To start with, I don’t think there is any right or wrong answer, but more a matter of the circumstances we are each individually faced with. The ultimate goal of each activity is to generate as high a return on our time with the least amount of effort. I’m personally a credit card churner. Ariana is the manufactured spending Queen of the Game. And we both do very, very well.
My background
My background is credit. I owned a FNMA approved mortgage banking company in my former life. I spent most of my time looking at people’s credit files, life situations and deciding if I could grant them a home loan.
During those younger years, I never carried a credit card, because I just hated the idea of paying interest. Looking at other people’s credit card balances was terrifying to think about paying all that interest each month.
But once I saw the benefit of sign-up bonuses from multiple credit cards, I was on my way. I never was late on a payment and always paid in full each month. Some people’s circumstances just don’t allow that to happen.
I’m not a particularly organized person, but can keep track of a deadline and how much I’ve spent on a credit card. I pay my balances always on time, keep my utilization ratio under 40% and will pay mid-cycle if necessary to do so.
The advantage of credit card sign-up bonuses
I like the idea of reaching a goal and seeing the large addition of miles to my account. And most of all, I like the idea of earning so many miles for every dollar I spend.
I recently did a card sign-up bonus that paid 60,000 miles for $1000 in spend. That’s 60 miles per dollar! I know the annual fee cuts into that number, but it’s still considerably higher than the 6X Ariana tells me is pretty much max doing manufactured spending.
The cons of credit card sign-ups
The downfall of credit card sign-ups, particularly when you’ve been playing as long as I have? There is a point where you’ve had just about every card of value, and you are limited to finding new cards, that typically have less and less valuable sign-up bonuses.
Manufactured spending = more opportunities to earn
On the manufactured spending side, it appears that the sky is the limit. I hear MS’ers talking of depositing $50,000 worth of money orders per month on a given card. The limitations here seem to be not so much available products, but outlets in your region to perform the required tasks.
Also, I think it takes a gutsy individual to walk up to a service counter and ask for $8,000 of money orders. I get nervous at $2,500.
I happen to live in an area where those small numbers I play, have plenty of outlets. So I can skim along under the surface and pick up $40-$80 profit in an hour or so. I understand many areas seem to offer unlimited opportunities for manufactured spending and others almost nothing at all as far as liquidation sites.
Maximizing manufactured spending
I’m really glad that at this point in my travel hacking career Ariana has taken my under her wing to help with picking the right shopping portals to increase my yield and efforts in pajama MSing.
The idea of getting it all done, except for the liquidation from the couch, is very appealing. I’m still a little weak on monitoring my shopping portal payouts but am sure that will come with time.
In retrospect, I guess the ultimate answer is to do both activities to the best of your ability based on available credit and the manufactured spending market you live in. The more we diversify our earning opportunities, it seems the more we have to gain.
As always, your comments, suggestions and advice based on your particular set of circumstances are welcome here. We can all learn from what we all know.
Credit card bonuses are superior, of course. I see MS as something of the graduate level. I may not (but probably would 🙂 MS if I could get a couple SUBs per month but I struggle now for a half dozen per year.
I MS over 50k per month but not on one card. I too get nervous at requesting large MO amounts. The most I get now at one location is $2k, but only $1k at WM due to their rejection after ID. I just go to a lot of outlets that are available to me. But I have more time and probably opportunities than Ariana has to liquidate. Judging by some of her posts I probably have a little more patience too!
MS is addictive though, more so than cc SUBs. I have trouble passing any store where I can either buy a gc or liquidate one.
CC SUBs are, of course superior to MS. I think of MS as the graduate level. I may not (probably would:) MS if I could get a couple SUBs per month but I get maybe 6 per year now.
I MS a little over $50k per month but not on one card. I have many liquidation opportunities in my area. I too get nervous asking for over $2k in MO at one location so I spread it around. It takes more time but I have it. Can’t see Ariana doing it my way, but judging from her posts I likely have a little more patience than her!
MS is addictive though. More so than SUBs. I don’t scour for cc SUBs daily but I struggle passing any place I can buy or liquidate gcs.
