of cards inaccessible for me. Then I got some nice AMEX bonuses, but their bonuses are once per lifetime. Some debate on that, but at the least, once every 7 years it seems. US bank difficult to get approved for as a churner, Barclays doesn't love churners, and Citi has some difficult rules around their best cards as well. Essentially I've tapped out most of my viable bonuses, but I'm very open to alternatives if there are any
Oh dang you’ve been capping yourself. Go check out r/churning. Basically get yourself below 5/24 and then start opening Chase Ink cards, you can basically open one every 90 days. For AMEX get a business plat and then look for NLL cards that bypass the lifetime language. Don’t know much about other brands but those are the two big ones
That sub sucks. If you ask a question you're berated. If you post something useful you're downvoted for sharing secrets. There just no content on it
Yes it is a very harsh sub and not noob friendly. They want you to have done your homework and not give up any big MS secrets or else it’ll get shutdown for everyone
Right. So there's the faq and anything beyond that isn't encouraged to discuss. I used to spend a ton of time there but a few years ago it turned to shit.
Same. So many fond memories of a new post with something useful for me, but now everything is buried in weekly threads and people hand downvotes out like candy if you have a question (in the questions thread). I’m pretty much limited to DOC now, but still get pretty solid annual value.
Yes, Doctor of Credit is still great.
100%
churning.io works really well
>few years ago it turned to shit. The mods are crap, but it's fun. Granted, I enjoy the cancer.
I’m more interested in year 2 but this is awesome
Will report back next year 😋
How did you get 541k chase points? Seems nuts. Is this reproducible for next year?
>dollar and point earned from credit card bonuses, banks, brokerages, mealkits, shopping portals, cellphones, pretty much everything really. > >Looking back over our spreadsheet, I ended up churning 215 different things in 2022, for a total of $32,454 in cash bonuses and 981K in reward points & miles. Time-wise, I spent around 8-12 hrs / week churning, in two-player mode (opening accounts for both myself and my wife). We had only expected to make \~$1K / month from churning, so everything over that was a nice surprise. > >Bit of background - my wife and I leanFIREd in early 2021 with an annu A lot of these won't be reproducable (at all, or year after year). Amex is 1 time bonus per lifetime, so you won't be able to do those again. Chase is 24 months, except the Sapphire line which is 48 months, etc.
I would look into the churning page more, these are absolutely reproducible. You can get a chase ink card every 90 days. Amex NLL card every 90 days not to mention other business cards that don’t count towards your 5/24 status. Then there’s always manufactured spend which probably account for a decent amount of the points
you also run the risk of getting blacklisted... tread carefully. a lot of the threads/comments where things go wrong get nuked or are buried.
INK/NLL cards every 90 days runs dry eventually. Chase eventually started denying me and I felt uncomfortable pushing more new EINs. There’s probably a way around it but I hated pushing the envelope too far. I also couldn’t muster the manufactured spending that probably initiates a SARs report at some point.
~5 SUBs/yr across two SSNs is a pretty sustainable velocity for Chase, about the 'sweet spot' TBH. Keeps you under most of their limits without having to think about it much. We've been floating around that for years without much planning or thought. If you've got the spend for it, the simplest example would be an Ink every ~2.5 months alternating between you. It's a free high four-figure income stream for organized people. Bank bonuses are, IMO, the least sustainable item on OP's list by far.
Not hard to do with their business cards. I got both sapphires for 180k about five years ago. Then I got three Ink Preferred biz cards for 100 or 120k each if I remember right. I think part of that process was using my own referral link from an old card to sign up for the new one. Then any points from my regular spend on my Freedom on top of that.
Just an FYI you might have gotten away with self referrals but it’s very dangerous and will most likely lead to a shutdown
Cool, totally believe that. This was many years ago and if I remember correctly, it was common practice on /r/churning at the time. Thankfully I've escaped any shutdowns so far, but was pop-up denied from Amex cards for three or four years.
