I don’t churn credit card much. Sure, I’ve gone a little nuts in the past with Alaska Visa card applications and I did take full advantage of the 100,000 miles Citi AAdvantage Executive card offer three years ago. But I don’t regularly churn credit cards like most people in this hobby do. My game is manufactured spending, focused largely on Visa and merchant gift card churning.
When I got a 65,000 mile Citi Platinum AAdvantage card offer in the mail, my first instinct wasn’t to apply for the card. I can generate 65,000 AAdvantage miles in three days and make a profit doing it. But I haven’t been ms’ing much and this required very little effort. So I applied, got approved with a generous credit line…and remembered what a high I’d been missing out on.
I remember my very first credit card churn almost six years ago. I’m pretty sure the Chase Sapphire Preferred was in the batch, along with two 75k Citi AAdvantage cards and maybe a Bank of America Alaska Visa. I wasn’t into more obscure banks like U.S. Bank and Barclays at the time. I just applied for the most mainstream card offers and felt such a high when I got approved.
There was a time when half a million miles seemed completely out of reach. But there I was, inching pretty close to it. I had totally forgotten about the excitement of a card approval and “easy” miles until this weekend when I got approved for that Citi AAdvantage card.
Now 65,000 miles after $4,000 spent in 3 months isn’t the best offer ever, especially on this particular card. As I mentioned, I once got approved for two of these cards at once. Each bonus was 75,000 miles and I believe the spending requirements as $3,000 each.
Not that the spending requirement is going to be a problem, but there have been better offers in the past. The currently publicly available bonus for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum card is 60,000 miles after $3,000 spent in 3 months.
That’s not a huge difference, but I’m still glad to bag an extra 6,000 miles. What I really missed was the ease of getting a substantial number of miles with a few clicks of the mouse. It made me realize I need to do this more often!
What will I do with the 69,000 miles I’ll earn from the Citi AAdvantage Platinum card? I finally have a better handle on my travel plans for December, when I’ll take my sister on a surprise trip to celebrate her finishing an intense coding bootcamp.
I’ve actually decided on a destination (or two), but my sister reads this blog so I can’t share it. Since I’m taking my entire family, including my nieces and nephew on this vacation, I’ll need all the miles I can get. The 65,000 mile sign-up bonus from the Citi AAdvantage Platinum card gets me at least a one-way ticket.
My younger sister also got one of these offers in the mail, so I’ll have to see if Citi is serious about giving a 20 year-old student with a part time job a rewards credit card. I’ll report back once I pull the trigger. With nine premium award tickets to book by November, those 69,000 AAdvantage miles will mean three less trips to Walmart for me….
Did you get targeted for a 65,000 mile Citi AAdvantage Platinum card sign-up bonus? What do you plan on doing with the miles?
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Did you have an open AAdvantage Card at the time you were targeted? If not, how long ago was you last AA card closed?
I did not. I honestly can’t even remember the last time I closed my personal AA card (I manage four other family members’ accounts, so it gets blurred).
“I can generate 65,000 AAdvantage miles in three days and make a profit doing it”, I read your blog all the time but I must’ve missed the article on how to do this. Can you please refresh my memory?
I haven’t written about this stuff in a while. You can find it by typing “My week in manufactured spending” into the search box.
Since GCM decreased the limit of GCs to $250 and Yazing decreased the pay out to 1%, I’m no longer able to turn a profit while MSing. How are you still making a profit form it? Thanks!
I haven’t been targeted but I can relate to the “high” you get when you get approved. I was telling a friend recently that it’s almost like an addiction for me. When I apply and wait while the screen tells me it’s processing I get the same excitement from playing a slot machine. It’s such a thrill to get instantly approved. I think sometimes I apply for cards I don’t really need but I just need that little kick of excitement.
I think I’m hooked too. Though I’m going to try to hold off on more cards until the end of the year. Just in case Chase does a year-end increased sign-up bonus on the Reserve card.
I can relate to the high…I got into the hobby this year with the CSR, and now I have 5 shiny new cards. I’m trying to focusing on the ms part, because I would like to be under 5/24 again =\
Mariana, referring to “My game is manufactured spending, focused largely on Visa and merchant gift card churning”, I read all 3 links in the sentence, so very interesting. While the last 2 are fairly recent, the finest one was written in 2014. Can you possibly write a follow-up with updated information? Thank you for your informative posts and knowledge sharing.
Just noticed that the spelling assistance changed my typing of “Ariana” to “Mariana”…… Sorry about that!
Ha! No worries.
Yes, I will update those pages and write a more current post.