[bogrollben]

I enjoyed the article. Many comments here on HN seem to be missing the point.

The author isn't bashing on "hobbies" and is not even bashing on "vanity activities". S/he is merely challenging us to acknowledge them for what they are. Stop kidding yourself.

If you churn credit cards (for example) and are one of the 10% that can make it truly profitable, then good for you. The other 90% are probably kidding themselves. Same for the other examples. The author is encouraging a self-sanity check. Are you in the 10% or the 90%, and wherever you land, are you okay with that? If not, you may want to reevaluate, pick something else, or make peace with it. It's better than kidding yourself.

[toast0]

IMHO, churning is clearly profitable if you pay off your card every month, will hit the spend requirements organically and are organized enough to cancel to avoid annual fees in the second year. Some people dive into manufactured spending to hit the required spending, but then you really need to consider the time invested.

The question is more about if the rewards are meaningful. I think it's actually worth doing a bit of churning to get exposure to different banks and figure out which one you like... might as well get paid for that. But after a certain point, I value stability and routine more than $300 to jump through hoops... and I'm not going back to Chase no matter what they want to pay me.

[fastball]

What's wrong with Chase?

[toast0]

Bonkers fraud checks that flagged my ISP charges every month for several months in a row. And some other stuff I don't remember, but I'll continue to hold the grudge anyway because there's 9 other top 10 national banks. Or at least 8, cause I'm not using Wells Fargo either (they dinged me a phone teller fee when I called in to let them know I was fixing an overdraft) ... Wells Fargo doesn't do a lot of attractive credit card offers though, so that's less of a hardship than ignoring Chase.

[ErroneousBosh]

I feel like it's hobbies with an element of virtue-signalling.