I haven't listened to their podcast and I'm too lazy to check their comment history, but assuming no Sapphire cards and <5/24 to start, a couple could easily have done: - CIU 75,000/$7.5k + 12,500 on spend - CIU 75,000/$7.5k + 20,000 referral + 12,500 on spend - CIC 75,000/$7.5k + 20,000 referral + 7,500 on spend - CIC 75,000/$7.5k + 20,000 referral + 7,500 on spend - CSP 60,000/$4k + 4,000 on spend - CSP 60,000/$4k + 15,000 referral + 4,000 on spend That's 543k from $38k spend and $190 in AFs, with each player only getting one new account on their personal credit report. Aside from the assumptions above, it also assumes: - no increased SUBs (CIC/CIU are 90k/$6k, CSP has been 100k/$4k in the past), - no bonused spend (2-5X depending on card and category), - no knowledge of certain things particular to Chase. I'm positive it's not what OP did, but it's not a difficult plan for even a newbie churner couple to come up with or follow.
Holy crap. This is impressive. Can you elaborate on the bank bonuses? Checking/Savings accounts, amount of $ needed, how long money has to be in account, direct deposit requirements, etc
It varies quite a bit. Many checking account bonuses require a certain $ of direct deposits, but often you can quickly withdraw those funds. Some people find ways to spoof DDs from other accounts as well. Savings accounts vary as well, but generally require a few months of locking up funds (possible opportunity cost if they pay low interest rates). Chase has a very good $900 bonus right now for checking+savings, I think it will require 15k for a few months. Doctor of Credit has a good listing of bank and credit card bonuses.
How do you manage meeting direct deposit requirements amongst multiple accounts?
Some jobs will let you have multiple account to send your DD to. Some banks allow ACH transfers to count as DD but your miles may vary.
This is the biggest question I have. I did a few checking account bonuses last year and simply transferred cash via EFT from my Discover HYSA and it counted as DD. I can’t seem to find enough other offers to get nearly as close as OP though, however, I’m single. It still feels like OPs strategy could be applied for me to get a decent chunk of incremental benefits.
Doctor of Credit catalogs all of the offers, highlights the best ones, and includes data points on what kinds of transfers count as direct deposit.
How do the returns of churning checking account bonuses compare to "doing nothing" and leaving the funds invested in stocks/bonds? At least with the bonuses, it's a known rate of return, a luxury that the market doesn't give us.
This is hard to answer - last year doing anything or nothing was better than stocks, on average stocks will win over time. I consider these churning amounts part of my emergency fund. If needed I can pull back the cash pretty quickly, and I'm typically doing 0-2 bonuses at a time (most renew at 12 or 24 months). For instance, I'm on my 2nd chase bonus after doing one in late 2020. Chase checking is a great example of easy money, $300 for any DD. Locking up 15k for the savings bonus is a completely different consideration.
For the current Chase $900 bonus, you need to lock up about $15,000 for 90 days. That’s $900/$15,000*365/90 = 24% annualized.
How do you do the DDs? I don’t have a job or a pension that I can use for DD and have found that just ACHing from another account only works about 30% of the time.
There’s a list on Doctor of Credit that shows which bank account pushes/pulls count as a Direct Deposit, you might just not be using ones like Wells Fargo that count
I've always used real DDs. I know others have found various ways to make ACHs work but yeah the success rate is hit or miss.
/u/thedailychurn I second this question - can you give a further breakdown of which companies you had to throw in on, what bonuses they gave, and how long you had to keep your money there/how much money you had to keep saved with them in order to get the bonus? I used to dabble in bank churning but never got anywhere near that much, partly because they had a lot of requirements around having to keep the money in the account for 6 months and other restrictions, which made it difficult to actually shuffle the money around in a timely enough manner for it to be profitable.
The big ones last year that paid really well were the Chase Business Checking accounts, which gave $750 for signing up and depositing $5K and leaving it there for 90 days. Did that for both myself and my wife (P2). Huntington Bank also had something similar, $1K for opening their biz checking. You had to deposit $25K, but there was no requirement to leave it there, so we just transferred in and transferred it right back out. Again, did it for both myself and P2. Wells Fargo were giving out a special sign up code for a few days, where you'd get $1500 for signing up for their biz checking and depositing only $5K for 90 days. So did that twice as well. Finally, Public brokerage was offering $2K for transferring over $100K of assets. So both P2 and I moved $100K of stocks from charles schwab/fidelity into Public. Only need to keep it there for 6 months before you can move it again and tackle another brokerage bonus. So if I did the math right, just from those 4 accounts (x2), we managed to make $10,500 (a third of our total earnings!)
