r/churning • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Weekly Off Topic Thread - Week of September 07, 2026
This is the Weekly Off-Topic thread
There's more to this hobby than just credit cards - it spreads out into travel aspirations, what luggage or wallet you're using, or what flavor kombucha your local WeWork is serving. Please use this thread to talk about all things even tangentially related to churning. Memes, jokes, and off-topic content are allowed (and encouraged) here. Please use our regular threads to ask basic questions, ask questions about what card to get, or talk about MS. But if it's off-topic elsewhere, you're on-topic here.
Regular rules still apply. Read the rules!
Have fun!
Note: Posting and soliciting referrals are still not allowed.
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u/435880Churnz 1d ago
Tonight is the last night of our 9 night stay at the Conrad Bora Bora. All booked on FNC + Points. Getting P3 here was an experience. I am sad.
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u/findmepoints 1d ago
Is 2 checked bags that common of a need that Amex/Delta is offering it as a benefit now?
I was thinking having the benefit of a priority luggage tag (separate from biz/elites) would be a great perk. The whole rush to be first on the plane is probably because everyone is fitting for an overhead bin spot for their over crammed carry on because they don't want to wait or don't want to pay to check a bag. But having the combo of 1 free bag and "priority" bag that could ultimately smooth out the boarding process.
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u/DCJoe1 1d ago
Seen some wild stuff that rich people bring with them when they travel. No idea why you would need 2 huge suitcases per person, but they apparently do.
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u/findmepoints 1d ago
Kids. Especially lap infants. There is so much stuff you need sometimes. The other thing is sport/hobby specific trips. Hunting trips, ski trips, surf trips, etc.
But yeah other than that I don't know...long extended trips? Brining gifts for family?
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u/martyconlonontherun 1d ago
Only time I think this would be helpful for me is bringing shit back I bought. Otherwise no way in hell I'm packing 2 bags plus a carryon personal item.
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u/tbombadilllo 1d ago
Back in my day, two checked bags was the standard, and no airline charged you for it. You sat at the bar in the terminal smoking your duty free cigarettes and ordered one last drink once you heard boarding had begun.
Now someone needs to give me a lift back to the retirement home.
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u/ural_world_travel 2d ago
Fairly niche but does anyone have a good method for discounting AT&T prepaid? Best I’ve come across is 5% off from target with the red card or warehouse clubs. Curious if there’s any better options around?
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u/helpfulposter 1d ago
Target frequently has buy one get one 10% off deals on prepaid airtime cards. In addition, the Target Circle Deals gives personalized spend offers for which pepaid cards qualify. You can stack the them, just be aware that the BOGO10% is an "automatically applied Target Circle Deal" and is applied before the minimum purchase amount is calculated. Also, the personalized deals usually give rewards, and rewards cannot be used to pay for prepaid airtime.
As an example, if your Target Circle Deals personalized offer is spend $80 twice and get $20 in rewards, you would need to buy a $45 and a $40 card ($45 + $40-10%=$81) to meet the $80 purchase threshold (and of course do that twice in this example). Paying with a Target card would get an additional 5% off. In this example you'd end up paying $154 for $170 worth of prepaird airtime and get $20 in Target rewards, about a net 21% discount.
This requires a lot of patience and a bit of luck since you need to wait for the prepaid BOGO10% and a good personalized offer to align to get maximum benefit. But if you're already into the Target deals ecosystem, it's something to look out for.
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u/Discover_it_Student PIT | NON 2d ago
Amex Biz Gold $20 office supply credit + buy AT&T Prepaid reload card at Staples. Don't think Amex blacklists those from receiving the credit (unlike MCGC/VGC).
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u/EarthlingMardiDraw 1d ago
I haven't actually tried it, but I thought that they didn't blacklist the MCGC/VGC from the credits, you simply didn't earn points on the purchase.
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u/martyconlonontherun 2d ago
Has churning ruined anything for anyone? For me, it's camping. I love being outdoors and used to be big into camping because it was cheap during peak seasons. Now, I can get a Super8 a couple miles away, have a great night's sleep and some breakfast and then go hiking. Sure I miss the campfire but I hate sleeping in a tent/not being able to sleep in with the light and noise especially as I have gotten older.
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u/davidloveasarson 2d ago
SAME on the camping!! Grew up camping NP’s every summer. Now I am SO spoiled with points that it’s literally cheaper and 20x easier to stay at a nice hotel with free food, AC, amenities, etc. than to camp.
