Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Exploration 7 by Amanda Bracey: "Credit Card Churning: for Mustachians or Sucka Consumers?"

Link: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/10/13/credit-card-churning-for-mustachians-or-sucka-consumers/    

To sum up the article, it was about making the best use of your credit card that offers bonus like cash back or points for travel. Nicknamed the "Churning" if you are lucky enough to have the  income and strong enough credit to have one these cards the basic plan is to use the credit card to pay for the trip. Then redeem your points and apply your redemption as a payment on toward the balance owed. Then you pay the difference. Ideally, if you have enough points built up, your $16,000.00 trip to Japan could only cost you $1000.00. 

There was two main strengths & weaknesses within this article. The first strength would be I thought it a good thing that Mr.Money Mustache was clear with his own opinion and that of others who were both pleased with the experience and those who were not. The idea of having multiple credit cards can be treacherous if you are not paying attention to what you are spending. When he was getting the opinion of someone who owned their own business as well had so many rewards cards that they had to be carried in a special binder he said his honest thought about the matter right off the bat. "Is it really worth your time to keep track of so many credit cards? Isn't that like a binder full of ticking time bombs?”  Not sure I would have been able to do that. Obviously if the person is dedicated enough to have binder full of them, they are already committed to having them along with all the fees that go with them. 

The second strength was use of imagery that was used in the beginning. as well being able to make that tie in throughout the entire blog. When I first read it I thought that 
Mr.Money Mustache was only using that as an opening statement to catch the readers attention in order to make them curious enough to continue the read the article. Yet he tied his story as transition piece and even closed blog with it as he progressed to provide his final thoughts in to the matter. "Bringing it back to the leafy sidewalks of my own town, I do still stop to pick up a hundred every now and then. Sometimes they are within easy reach, and sometimes they take a bit more work. But whenever there is effort, there is also the opportunity for learning, so as long as it doesn't involve compromising my own values, I’ll happily continue to harvest and may see you out there." 

The first weakness, for me would have been that he was so detailed in the building of his scene; however, managed to not share enough information about the cards that he personally carried and used himself. I felt that if he provided which ones that was working for him, it would have given more of an realistic idea of the possible outcome and expectations. 

The last weakness was lack of time frame of when one would accumulate that many points in order for them to be of any use for a vacation. Sure, when you tell someone that they need to have a credit score of over 700 in order to be looked at to have one of those cards it would be a deterrent. I would have like to see a break down of the average shopper who does not sit down and spend $3000 at the beginning of the month and turn around and pay it off by the end of the month. Just does not happen in normal people land
 
In conclusion, I thought the writing style and the content was light, fun and easy to understand.  I could see that this would be popular as everyone wants to save a buck but also wants to be able to get the most out of the buck used. I would figure the people who may not have the best credit may not enjoy this article as overall is it talking about an option that has the potential to make things worse than what they already are. On average. I would say people would follow the blog as something that they are curious about and want to learn from other people as to what they were successful with and what was a complete waste of an application time and effort.
For me, I know I would be one of those people who has to weigh all the options and talk to people who already have the card. By the end of the day I will think about my existing credit and talk myself right out it. I did enjoy the article and would like to read more just for the fact that it raises my curiosity. I was debating about getting a credit card with those kinds of perks. After reading the article I know without a single doubt that I need to work on my existing debit more before taking on a credit card like that.

1 comment:

  1. I thought this article was very interesting. I think it did a great job of highlighting the positives and negatives of credit cards and its awesome that a person can receive benefits from using a card as long a person has good credit.

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