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Matthew Palm, who lives in Illinois, turned an online routine into a stream of cash. He goes months without applying for anything—until he lands on the right issuer’s site, fills out the form, and hits submit. The rule is constant: only open cards that offer a sign-up bonus in exchange for a modest spending target. According to him, the most tense moment is always the same: when he presses “submit.” Anxiety rises, the response arrives, and the adrenaline rush does the rest.
The method is cumulative. Each bonus amounts to a few hundred dollars in points; on its own, it’s not much. Repeated many times, it turns into a respectable sum. Over seven years playing this game, he and his wife opened more than 50 cards and racked up over $40,000 in promotions. Palm doesn’t consider himself extreme—he knows people who open 20 cards a year, and have done so for decades. What looks excessive to many is, to him, just a practice with clear rules, one an entire community has dubbed churning: opening cards regularly to capture promotional rewards and then moving on to the next opportunity.
Who the “Churners” Are: Different Profiles, One Habit
The gateway into this universe is almost always the same: realizing that hundreds of cards offer welcome bonuses. If the incentive exists, why not take it? For Isaac Khor, a Northeastern University Ph.D. candidate, the answer became income. He started at the beginning of the pandemic and estimates he has made $15,000 this year.
On a graduate stipend, that difference is tangible. He describes the hobby without romance: it’s for people who like reading fine print and who “squeeze” every last bit of value from each offer—even if that costs weekly hours in spreadsheets.
The demographic map is broad. There are young adults, stay-at-home parents, high-earning professionals. What repeats is not age or ZIP code, but tolerance for meticulous management: tracking deadlines, understanding eligibility rules, calculating annual fees, and arranging expenses to hit targets without carrying a balance.
When It Becomes a System: Discipline, Liquidity, and Paid Vacations
On the other coast, Lindsay Ash’s story shows how the strategy stops being chance and becomes an operating system. She and her husband started 15 years ago; today they keep about 60 active cards. The couple reports five-figure annual gains and frequent points-funded trips—to Japan, Florida, and Hawaii. The secret isn’t mysterious: discipline to meet targets and paying in full to avoid interest. There’s also a prerequisite that separates aspirants from practitioners: upfront cash. Bonuses only unlock after the spend. Without liquidity, the hobby turns into debt.
The Silent Risk: One Misstep Can Cost You Your Score
Churning isn’t for everyone. A calendar slip or a tight month can damage your credit history. Opening a new line usually cuts your score in the short term; late payments trigger high interest; chasing a target without cash set aside creates the kind of snowball that wipes out any bonus. “If you’re even minimally unsure about your finances and need to juggle bills, stay away,” Palm warns.
The apparent paradox is that many churners sport super-prime scores. The math explains it: low utilization—spending only a small fraction of available credit—helps your score. Those who hold many cards increase total available credit and, by keeping spending in check, drive down their utilization rate. The outcome is a high score supported by a strict choreography: full, on-time payments, attention to the average age of accounts, and an aversion to revolving balances.
Inside the Machine: Why Issuers Offer So Much and When It Backfires
Issuers know the game—and need it. The business model rests on two pillars: interest from revolvers and merchant fees on each purchase. To grow, they must convince more people to adopt the card as their daily payment tool. Hence the decades-long cycle: new cashback categories, welcome bonuses, and ever-flashier campaigns.
On the planners’ whiteboard, the math works like this: lose money on the initial promotion, earn it back through recurring use and interest over time. The problem, admits Roger Hochschild, former CEO of Discover (later acquired by Capital One), is adverse selection: offers that are too enticing attract a contingent who take the promo to the letter and nothing more. In that scenario, the issuer loses money on every by-the-book customer.
The response comes in waves. Chase tightened policies to discourage repeat applications for the same product seeking duplicate bonuses. American Express followed a similar path. But there’s a hard limit: public offers can’t arbitrarily discriminate, or regulators will step in. The result is a constant pendulum between opening the door to grow and closing it when the points crowd starts pouring through.
Size and Noise: The Community and the Casual Layer
Measuring churning’s universe is hard. A dedicated subreddit draws tens of thousands of visitors a week; websites and podcasts rack up thousands of monthly views. Beyond the hard core, there’s a crowd of casual participants: people who don’t collect cards but grab a promotion when it aligns with that month’s spending. In 2023, a Federal Reserve Board study estimated that sophisticated users capture $15 billion a year, essentially funded by cardholders who pay annual fees and interest without exploiting rewards.