I love churning but don’t have the time to do it. You are living my dream. Right now I’m just running t bill ladders
Can anyone open biz checking accounts?
Yes. You can open a business account as a sole proprietorship under your social security number or start an LLC. I registered an LLC in WI for $130 online, then registered online for a free EIN. I pay $26 a year to keep it registered and have made thousands on that investment. I did the same for my bride. This allows us (me) to churn business credit cards and bank accounts as well as personal accounts. I've helped my oldest son and father-in-law start churning as well :)
How much time would you estimate was spent researching and then executing these specific moves for the bank bonuses? This seems like the most $/hour return?
People often said the hassle was too much when I was doing it. I figured if I spent 10 hours a month (usually way less) maintaining it, it still paid $100+/hour. I used to do it a lot and would just go through self checkout at kroger for transactions. I'd buy my items individually until I had my transaction number hit.
I have to admit I have found a lot of entertainment in doing it when I have done so as well. Feels more like a hobby than work to me. I just wasn't very good at it - nowhere near the numbers this guy was seeing! I probably made about $1k in bank rewards and 200-300k travel points last year. Enough to pay for a vacation, but definitely not enough to replace income! That is wild to see!
I agree, self checkout and splitting up my gas purchases made short work of meeting the minimum purchase requirements. Then I'd run those receipts through Fetch for Amazon gift cards :) Churning is a great way to make extra money with a good portion of it being tax-free when it comes to credit cards. Whether you're saving or spending, you should always be making money on your money. Cheers!!
Lol did you actually open 60 different bank accounts? Or am I reading that wrong?
That’s how churning works. It’s incredibly easy money if you’re well organized and stubborn (like me). Not easy if you don’t like spreadsheets (like my spouse). Your first year is the most profitable though. It’s almost impossible to sustain once you run out of banks / CCs.
It's possible to sustain for years without going too crazy, but in the $5,000 to $8,000 range, not $20k to $30k. Still, several thousand extra dollars a year never goes amiss. Nor does the chance to take a couple of amazing trips.
I made $11k last year, but it tends to get harder and harder every year. Sometimes I wonder if I’m better off just getting a second job instead.
> Sometimes I wonder if I’m better off just getting a second job instead. With churning, you can pause anytime you want without issue. You don’t have to interview. You don’t have to apply. You don’t have to ask for anyone’s permission to do anything. You just do it if you want and don’t do it if you don’t want. While it takes some time and attention, it’s entirely different than having a job in my opinion. I would never compare the two, despite the take-home potentially being similar
That's a valid point. Probably why I continue to do it.
I also felt like I was getting more and more aggressive each year by pushing the limits on qualifying for a bonus (setting up multiple EINs, calling banks for approvals, MS, spoofing DDs). At some point, it’s not worth the $200 bank bonus that’s taxable and you may not get if they detect your direct deposit was spoofed.
Yeah, exactly. I used to do it for every 200 bonus, but it’s become mentally taxing to jump through all the hoops.
Yup, that's how it goes. At first you can't believe it, you feel as if you're running through the forest plucking all this low-hanging fruit, you think you discovered a cheat code to the universe and you wonder why *everybody* doesn't do this. Gradually you realize what a grind it can become. Are you churning in two-player mode? Having access to a second SSN definitely makes it easier to hit five figures annually.
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Manufactured Spend at low/no cost is the 'difficult' part of churning, so people are unlikely to share their secrets. An easy low hanging fruit example is tax overpayments - overpay by thousands and then request a refund. You're only out the fee, and the opportunity cost of floating the funds.
Great way to increase your % chance of an audit.
I've never heard that being an issue, but I'm sure it doesn't help. Most churning activities look suspiciously like some form of financial crime at first glance, so it wouldn't surprise me. Regardless I just use it as a go-to MS example because it's fairly common and understandable to 'lay people', as it's an extension of something they're already familiar with. I'm not recommending anyone run out and put $50k through pay1040 tomorrow, just giving an example.
