Summary of Year 2 of Churning

Check out the link below for summary of first year

http://travelinpoints.com/2-mil-points-earned-year-one-churning-as-a-grad-student/

Once again I feel compelled to say that this isn’t a brag post, instead it is meant to show what is possible even with an aggressive year one churning as mine.

As the title says this is the summary of my (and my alone) 2nd year of churning. You may read summary of my year one churning  clicking here.

Goal has Shifted Towards Cash

My 1st year was heavily focused on acquiring miles and that was appropriate thing to do because because I was just starting out and thus was naturally low on points. Ironically when I had enough points to travel, I felt the need to acquire cashable points because I wanted cash acquired through churning to pay for travel and activities done during travel.

While I still value miles, I’ve definitely shifted more towards “cash is king” mentality and this will be abundantly clear in later section where you see me cashout points that most points & miles veteran would not. Also, these-days I find myself more likely to jump on a cash deal than a strictly miles deal.

Annual Fee Paid

This annual fee section was a bit trickier to put together than it was last year. Tricks like pro-rated refund make it harder to give an exact value of how much I paid. Regardless I’ve thrown some rough estimate numbers for your reading pleasure.

Bank	estimated AF paid this year	estimated renewal of AF
Amex	1295	95
Chase	190	190
Citi	195	195
UBS	60	60
Other	250	0
Total	1990	540

Bank Bonuses

Alike year one my criteria for bank bonuses make it difficult to earn a lot of bonuses. Said criteria are as such:

1. I don’t want to change my DD
2. most bank bonuses require decent chunk of deposit and
3. I don’t want to bank with banks I churn cc of

I did open Chase banking accounts and violated #3 but by this point I was more or less done churning chase credit cards for a while.

Bank	Bonus in $
Huntington	200
Chase	300
Chase Business	300
Old Second Bank	150
BoA	100
Old Second Bank	150
Bridgeview	175
Wells Fargo	200
Total	1575

My excuse for missing out on glory days of M&T is that I was out of State for a good portion of 2017.

Cashing Out Points

In this section I’ve only focused on cashing out of points that otherwise could be redeemed towards travel. I’m not going to tally out cash/airline credit that come with various credit cards.

Points	Cashout	Note
70k Thank You	$700	1:1 cashout via Prestige
678.4k Membership Rewards	$8480	1.25 cpp cashout via Schwab Plat
50k Arrival+	$500	always cash out
50k BoA Premium Rewards	$500	always cash out
25k TravElite	$250	always cash out
50k UBS	~$625	35k pays off $495 annual fee
55k Disney Dollar	$550	cashed out via upgrade to Premier Rewards trick
150k Ultimate Rewards	$1500	yay money?
Total	13105

Cards in Year TWO

The pace at which I could obtain new cards significantly slowed in year two. It didn’t help that I was out of States for a good portion of 2017 and reconing or even applying for a new credit card was often time consuming and somewhat costly. I’m sort of bummed by the fact that I missed on massive Merrill+ churn.

Card	Bonus	Keep/Cancel	Notes
Hilton Surpass Upgrade	100k	Downgraded	tried again but no bonus (add link)
FNBO TravElite	25k	Keep Forever	free $100 every year
Ameriprise Plat	None	Cancel	just churn it again
Citi AA	60k	Cancel	churn baby churn!
EDP	30k	Downgraded
BRG	75k	Downgrade	hope for plat upgrade offer
UBS Visa Infinite	50k	Undecided	matched to 50k
Vantagewest Connect	None	Keep	5% categories
Business Blue	10k	Cancelled	needed to free up slot
Delta Gold	60k + $50	Keep	5% categories
BoA Premium	50k	Undecided	can $100 travel credit be cashed out?
AA Biz	65k	Cancelled	matched
Schwab Plat	60k	Cancel	1.25 cpp cashout
AA Biz	65k	Cancel	loophole mailer
MB Plat	60k	Cancel	free MB merchandise is nice but overpriced
CIP	100k	Keep	5/24 bypassed through paper app
Delta Plat Business	70k + $100	Downgrade?	might down to Gold
Business Blue Plus	20k	Undecided	might cancel to open cc slot

Redemption

I did a lot of travel in Nepal. It definitely helped that $1 was roughly Rs 107. A simple bank bonus like $400 from Capital 360 could get me a lot of things or last me a long time with normal spend. While in Nepal I also did some things on the side so accumulating funds for travel and adventure wasn’t much of a problem. I did many activities like ride on a cable car (ropeway), paraglide, bungee, zipline, elephant safari, jungle boating, jeep safari, and numerous trekking and sightseeing throughout the country. I also made multiple stays at all four international chain hotels in Kathmandu.

After my return to US, I resumed my occasional travel within US. After several months of being back in US, I had traveled to San Francisco (twice), San Diego (twice), Buffalo, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale.

Post	Notes
Mustang – Jomsom – Muktinath	travelling to the “kingdom beyond himalayas”; Nepal
Hyatt Regency Kathmandu #2	best category 1 Hyatt hotel; 5k points
Nepal is Beautiful.	random pictures
Beautiful Far-West Nepal	random pictures of Far-West region of Nepal
Marriott Fairfield Kathmandu	checking out newly opened Marriott hotel in Nepal; 15k points
Crowne Plaza Kathmandu-Soaltee	Kathmandu, Nepal
InterContinental San Francisco	meh
Fairmont San Francisco	probably should have used my free night cert elsewhere
Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf San Francisco	burning free cert at a often mentioned category 4 hotel
Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay	overhyped by bloggers; zero re-visitibility factor
Fairmont Grand Del Mar in San Diego	excellent domestic use of free night cert
Hotel del Coronado, Curio Collection by Hilton	wish I did not pay for an upgrade; 69k
Intercontinental Las Vegas – The Venetian	used free night cert and loved it
Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City	decent hotel and good location; 42k points
Hyatt Place Fort Lauderdale 17th Street	i like Hyatt Place; 8k points
Hyatt Place Miami Airport-East	i like Hyatt Place x2; 8k points
Hilton Cabana Miami Beach	decent hotel at a decent price; 38k
Conrad Miami	cool hotel but won’t stay again; 61k

I don’t want to detail out my plane ticket so I’ll be brief about it. All tickets bought to-from Nepal were either bought with FlexPoints (at higher than 1.5 cpp) or with Ultimate Rewards (CSR at 1.5 cpp). I was pretty much using cash equivalent currency because it costs a ton of points to get there and/or points route is hours longer than my typical route.

Me and SO took four domestic Delta first class flights but other than that everything domestic was booked on Southwest for which I do have a companion pass. I had obtained companion pass through the Marriott vacation package trick (rip).