Please post the maximum annual income you have managed to earn on a sustained basis (at least 2 years, please mention how long) purely from CC BT interest rate arbitrage (borrowing money at low interest rates from CCs and investing at higher rates) and CC/bank rewards (including sign-up bonuses).

I am hoping that this will give us some data points about how much income one can earn from these methods, with what kind of credit, and with how much effort.

I will go first:

I have been making about $3K per year from CC BT interest rate arbitrage over the last 2 years or so. My credit score is around 750 at healthy times, and around 100 points lower at the least heathy times (right after an App-o-Rama with 6+ recent inquiries and a large BT debt).

I have earned only small amounts from CC rewards. I have never gotten any sign-up bonuses so far (out of my own laziness; never managed to applied for accounts when bonuses were being given).

Anakin

Maybe it's me, but I don't see the point since you can kind of guess at the theoretical limits? I think $100k in BT per person without 100% utilization, is a fairly achievable conservative estimate.
so you got $100k X .04 = $4000 for BT
maybe $1000 for cc rewards and bonuses
so $5000 a year roughly?

maybe you hijacked your wife into the BT game or taken
over her credit card accounts so $10,000 per couple?
maybe you have very high limits and are at 90% utilization so $20,000 at most per couple?

maybe a more interesting discussion would be what's the ratio of how much money you have in CC BTs vs how much you make per year?
So say you have $100k in 0% BTs and make $50k per year at your job...$100/$50 = 2
who has 4? or 6? or 8? or infinity (if you're a student and don't make anything)

or maybe what have you done with your $100k 0% BT other than conservatively put it in a savings account (boring)?
maybe you decided to go to Vegas or put it in some stocks.
I think it would be interesting to hear some riskier stories

xerty said:The game theorist in me suggests that reporting unattractively low earnings in this thread will discourage others from interfering with my good deal.

You've just given yourself away.

xpguy does a good job of going through some plausible scenarios. Like xerty implies, however, there will always be those at the top of the curve who may do better.

How would others interfere with your good deal? How is this strategic interaction?

xerty said:The game theorist in me suggests that reporting unattractively low earnings in this thread will discourage others from interfering with my good deal.

If one were to post the limited exemplarity deal then everyone would do it more times than not nixing the deal.
Countless examples of this “FW effect”.

While it can be argued that this is counter productive to a message board about sharing strategies the reality is simply it is what it is.

The good news is if you take what you learn in strategy you can then identify opportunities that you may be able to take advantage of.

tooshy - Your time is obviously worth a lot more than mine, I feel very well compensated for the small amount of time I spend using OPM. Nor do I feel that potential larger returns in equities or whatever have much to do with sure things like other people's money.

i think i am taking a lot of risk on my 0% apr CC...i am investing it in mutual funds and getting about 14% annual returns..

that covers up a lot of school expenses...


any other good investing suggestions other than HBSC or ED are welcomed...

Got in on the Discover 0% for life deal (I buy a 1 cent stamp twice a month from my local post office). Converted the funds to euros at 1.1850 and holding for 1.4's within 2 years (only getting 2.50% at the moment in euros but hoping to get around 20% capital gains....ECB should keep hiking very slowly to sweeten the deal while the Fed holds).

Yodlee is the great equalizer. No need to clutter one's brain, just allow yourself the opportunity to get a high-level view of all your accounts from a single page.

Made $5K or so last year will clear $9K or so this year (pre-tax). Maybe an additional $1200-1500 in bonuses.

(As a caveat, no, this sort of income isn't reasonable to expect. I push things a lot farther than I really should. Current utilization is roughly twice my income. And although I don't feel I spend a ton of time on it, I do check my finances daily and enjoy doing so. The only way to make this sort of behavior pay well is to have large credit lines in the first place, and typically the only way to do that is to have a sizeable personal/household income. Doing the same sort of thing with smaller credit lines just ends up resulting in significantly less profits for the same amount of time invested.)

No wife, but I was able to pull in ~$1500 last year.