CC SUBs are, of course superior to MS. I think of MS as the graduate level. I may not (probably would:) MS if I could get a couple SUBs per month but I get maybe 6 per year now.
I MS a little over $50k per month but not on one card. I have many liquidation opportunities in my area. I too get nervous asking for over $2k in MO at one location so I spread it around. It takes more time but I have it. Can’t see Ariana doing it my way, but judging from her posts I likely have a little more patience than her!
MS is addictive though. More so than SUBs. I don’t scour for cc SUBs daily but I struggle passing any place I can buy or liquidate gcs.
CC SUBs are, of course superior to MS. I think of MS as the graduate level. I may not (probably would:) MS if I could get a couple SUBs per month but I get maybe 6 per year now.
I MS a little over $50k per month but not on one card. I have many liquidation opportunities in my area. I too get nervous asking for over $2k in MO at one location so I spread it around. It takes more time but I have it.
MS is addictive though. More so than SUBs. I don’t scour for cc SUBs daily but I struggle passing any place I can buy or liquidate gcs.
Kirk, would you mind sharing how you MS 50k/month and how you liquidate? I need to take a break from SUBs for a while and would love to get into MSing but don’t know where to start. Thanks!
Example:
Buy $8 k gcs from staples.com on old ink cards(5x).
Buy $8k gcs from grocery on grocery bonus category cards.
Buy $16k gcs from Sam’s Club on current Amex promo.
Buy $25k or more at Simon Mall on Fidelity, Discover Miles (in first year of double miles), Alaska cards.
Liquidate through MOs at the 5 WMs and 12 grocery stores in my coverage area.
Start small. If you have an old Ink 5x at office supply card, I’d start with staples.com.
If not get a grocery bonus category card and start there or if you have the Sam’s offer I would milk that first while it lasts.
Good luck! It’s not easy and a bit confusing starting out, but after the first successful run you got it. Use the gift card as a debit card when buying the money order. The last 4 numbers of the card is usually the PIN. You probably knew that…. but just in case 🙂
Something that continues to confuse me is around using the Amex Gold (4x groceries) for purchasing GCs at said grocery store. Are there issues with throwing in one or more $500 GC with organic spend to Max the $25K cat bonus?
Occasional new card bonuses (~2/yr), but it’s hard to get excited about run-of-the-mill offers. Almost all the cards I sign up for are cards I’ll keep longterm – very few are simply for signup bonuses (have to be exceptional offers to get me interested for random cards). It’s mostly MS for me. Only $1-$1.5M a year as local outlets have clamped down. My MS is mostly cashback as I already have a stash of points.
But 40% utilization? Mine is 5% or less – occasionally I’ll mis-time some purchases and have large statement balances and my credit score will drop 60-80 points and utilization will be 10-15%. Next statement I’ll get back to low utilization and will recover most of the score drop (quickly falls off a cliff but takes a few months to recover)
No issues
Appreciated your comment and insight Kirk. Sorry but what does “CC SUBs” refer to?
Credit card sign up bonus
>>>>>>>>But once I saw the benefit of sign-up bonuses from multiple credit cards, I was on my way.
Should be edited to:
But once I saw the benefit of getting paid for selling credit cards, I was on my way to pump my readers 24/7 365.
And mega yawn #sameoldrinserepeat
Dude, give it a rest already. We get it, your anti RI on a personal level because of his prior success (re: secretly jealous?).What positivity comes from it? Let’s face it, 95% of all (not just travel) bloggers are pimpers/pumpers in their own right. They ain’t in it to Kumbaya My Lord. It IS all about the Benjamins, just look in the mirror. #urnotreallythatdifferent
I do both. In my spreadsheet I input the bank rules and know when I can get the same card a second time after closing a card. I also have a tab and spreadsheet that helps me plan the minimum spend when doing several cards simultaneously. I do find it helpful to find out exactly when the card company wants that spend done.