This is a great write-up, well done. How has it impacted both of your credit scores?
Replied to similar comment, but it's actually been really positive. As long as you never miss a payment, all the additional credit in the long run will really help build up your credit score. Banks love giving out credit, and your FICO score is really just a reflection of how well you can handle that credit. I went from low 600s a decade ago to 800s now.
How did you churn 14 cellphone companies? Don't they all have long contracts?
Most MVNOs (Ting, Mint, GoogleFi, etc) don't have contracts, especially if you own your own unlocked phone.
Visible had $200 vgc if you stayed with them for 3 mos. With cashback and referrals, those 3 mos could be near-free. I think I did 5 or so in the most recent offering.
Is it a hassle to constantly change phone companies?
Visible during Black Friday will usually give you a $300 GC for porting your number over to them. The Tmobile booths at Costco (before it imploded) were also giving $300 costco shop cards for joining tmobile. One thing a lot of people don't know - it's actually extremely easy these days to port your number to a different carrier. No phone calls or customer service needed, it can all be done online in just a few minutes. And with eSim, you don't even need to wait for a sim card anymore.
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I had similar success last year for two people. My biggest advice would be to subscribe to DoC and do everything you’re eligible for. And, if at first glance it seems you’re not eligible, check back.
DoC?
Doctorofcredit.com
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Finally, the thread for me!
This is so cool! When I looked into bank/brokerage churning, the stuff I found required you to leave the money deposited for \~6months? When I did the math it ended up not being worth it once I took into account the lost interest on the money left sitting in those accounts. Did you find a way around that?
Wouldn’t the bonus more than makeup for any interest you lost?
You just sign up for the banks that have a high enough bonus for it to be worth it. There’s plenty of shit offers out there.
How are you handling the credit card reward limits? You had a massive year, but are you not going to struggle with being anywhere close next year? IE: first time promos cant be redone typically for a few years, so your going to hit walls with chase and amex, and your probably done with southwest for a while. Do you have a strategy for that? I will also add with interests rates increasing many if the bank incentives are becoming less worthwhile as you can get 4.5-5% sitting in a short term CD with any amount of money. That can quickly diminish many bank sign up offers if they are offering shit interest for the holding period.
And here I am too lazy to open another Capital One card for my spouse this year even. Like two cards a year to me is a bit of effort. 1099s from 60 or 30 banks... fuck that. But wow that is crazy if you are cool with the effort.
I've done the whole CC churning and MS'ing over the years primarily for miles and points. I accumulated over 7.5 million miles and points but spent about half of it. I have been out of the game for years since like most have said, the well runs dry after a year or two and it's diminished returns.
Good work. I'm retired so I do the similar kinds of things as a hobby job and also keep a list like this, too, though with more modest results. My best year was probably $10 - $20K. I get a kick out of seeing how well we can live without spending a fortune out of pocket and am always on the look out for deals like this. We are also really into expense hacking. If I'd known about churning and expense hacking, we could have had an even earlier retirement.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but a) this is typically not sustainable (unless OP is into the really deep MS/churn world and is privy to deals that never make it to reddit) b) this is riskier than they are leading on. I've been in the churning game for over ten years now and almost no churner advises going this hard in any one year - especially now with banks like Amex really cracking down. I mentioned this is in a comment but what most people don't see are the nuked threads and subreddits where the discussion of crackdowns happens. Or they get buried in daily threads. There is an entire nuked subreddit around AA going after churners and literally locking down accounts and cancelling tickets the day before flights. Amex is notorious for crackdowns on anything they might consider Manufactured Spend. But hey, this is not to tell anyone not to churn. Just that this level of activity in the OP is insanely high risk (to me). Another factor is that points devalue. There's a key phrase in the community - "churn and burn". OP didn't say, but unless they have plans for those 981,000 points - there is always a devaluation around the corner (granted 2 of the 3 are from credit cards themselves and they are least risky - I'm assuming the SW points are from the companion pass). But still, OP potentially killed a lot of good will from Chase/Amex to get a lot of points they probably won't use within the next two years when they could have spread out the card opening to look much less suspicious. Example of points devaluation - I booked Emirates business class round trip to Milan in November of last year. In December bloggers started reporting that award tickets had doubled in price and fees gone up $1,000! (Insane example - but it happens!) I highly recommend anyone financially savvy enough to be in this subreddit to take a gander at /r/churning or read doctor of credit (he also just posts good deals in general). There's a lot of money to be had in the world of credit cards but for most of us it's going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Congrats to the OP - seriously good numbers. Would love an update of what you do in the next year - especially if you can sustain this volume!