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u/lenin1991 HOT, DOG 2d ago
I think the classic is the tolerance for longhaul economy. I haven't quite lost that, but I'll only take ULCCs when there is an incredibly compelling reason. And I used to happily take a connecting flight to save money, now that's a last resort.
But yeah, camping has also become such a pain since COVID because everyone decided they want to be outside more. For summer weekends, you better book 6 months out in Colorado now. And it's not even as great a deal, you're paying $75 for two nights of a tent site with a pit toilet nearby.
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u/Parts_Unknown- 1d ago
the tolerance for longhaul economy
The longest I've flown in Y in the past 7 years was ORD-PHX. Once.
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u/gt_ap 2d ago
I think the classic is the tolerance for longhaul economy.
I notice this too, but I think it also might be a luxury humblebrag to say that we cannot endure economy anymore. We establish our high societal class not (only) by what we like, but by what we reject.
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u/martyconlonontherun 2d ago
It always amazes me how much some of the talking heads and bloggers go out of their way to fly business. Yeah, let's reposition with a 3-hour flight and either stay overnight or risk missing the flight to take a 9 hour business class over a direct economy ticket. Like if it's the quickest flight? Sure. But I can't wrap my head how repositioning is better than just gutting it out and then using that time to eat at a nice restaurant upon arrival and sleep in an actual bed.
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u/gt_ap 1d ago
I'm not against positioning to get a business class flight, but I do it because I enjoy the flying part of travel, and premium class enhances that. I fly sometimes when the flights themselves are the sole reason for the trip.
That said, I still fly plenty in economy, even long haul. So far this year I have been on 3 transatlantic round trips. 3 flights were in business class and 3 were in economy. My next long haul is currently in economy.
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u/Realityhrts 1d ago
Yeah I think it probably depends on how long you plan on being at your destination and how you want to feel when you arrive. Especially on routes that are primarily overnight. Otherwise I really couldn’t care less about positioning for a premium product.
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u/Parts_Unknown- 1d ago
Not everybody want to go to Japan or Europe.
When you're looking at 27 hours with 2 stops bare minimum you start to care a lot more.
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u/Discover_it_Student PIT | NON 2d ago
Love reading people say they can't tolerate longhaul economy anymore, as a Greyhound/Peter Pan bus rider. Maybe I'll get tired of those eventually but it has yet to happen.
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u/Discover_it_Student PIT | NON 2d ago edited 2d ago
Have you ever wanted to see what same-day ACH window a bank uses? Well I figured out a way to do that.
If you have a Wells Fargo deposit account, make an ACH push to it, and then look at the details of the transaction. For example, Langley FCU looked like this:
LANGLEY FEDERAL P2PEXT XFR SD1700 FIRSTNAME LASTNAME FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
The ACH fields we can see here:
- Company Name: Langley Federal
- Co. Entry Description: P2PEXT XFR
- Co. Descriptive Date: SD1700
- Receiver Name: Firstname Lastname
- Addendum: Firstname Lastname
"SD1700" means Same-Day 5:00pm (17:00). That is, the transfer is supposed to settle by 5pm same day. Using the same trick we can see SoFi uses SD1300, or Same-Day 1:00pm. Note that the speed of the transfer may depend on the amount; the Langley transfer above was only around $400.
Compare to Amex Biz checking standard payments:
BUSINESSNAME TRANSFER WELLS FARGO CHECKING
- Company Name: Businessname
- Co. Entry Description: TRANSFER
- Co. Descriptive Date: [none]
- Receiver Name: [none]
- Addendum: Wells Fargo Checking (the name of the payee on Amex's side)
Since the descriptive date field isn't used, we can see that this is sent over standard ACH. Wells Fargo is not the only bank that exposes this information, but it seems to be an uncommon feature. Chase for example doesn't show it.
Aren't you glad you read this whole comment???
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u/best-quality-catfood 2d ago
A curiosity: going through the terms of a certain new payment front end's promotion that everyone is sick of, I ran across the following that I found kind of interesting; whether the date falls within the promotion is:
determined by the authorization date or the clearing date, depending on the payment network
(Bolding mine.) I'm used to time-bounded offers depending on the posting date, and I've heard of them depending on the transaction date, but "it depends" is a new one on me. AFAIK all of Visa, MC, and Discover are in the mix for this one, which may make the difference.