Scale Changes the Game: When a Tactic Becomes a Waterfall
At the strategy’s extreme is Max Gunara, a 30-year-old entrepreneur. He says he keeps 41 personal and business cards and has 19 million points banked. He pays about $15,000 a year in annual fees, a cost that only makes sense because his companies run seven-figure expenses, yielding roughly 3.3 points per dollar.
By his math, issuers and airlines lose between $30,000 and $50,000 a year on his profile. The bravado has a point: scale turns small program leaks into a waterfall of benefits. And for every aggressive optimizer, there are, he estimates, “10 to 100” cardholders who don’t use their own benefits, paying for features they never touch. “It’s a huge transfer of wealth to me,” he sums up.
The Loopholes and Each One’s Expiration Date
Where there are complex rules, there are gray areas. For years, a tactic circulated: ordering $1 coins from the U.S. Mint and paying by card to spin volume, hit spending thresholds, and then deposit the cash—a shortcut that was shut down once it became common knowledge. Other routes fall under what veterans call “manufactured spending”: buying gift cards to resell, prepaying taxes, purchasing gold bars at retailers like Costco during promotional windows.
In parallel, buying groups emerged: when stores cap units per person on hot releases (like iPhones), hundreds of participants buy separately and resell in bulk to a single corporate buyer, trading effort for card rewards.
None of this is simple—and almost nothing lasts. Each time a technique goes mainstream, a company closes the loophole or the model stops working. That’s why secrecy is part of the game: those who find a quiet avenue tend not to broadcast it, so it stays profitable longer. As Gunara puts it: “For every loophole that closes, another opens.”
Zero Interest, Zero Margin
Not every advantage lives in the shadows. Some cards offer 12 months at 0% as an introductory incentive. Gunara used one to borrow $76,000 and pay it off before the deadline—in today’s rate environment, it’s the cheapest credit a small business owner can get. The move only works with absolute punctuality. A tiny delay converts 0% into double-digit APR and wipes out the gain in days.
What This Means for You: Who Should Try It and Who Should Skip It
The honest question isn’t “how much can I make?” but “what kind of discipline does this require?” Churning demands liquidity to front the spend, a drama-free calendar, and a tolerance for details most people prefer to avoid. If you’re in a phase of organizing bills, tackling debt, or on the verge of a sensitive credit decision (a competitive rental, a loan, an employer credit check), now is not the time.
If the foundation is set—a balanced budget, an emergency fund, consistent, full, on-time payments—picking off a promotion here and there can add up, as long as the practice doesn’t push you into forced targets and revolving balances.
Where the Paths Diverge: A Table for a Coherent Decision
| Dimension | Consistent Churning (dozens of cards, bonus hunting) | Traditional Use (1–3 well-managed cards) |
| Purpose | Extract sign-up bonuses, promotional categories, and occasional 0% windows | Simplify finances and build a strong credit history |
| Day-to-day Operation | High complexity: issuer-specific rules, deadlines, annual fees, spreadsheets | Low to moderate: few due dates, predictable routine |
| Liquidity Needed | High: you spend first to unlock bonuses | Low: focus on paying in full and avoiding interest |
| Score Impact | Can be excellent with low utilization and discipline; subject to swings from new accounts | Stable and predictable over time |
| Financial Gain | Peaks via bonuses, boosted miles/points, targeted cashback | Consistent rewards without aggressive targets |
| Key Risks | Forgotten annual fees, targets that become debt, missed dates, unilateral rule changes | Smaller short-term gains; risk of complacency (not reviewing products) |
| Best-fit Profile | Those with organized finances, time, and appetite for detail | The majority of consumers |
The Verdict: The Reward Exists, But Only With a Method
The stories of Palm, Khor, Ash, and Gunara show that generous rewards are possible. They also make the hidden cost clear: attention. In a system that pays those who read the footnotes, discipline is the currency that precedes any mile or cashback. The market, for its part, will remain in uneasy balance: issuers need growth, regulators limit discretion, communities discover shortcuts, and companies react.
If curiosity persists, invert the ad copy’s order of operations: stability first, experiments later. Stability means cash for surprises, bills paid without strain, and a horizon free of credit decisions that a score hiccup could derail. Experiments mean starting small, gauging your own appetite for complexity, and accepting that the playing field moves.
Between an anxious click and a gleaming approval, what determines the outcome isn’t the shine of the new card but the least glamorous part of the process: management.
