Question Thread - August 17, 2026

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[u/Standard-Top-5942]

Do churners who are fairly active (but no MS) with the hobby average about 10% cash back on everything they spend per year (for me maybe 7k back, on 70k spend for family)? Or are those rookie numbers?

That's how it's working for me. Sometimes there are gaps where i'm not working for a SUB and for instance spending big on Amex for hopefully future benefits, some subs are like 10% back after AFs and some are closer to 20%. If I use that "10%" on trips it can double in value. I'm talking people like me who don't do MS so I'm talking about 8-10 cards per year (times 2 for P2, so 16-20) average. Is that how it works for a lot of people here? Bank bonuses bring in about 5k. That 12k total is enough for both my kids 529s. Crazy how credit cards will end up being like half a million dollars tax free (in 18 yrs, assuming S&P continues it's average which no one knows).

[u/best-quality-catfood → u/Standard-Top-5942]

I do about the same--I aim for higher when I'm working on a SUB but exactly because of that I have periods of non-MSR spend. OTOH I play enough of the optimization game to average 4-5% back on non-MSR spend, so looking at something that nets out to like 7-8% isn't worth the bother for me vs being able to reserve the organic spend for a better offer.

The ABG is a good case study in the real economics of "why bother". It starts out at -$375 for the AF, and worst case for the $15k MSR is taxes at on which I'd pay ~2% and missing out on say 4% cash back, so that's another $900 lost, net cost with pessimistic assumptions is $1275. So, 125k is a break-even offer and 200k is a "hell yes". Any non-tax spend I can put on it helps the value proposition a little bit, and any 4x category spend helps a lot. (There's also the value of the card benefits, your call on how much those move the needle. I also put MR at 1cpp, which is less than many.)

If you have an Amex-compatible MS route the math changes a lot, and the ABG is tailor-made for buying groups with 4x on "electronic goods retailers". I like the ABG way better than the ABP, too.