Reddit churning has long been followed as a great community for credit card churning and manufactured spending. Read how to use Reddit churning to step up your travel hacking game.
Why You Need to Use Reddit Churning for Travel Hacking
Discussions on the Reddit churning community were always a treat. They offered a number of different insights on credit card churning, manufactured spending and what credit card should you obtain. You can check R/Churning to see the community for yourself.
Components of Travel Hacking
Travel hacking includes credit card churning, manufactured spending and booking award travel. The Reddit churning community offers advice on the first two. For booking award travel, head on over to the r/AwardTravel.
Travel hacking (or credit card churning) is a great way to earn free travel around the world. The only component with it is that it takes up significant time to learn and execute. In my opinion travel hacking includes three important considerations:
1. Credit Card Churning
Credit card churning is the act of repeatedly opening and closing credit cards so that you can earn the sign-up bonuses over and over. If you’re able to do this with several cards it will allow you to build up many more rewards than using just one card.
There are strategies you can use, which we’ll cover in this article, that will allow you to maximize the amount of rewards you’ll be able to earn. Avoid these credit card churning mistakes.
2. Manufactured spending
Credit card manufactured spending in 2018 can be summarized as a credit card technique where you spend money in ways that allow you to get the money back as cash. While these techniques are completely legal, they are often used by criminals to launder money or convert stolen card numbers into cash. This has led to many businesses to start blocking these techniques.
You should know your routing number as you’ll likely have to incorporate a number of different payment methods. I bank with Wells Fargo, here are all the Wells Fargo routing numbers that you need to know.
3. Travel hacking without credit cards
Travel hacking without credit cards is everything in between you travel experiences after you have accumulated significant rewards points.
For instances, travel hacking without credit cards is points hacking where you sign up for the smaller bonuses that give you the optionality of additional points. Consider these hacks like overcoming a language barrier or ensure you get all of your VAT reclaim back.
4. Booking award travel effectively
Booking award travel is the execution of all the points that you have already accumulated. Let’s be honest. Once we have put in all that hard work, we don’t want to throw away hard earned points by not booking rewards efficiently.
The churning subreddit is a very large community with over 100,000 subscribers, which increased the robustness of datapoints as well as speed of new groundbreaking credit card churning information.
The subreddit for churning has been excellent to the tune that you receive instant feedback on questions, datapoints and comments. The access to instant information is outstanding and very hard to find elsewhere. Booking award travel is a massive component of your overall capability of saving money for travel.
You can use Booking or CheapOAir to find the best deals if you paying cash instead of points.
My Free Travel Hacking Spreadsheet Template
Well the first tool that is a must-have is my travel hacking spreadsheet that is completely free to download. My travel hacking spreadsheet includes:
- Credit card churning tracker
- Manufactured spending tracking
- Hard pull credit inquiries
Read more and watch how to use the credit card tracking spreadsheet to get started. This will help you stay organized and efficient with your travel experiences.
Advantages of the Reddit Churning Community
The Reddit churning subreddit has a number of amazing resources that I highly suggest that you get involved in reading to start your travel hacking journey. There has been public scrutiny for travel hacking and we really don’t know when the music will end. The music is playing and the party is going, so get in now while the going is good.
Some of the advantages of the Reddit churning thread include:
- Rapid response times from community members
- Effective guides and educated rules
- Sophisticated credit card churners that know every fine detail of the credit card churning game
- Phone numbers to the bank lines! This is huge – I usually find the appropriate number to call the bank to get a quick response from them about my credit cards
The community helped me find out ways to MS the Chase Freedom card each quarter. Also, I was able to achieve the Southwest Companion pass with the help of the r Churning community.
Here are some of my favorite resources to consider in the Reddit churning threads.
Credit Card Decision Flowchart
Here is the credit card decision flowchart that helps you find the right credit card for you to use in credit card churning. You can find updates here.
Source: Reddit Churning Community
Datapoints Central Thread
The datapoints central thread is an absolute must have for credit card churners and travel hackers. You need to constantly stay up to date on the latest datapoints on rewards, manufactured spending and more.
The travel hacking game is changing rapidly, so you must stay on top of EVERYTHING. You can stay up to date on the recurring datapoints threads here.
Disadvantages of the Reddit Churning community
I am a frequent member on the Reddit churning community. Usually tossing out some of the best advice, datapoints and more. However, slowly the community turned into more of a beauty contest than anything. Here are some reasons that I ultimately decided that Reddit churning has some limitations for travel hacking:
- Biased advice: Members of the Reddit churning community will likely sway you to open a credit card that allows for them to earn a referral off of your application.
- Varying motivations: In general, the community has been highly motivated to share referral links and thus I have seen a number of people trying to peddle offers for referrals or even straight up cash payment for the offer.
- Hostile: If your question or comment is not exactly precise or correct, you will get ridiculed. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
If you know how Reddit works, you might want to know that the community is very quick to downvote you to the death. Don’t take it personally, they are just one of the most sophisticated groups out there.
Other Credit Card Churning Resources to Consider
Travel hacking is very dependent on people finding datapoints, offers and methods to rack up awards points in order to be successful. You must spend time scraping the web to find the best options for your credit card churning goals.
Here are some other useful resources to consider:
- Doctor Of Credit: Find all the latest and greatest deals relating to credit cards, coupons, bonus points and more. Doctor Of Credit also provides solid updates regarding a few credit card policies to consider. Don’t miss a single reward opportunity with Doctor Of Credit.
- FlyerTalk Forums: FlyerTalk Forums has all the best datapoints and ways to extra miles from your rewards programs. This is also a great forum to find and book award travel. FlyerTalk forums is the ‘dinosaur’ in the travel hacking world. They have so much information on the forums that you simply can’t miss a step in your travel hacking goals whether you are a newbie or an expert.
- AwardWallet: AwardWallet provides a free service that helps you manage your reward balances and travel itineraries. They support 672 loyalty programs – air, hotel, car rental, credit card and others. The AwardWallet blog has been very helpful for me to learn more about the best credit card bonuses available.
Is credit card churning or travel hacking right for you?
Look travel hacking is a marathon and not a sprint. You should only participate as much as you are comfortable with. Don’t try to go for the big wins early.
Try to be strategic with your goals and maintain a low profile. I’ve seen far too many people get eliminated from the credit card churning game simply because they try to do too much.
Try to stay focused with a plan that works for you. Just like personal finance, travel hacking is tailored to everyone’s personal financial situation and goals.
Some people prefer to use credit card churning to earn cash back others use it to accumulate significant rewards points. If credit cards, aren’t for you that’s okay. Just by traveling you learn a lot from your experiences. I learned these travel hacks while visiting Japan.
Did my guide on how to use the Reddit churning community to participate in travel hacking help you? Please let us know in the comment below. We’d love to hear from you!
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2 Comments
I’m a user of doctor of credit. I surf into rchurning from time to time but I’ve found the same info on doc with better organization for a quick read. Anyway I do agree, for travel hacking it’s a good idea to have a source of info on new offers and strategy changes.
Yeah, I love them too. I think it’s great to have every source possible to ensure you are fully up to date on info.