I am currently on my 2nd go with Citi TY cards for both of us. Too bad BOA messed up the honey hole with the Alaska card, but that just becomes a longer play like the Citi cards. I still do a small amount of MS as my one WM and WF will safely allow me to do.
This coming year is the big year of travel where we drop roughly 1.5MM points on hotels and flights. One 400k at Al Maha this coming spring is a big hitter. It will take a bit of time to replenish those points.
I wish I was as organized as you are. I try to keep track of things in my head but it gets much more difficult as I age.
John, could you share what does WF stand for?
wells fargo
John, how does WF let you ms?
Rick, enjoyed reading your article. Ariana got me started on CC SUBs but I never had the courage to do MS. Besides I could never find a location that would allow me to do MS. Even the local WM wouldn’t allow it. Perhaps I didn’t try hard enough. I need to take my gift card and go from one place to the next to find one who would be willing to give me a MO. Maybe one of your readers can help me how to find such a location.
Feroz, Tell us where you live?
Thanks for responding Rick. I live in Troy, Mi.
I buy gift cards at Staples when the fee is waived and then I buy money orders at the Post Office. They don’t blink and eye. But….and this is a big but, I use the post office located in the two markets in my small town. Their machines take my gift debit cards whereas the regular post office don’t,
I’m not rich like a lot of these people are. So for a 5000 msr I have to plan ahead. So ms can be easier for me financially. But that being said I would prefer signup bonuses. Guess it’s just a matter of doing fewer cc openings. Being single doesn’t help either. Slow and steady pace.
I’ve MS’ed as much as $150k per month for a while, but it’s a lot of work. Right now I’m at about 80k, which still, with everyday spend, gets us to about a million a year, across cards.
With Simon Mall now allowing large orders, and cards in $1000 increments, it means that at the four swipes max WMs in my area, I can get $4k at once instead of 2.
There are also a couple grocery chains in the area that sell MOs. Meaning that 2 WMs and one grocery store in a day can yield $10k or $11k in MOs.
That’s a pretty good return for about three hours, twice a week. It means easy biz class on multiple airlines. Spur of the moment trips on SWA. And best of all, gifting miles or hotel stats to our kids. All for 6 hours a week.
You are fortunate you can still do $4k at Walmart. From what I read, most of us who have hit WM heavy lately are rejected now after ID. I have to keep it under $1000 at WM now. As a result I have doubled my MO at grocery stores to $2k. I don’t want to push that limit as I know long term it will cause either a ban or ID at grocery.
Got ID’d at one grocery store last week when asking for a 4 card swipe $2k MO. They rejected me after seeing my gc had no name on it. Ugh! Now I have to be watchful for that same rep in that store!
WOW. I would love to get a hint of those grocery chains,
I am still very new to the travel hacking world (little over a year) I just found out about MS and Pointchaser in October. I love SUB. I have just started dipping my feet in with Simon mall and OD/OM and converting to MO. I have done about 2k in November. How are you able to do 50k a month or higher? What cards are you using? Do you spread that across multiple cards?
See answer above for my humble guidance for what it’s worth.
Everyone has an opinion on best cards, but hard to argue with old Ink 5x or grocery bonus cards.
Rick, this was one hell of a topic to write about. Something I constantly wonder how people can do.
SUBs for the win.
Albeit, I’ve just entered the world of MS as of last month after being aware of the practice for years (via this site). Signup bonuses are getting tougher after still being within 2 years of closing TY and AA accounts, being above 5/24, and hitting the AMEX popup blocker. Just got a couple Hawaiian cards for the first time (utilizing the 2 bonuses for a HNL-ACK biz), and also just took the plunge with CO Spark. Using MS via Simon Mall to hit the 200K SUB. Then hoping they run another EK 100% transfer bonus promo to move most of the 300K over for 2x F tickets.
“I never was late on a payment and always paid in full each month. Some people’s circumstances just don’t allow that to happen.”
I will say somewhat off topic that this comes across wrong. Being unable to pay a card in full isn’t a result of circumstance, it’s a result of poor planning or purposefully deciding to make purchases beyond your means.