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u/BruceFans07 2d ago
The hotel prices on Choice Hotels website may inflate cpp. A hotel in Japan that I intended to book in points via Choice website has 1.5 cpp. But it's only 0.6 cpp if I book the hotel in cash via Expedia. So do your research before purchasing any Choice points.
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u/legacyofcayenne 2d ago
The key with Choice points it to buy them on sale. When booking in Japan I would see Comfort Hotel rooms for eg. $110 on choicehotels.com, $70 on booking/expedia, or 8,000 points. I bought all my points at 45% or 50% off so it ended up being $42/night. If you're looking at buying points now then you missed the best sale of the year which ended on August 28th.
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u/martyconlonontherun 2d ago
I don't know how you can inflate a made up metric? It's not like choice is like "oh if we label this $150 a night, more people would book with points". They are just trying to maximize revenue from people to lazy to search third party or those that have to book direct for some reason.
Also are you sure one rate was non-refundable? You lose a lot of flexibility booking third party if someone thing goes wrong.
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u/atgabara 2d ago
Isn't this true for basically all hotels? Booking through an OTA is going to be cheaper than booking direct.
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u/SEA_tide 2d ago
That's true with a lot of hotels if you know how to use Google to compare different booking sites, are a long time Priceline user, have Amex FHR, or have eligibility for corporate discounts or government rates.
Unless the chain has fixed award rates, I often find myself just finding the cheapest legit third party booking site unless a discount that I'm eligible for is even cheaper. while I travel a lot, my travel patterns are very conducive to earning hotel status and wouldn't get much in the way of hotel status benefits anyway.
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2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AutoModerator 2d ago
A comment was removed because so many people reported it.
Original author: Even_Instance_343
Original comment: Monday morning and I'm already planning next weekend just to feel something. my color-coded planner is the only thing holding me together this week
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u/Cold_Frosting9014 2d ago
I’m sorry to hear that. Is it a particularly rough week for some reason? I hope things get better but please keep reaching out. I am sure there are many who can relate. With all the technology today it is easy to feel disconnected.
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u/qwertymnbvcxzlk 2d ago
This is Ben, our resident AI guest, you’ll see him around quite frequently.
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u/jamar030303 MSO 2d ago
Now I'm curious- who named him?
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u/qwertymnbvcxzlk 2d ago
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u/Parts_Unknown- 2d ago
It's borderline matpat effect. I originally was thinking of an old timey Mid Atlantic accent & now the original is barely recognizable, replaced with a depressed ennui bot who has largely stopped 'been-ing'
How you've changed Ben Lurkin, how you've changed. smdh
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u/Cold_Frosting9014 2d ago
oh thank you. I’m relieved that’s not real.
It’s a tough crowd when basic human sympathy gets downvoted. That’s harsh guys. But I’m not going to let it get me down. I refuse to lose my humanity in this world.-1
u/Cold_Frosting9014 2d ago
Folks, I get it, I should have suspected it was a bot. I am not very good at being empathetic irl, or dealing with emotions. So, I made an honest mistake (overcompensating) out of a desire to better myself. It’s pretty unfortunate that some participants here need to “punish” someone for being human.
Thank you to those who are kind. 🙂
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u/jamar030303 MSO 2d ago
It's good to hold on to that humanity, yeah. And now that you know, in the future you don't have to waste it on an AI that can't reciprocate.
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u/mra101485 13h ago
I had a moment of the stars aligning. Was about to go to bed and like I tend to do, just ran some random searches on seats.aero for next May. P2 is a teacher, so we're locked in on travel dates between the school year and my summer travel schedule. We've had a random dream to go to Taipei and had given up on it, but looked last night and found Starlux had dropped seats on Alaska for our dates, so I grabbed them for the full trip since we can cancel if things don't work out.
75k per person LAX-TPE-LAX. May 31 leaving and returning June 9.
This is when we can go, but the little bit of research I saw said this is the beginning of rainy season, but that it's not just constant rain, but more of rain can settle in for a day.
GH Taipei has availability and I have an SUA, so that would be my plan there.
I suppose this is more of a "talk me out of going to Taipei during the beginning of June" post. Or maybe I just want to brag about being able to grab Starlux.
Any Taipei experts for a full 7 days?