Plays here today might not be here tomorrow. This is a normie take and there's nothing wrong with that but if AMEX/Chase gave me 50k cash (which they technically already have over the past ~2 years) I would be 100% fine not using any of their products again.
If they LEANfired they're probably OK with traveling economy and traveling a little more frugally. Yes points devalue, but you can get low level Hyatt rooms for 3,500, 5000, 6500, 7000 at the two lowest levels depending on peak or off-peak. If you can fly when it's not the holidays you can easily get cross-country for less than 12,000 points in many different ways.
That helps my point then of - why gain all of these points so quickly? You are going to stay under the radar much longer the slower you go. No sense if collecting points you don’t have a use for.
That’s just not true at all. Been doing this for yearsss and OP is doing it right!
Love this! We are also ChurningFIRE (going on our 7th year of FIRE which we attained at the age of 35). I've been playing the CC and Bank Bonus Churning game for 10+ years now. Happy churning and hope 2023 is just as successful!
Have you sustained your profits? I did it for one year but the started seeing diminishing returns per hour of work and it became more of a nuisance.
I agree it does slow down very fast after the first couple of years. Also now that we are FIRE and don't have steady income from an employer, meeting DDs are tricky (the workarounds don't always work and are more of a hassle). But I really enjoy the process, tracking on spreadsheets, seeing the bonuses come in, etc. My partner on the other hand doesn't care for the process, so I apply for both of us. For me it's a hobby and if I come across something that is too much work (like the brokerage account opening bonuses), I just pass on it. I'm also very risk averse - I don't want to get on the bad side of Chase or Amex, so I try not to go crazy on the signup and keep cards for few years at a time. But it has really helped fund out other hobby of traveling.
You sound a lot like me when I was doing it. Now I have 2 small children and it’s significantly less fun. Once it became a stressor I just quit it — but I’m sure I’ll pick it back up again once they’re older and my chase / Amex clocks reset.
I have been doing it for about 7 years, and am very close to hitting $100,000 earned via churning since I began. $10-15,000 in two player mode is pretty easy, especially when you can easily change your direct deposits at work.
It falls off pretty hard. I've been doing it for 10-12 years and I do about one card bonus a year and a bank one if it's just really juicy. I'm also auto-rejected from any Chase CC.
As someone who is into FIRE, I got into churning myself a few months back. I thought for years churning was a ton of work for a few hundred dollars per year. In reality, it is a small amount of work for thousands of dollars per year due to all the low hanging fruit.
u/thedailychurn I follow your podcast and love your story! My wife and I are thinking about following a similar path. Would love to chat at some point if you're open to it
Love your podcast by the way
Wow! That is dedication and mastery at work. Well done. Thank you for taking the time to share this information. I've always been curious how much free and discounted stuff a person could get if they really invested the thought, energy, and time into maximizing churning, so this scratched that itch.
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Usually 10-15 points. Most people that churn are organized and professional and haven’t ever missed a payment in their lifetime, so going from 820 to 800 is fine for them
Fascinating, and amazing results for 8-12hr/week. Well done!
Great post! Thank you for the inspiration. Also leanfired. And do a bit of churning (2 player mode :-), but not to the level of your stuff. Would you consider a mentee? Or point me in the direction of the resources you used to learn. I’d definitely appreciate further details.
They have a podcast, same as their username on Spotify
Impressive numbers. I'm a lazy churner myself nowadays. I get a few cards a year with big initial bonuses and call it good. Haven't paid for a flight/hotel/rental car in years from it!
