Originally Posted by Happy

You would have to MS a TON to generate enough $ to cover a cruise.

Unless you are lucky enough to be on West Coast and have access to the no fee Pay Power and could buy as many as you want, chances are, the most gain you would get, NET of the cost of MS, is a 1.1% return.

For a $5K worth of cruise, totally paid by the card earnings NET of the MS cost, it would mean said person needs to MS roughly $455K. That is A LOT of MS Work to do to generate that amount. This is just basic MATH that anyone could plug it in a calculator to show it. Even a math-challenged person could do it if s/he understand how a percentage works - $450,000 x 0.011 = $4,950. Try it on your calculator and you would see how much MS required to generate that $5K after the MS cost.

If you can MS that much $ to pay for your travel - then hats off to you as you obviously have a lot of time to "invest" in this.

Now, if you are using a 5x card versus a 2x card - the story would be different because now the earning rate NET after the cost, on a 5x card would be 4% - that is 300% more than the Arrival card's 1.1% Net after cost. But we are talking Arrival here that is a 2x only.

So for a 5x card, after cost it really is a 4x - the same $5K only needs $125,000 MS to generate - that is A LOT LESS MS WORK TO DO, and many can manage this in several months time, not to mention there is no need to redeem the "mile" with a travel expense in order to get that 1.1% net return, as the 5x card is 100% cash rebate that you can use it on whatever and however you want to use it. That is why even with the $440 bonus, it is not the best card out there to generate your spending cash.