$100,000 Challenge: June 2023 Recap

Greetings from Kyoto (Trip paid for with miles of course) ! Something I snapped yesterday on an early morning hike

Summary

It’s finally summer, and we continue to level up our beautiful points game!

This month we managed $10K in spend, with $1K in earnings. We introduced a TON of new cards this month (ouch, credit score).

The highlights

• Signed up for 2 Amex business cards: Biz Plat ($3,900 value: 120K SUB for $15K spend + 10X @ Office supplies til $7.5K) and Biz Gold ($2,600 value: 130K SUB for $10K spend)

• Referred P2 for the Amex Gold ($2,000 value: 100K SUB with $4,000 minimum spend)

• Earned 10K Bilt ($100 value) points with June’s Bilt Rent Day bonuses

• Finished the $25K grocery spend for 9X Amex points, earning $2,299 value (114,983 MR) this month (Spent $12,775.95)

• Decided to leave the rest of the Amex Delta Reserve spending for July’s Prime Day

Challenge Recap

If you’re new here, you can learn more about our 2023 $100,000 manufactured spending challenge here. In short, I am trying to manufacture $100,000 of spending this year, which will earn over $20,000 of value in credit card points. All the techniques and methods used will be shared on this blog series!

With that, let’s dive into our specific updates from this month..

Entering the world of Amex Business Cards

Earnings: $6,500 value (325K Amex MR Points)

Spending Progress: $25K/$25K

Amex business cards are a fantastic tool to have in your MS arsenal, given how often you can churn these cards. Typically, Amex cards include lifetime-language when you sign up. This means that officially, you can only earn a sign-up bonus for a specific card the first time you sign up for it. Now, yes, there are work-arounds here and there, but generally, the rule holds.

In recent years, Amex has started issuing no-lifetime-language (NLL) offers for business cards. As the name implies, these would allow the same Amex business card to be churned multiple times. Now, the caveats here are that NLL offers are harder to find, and that the SUB may not be as high as the lifetime-language version of the offer.

Since these are my first Amex business cards, I picked the highest offers that were around at the time. But my plan is to start churning these cards, so keep an eye out as I’ll start sharing NLL offer links in the fall.

MS Method

I applied the same method for meeting the massive minimum spend amount for both cards. This method runs at about a 3% fee, so at $25K of spend, this cost does come out to a meaningful chunk of $750. However, the earnings on the SUBs far outweighs this cost, so this play was worth it to me.

Now, the method I used, as much as I want to, I don’t feel comfortable disclosing publicly on the open web, as it doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in any other MS-related websites. However, I will post this method in detail in our Churner’s Lounge. If you’re not familiar, the Churner’s Lounge is where we share our best plays that you won’t find elsewhere. You can learn more about our lounge here.

Referring P2 for the Amex Gold

Expected Earnings: $2,000 value (100K Amex MR Points)

Spending Progress: $0/$4K

The Amex Gold is a favorite of mine, not just for earning on organic spend (our household eats out wayy too much), but also for churning purposes. Since my P2 had never owned a gold before, we finally got around to signing them up for the card. Now, in addition to the 100K SUB, we also earned a referral bonus. The great thing with Amex referrals is that as the referred, you actually don’t need to own the card for which you are referring, in order to get a bonus. FrequentMiler has a great post on this topic, that goes in depth, including a tutorial on how to make sure you are referring correctly.

Keep an eye for more info on this card’s progress next month, where I’ll share details on how we hit the minimum spend requirement.

Easy earning on Bilt’s Rent Day

Earnings: $100 value (10K Bilt Points)

Spending Progress: $1,666/$1,666

The Bilt Card is a great card for earning points on organic spend on rent. In my case, they my landlord a check every month that covers my rent, which earns me 1X points on those payments. In addition to this, Bilt offers special earning opportunities every 1st of the month, which Bilt calls “Rent Day”. On these days, Bilt offers 6X on dining, up to 10K points. To earn the full 10K points, we need to spend $1,666 (10,000 / 6X).

To do this, I used the same method that I used for my Amex business cards above. Again, you can find details on this method in the Churner’s Lounge. The great thing with this method is that you can set your transaction to any category that you desire, as long as you can handle the fee.

Amex Gold: 9X points at Grocery Stores

This Month’s Spend: +$12,775.95 (Earning $2,299 or 114,983 Amex Points)

2023 Spending Goal Progress: $25,000/$25,000

We have done it! We’ve successfully completed the $25K spending goal for this card. You can read more about this play on the previous posts in this series.

This time, I hit 3 stores, 3x transactions at each, for 3x $500 gift cards per transaction.

Amex Delta Reserve: Aiming for Diamond Medallion Status

This Month’s Spend: $0 :(

2023 Spending Goal Progress: $14,226/$30,000

No progress on this card this month, but I’ve realized that we should be able to hit most of the remaning spending goal for this card next month during Prime Day! I’ll share more on this play next month.