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Comment by Blackthorn | Hacker News Reader

For a free $200 flight (on the low end), you'd need to spend (on the bottom end, with an exceptionally good 3% rewards number) 200 / 0.03 = $6667, on whatever stupid categories your credit card has for the 3%. Just how much money do you think most millenials have?

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Just on groceries that is a free flight every couple years. Of course I also buy clothing, phone bill, car repairs, birthday presents... In short, I charge almost everything. I'm going for the 1% cash back not the points, but to me it seems normal to be getting back more than $100 every year. Note that I do not carry a balance. Everything in that list is something I do anyway, and I have the cash sitting in my back account (so I should probably add another buck to the $100 above for interest in my bank accounts)

Note that you have to be able to control yourself. If you ever carry a balance the math fails.

I'd think of it in the sense that if you're going to spend that money over whatever length of time anyways, might as well get the $200 flight out of it as well.

That's basically my attitude.(And I also have a fair bit of reimbursed spend.) You can also get credits that are effectively cash (e.g. on Amazon) or even actually cash. They're usually theoretically worth less than the airline miles or hotel points but are a lot easier to use efficiently.

As another comment suggested, there are also a lot of games that you can play churning credit cards--as well as playing gift card games. My personal take on those though is that you really have to keep on top of introductory offers, using gift cards, etc. or you can easily end up in the hole. It's also essentially a hobby. Once it becomes work, it's probably not worth it.

Look up ''churning'' which is the pursuit of mega signup bonuses in order to magnify the rewards. I've earned >1 million points and miles through this method in the last few years, easily $10k+ worth of travel, although I keep it up now more so because it has become a fun hobby and I enjoy it.

There are also articles describing the risk of churning, and that hardcore churners may be damaging their credit reputation by being seen as unprofitable.

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