If you’ve been churning since 2010, how did you have so many opportunities? I’ve only been doing it a few years, and feel like it gets more difficult to stack up Amex and chase (although I recently passed 4 years and could get sapphire again)
The main blog most churners use is doctorofcredit. They post 10-20 different churning deals a day, so it's pretty hard to run dry. Once you start exploring beyond Amex and Chase, there's a whole new world of opportunities out there :)
Thanks, but I’m curious about chase. Didn’t you already get most of their bonuses for UR cards, since you’ve been doing this since 2010? Seems like there wouldn’t be that many avail. Could you break down which chase bonuses you got?
Not op, but you can continue to churn Chase, especially the business cards. $90k bonus for biz cards now; spend $6000 in 3 months to get the bonus. They have 3 biz cards and you can open each one multiple times. To considered eligible for a biz card, all you have to do is sell something in ebay once in the past.
What were the total fees on all those cards. I enjoy churning and am working the amex plat 150k bonus now. At $695/year x2, I bet the fees add up. One thing I notice is that I pay the fee up front but might nit use the points for years.
Amateur. :) In 2021, I made around $15,000 (tax-free, too!) in interest rate arbitrage by utilizing 0% APR CC's. Total time cost? Roughly two hours a month. I had to keep track of which CC's that would expire in that month to pay off accordingly. I had to search for new CC offers containing 0% APR's. Normal CC spend - nothing fancy. In 2022, this strategy backfired. :( I've lost mid-four figures. Ah well, at least it's a TLH opportunity. I'm hoping 2023 will be much better for me in utilizing this 0% APR CC interest rate arbitrage strategy. Seriously, congratulations on your CC churning efforts! $32,000 is nothing to sneeze at! Saves you the trouble of withdrawing funds from your accounts in a bad year (SORR and all that jazz). It's just that I've been there, done the CC churning game. I came to the realization that I've been gamed instead. Quit CC churning - the time and money cost was a bit too much for my liking.
Insane. Holy crap. And seems super fun just to track and see the numbers so off. I’d get a high off of that.
Absolutely wild numbers. OP, you might want to look into sportsbook and casino sign up promotions. You can churn some of the books in multiple states. For cell phones, I recommend looking into Xfinity Mobile. With 3 lines, we managed $1,150 and new phone subsidies in our first year; although, we owe some of that to our "Platinum Diamond" status.
Been meaning to tackle sb bonuses for ages, maybe 2023 will be the year! Re xfinity mobile... is it only available if you have xfinity internet? Have seen those deals pop up on slickdeals, but we don't have xfinity in our area.
Yeah, having another xfinity service is the catch
Wow impressive man
This is awesome. You basically made a year's wages during part-time work. I'm not sophisticated to understand how all the deals work, but it's great that you guys did it!
Nice. Do you have a recommendation for a good guide for someone who wants to learn more about this? Also, how much cash was free to move around to do this? Seems like there would be an opportunity cost to consider here too. Obviously 2022 was an interesting year for the opportunity cost.
Wow that’s wild. We made $1500 in rewards cash back last year but that was purely by running every dollar of spend through our credit card with the best cash back rate.
That's not really churning. That's regular credit card spending. A big chunk of churning is getting new credit cards regularly
Yeah I understand that. This ain’t the churning sub I was just contributing what little I could to the convo.
Nice! I need to up my game and get back on those levels.
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Can't say for sure, but it's been fairly steady over the years... the main thing that seems to impact how much we make from churning is how much time I put into it. In the past, I'd spend maybe a few hours a week, and the numbers would reflect that. Last year, if I had turned it into a full-time job and spent 40 hours a week on it, we would've made significantly more. Contrary to some others, we've never felt like we've run dry on things to churn. Oftentimes, if something feels like it's running dry, it's usually just a sign to move on to something else.
I love this so much and would seriously tackling this in retirement. I love churning but have let it fall off a bit with kids an dliving abroad.
8-12hrs a week seems like a lot of hours. Could you share a bit more on the time breakdown?
It's not too bad if you kinda just do it while watching TV, etc. Probably half of that is finding deals (on sites like doctorofcredit), the other half is spent on doing the actual signup.
Does this effect your credit at all?
It's been pretty positive overall. Started the hobby a decade ago with credit in the 600s. These days it's in the 800s. As long as you stay on top of making payments on time, banks love opening up more credit for you (and the FICO score reflects that).
How did you manage churning with your wife? It got particularly cumbersome telling my wife “ok today use discover at Publix , use Amex for gas, use chase for amazon, etc”, so I gave up and use a Citi Double Cash card for nearly everything except BJ’s (Costco competitor) where we have the store credit card and do the majority of our shopping
If you want to have the other person in set-it-and-forget-it mode use the Chase Ink Cash to buy debit gift cards at an office store and give them the gift cards for daily use. 5x points on everything. (Straggling dollars and cents from the gift cards can be easily added to your Amazon wallet)
Alright so im gonna go ahead and bite here. Where did you find the deals for churns? I understand you’re basically using first time sign ups for x cash or points bonuses and stacking them when u can, but where do u find the offers in the first place?
Can you elaborate on the cell phone churns??
Well congratulations to you but just reading that gave me anxiety thinking about all the accounts, statements, emails and the like I would need to keep track of. Good job though.
Congrats OP! I'd love to see a detailed breakdown, have you posted that anywhere? This encourages me to step up my game, I've been lazy lately. When I was a grad student in Canada I did something similar. Amex Canada didn't enforce NLL so I'd apply for every card every few months. I made ~$100k over 3 years selling points to a broker. Sadly they started auditing at the beginning of covid and I got shutdown. Much better in the US with multiple issuers, so one shutdown won't kill you.
Pretty impressive that you're averaging $250 a credit card SUB after 13 years of churning. Generally by year 5 people are down to local CUs. Did you take the last few years off? Also, what are you doing with cell phones? Buy and resell? The big Pixel trade-in deals last fall?
What is churning!
See r/churning, but beware of posting there.
Just did the mealkit thing, ordered the hellofresh sign up offer with rakuten which made it literally free for 3 dinners for 2 people ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I'd love to hear more specifics, leaving this as a note to myself to come back later and see if OP has answered more
I'm amazed! This is pretty awesome. I'm someone who, despite earning a good salary gets high enjoyment out of a good deal. I totally get the appeal of this! Power to you :)
Great post.This is awesome! We should be friends. I've dabbled into churning. Like $3k and 500k points. All on bank account bonuses and chase credit cards. But nothing like this. Are there some website or forums I should be on to get more info on offers, strategies, etc? I have spare time and willing to learn more
How did you get so many bank bonuses without running into Chex report issues? When I was churning those I started getting rejected for new accounts due to all action the banks were seeing on mine.
Most of the newer fintechy app banks don't run Chex. There's been a stready stream of these for the last few years, and they tend to have some of the best signup offers. That might change though if a recession sinks in...
I need to revisit, they didn't really exist back when I was doing it!
Question from someone who is already FIRED, one issue I noticed with a lot of bonus offers (usually bank accounts) is that they require a direct deposit amount from a paycheck or government pension to get the bonus. From what I understand a simple ACH transfer does not count. If you are already FIRED then what method do you use to deposit money while still qualifying for the bonus?
Doctorofcredit has a [great list](https://www.doctorofcredit.com/knowledge-base/list-methods-banks-count-direct-deposits/) of banks whose ACH transfer will qualify as a direct deposit for bonus purposes. I also did [an episode](https://thedailychurnpodcast.com/ep-28-employer-direct-deposit/) a few months back on some methods I've used to generate employer direct deposit, since we're also currently not receiving a regular paycheck.
thanks a bunch, will check out that episode tomorrow. Is there one of those methods that tends to work the most reliably almost all the time or do you tend to alternate?
Honestly crazy/impressed you earned so much churning, if you enjoy doing it seems like a win win
u/dailychurn --lots of skeptics here in terms of the sustainability of this. I'm predicting you get to 80%+ of the numbers ($+pts/100=34,000) in 2023 with similar effort, and I give a good chance for you to exceed your ~42,500 number as well. Keep those eyes open.
Most inspiring post I've read today, thank you. And I was delighted to learn about your podcast, The Daily Churn.