If you can guarantee a 5 percent yearly return after taxes on a $200,000 investment that has zero risk whatsoever to principal and is completely liquid, please share.

I am not aware of anything close. Yes, you can possibly get better than 5 percent if you put your principal at risk. And maybe you can start to get upwards of 3 or 4 percent if you lock up your money.

But if I had $200k and did not want to put it at risk, and also potentially needed it somewhere other than in a maturing-nonliquid investment, 360,000 miles a year is pretty good.

No kidding!

I would say around 5k on my Ink Business bold (cable, phone... spend)
and 7-10k on Amex PRG (primary spend, groceries...)

If a 5% guaranteed investment were available with no withdrawal restrictions, the BankDirect AA miles program would cease to exist.

One of the best rates I know of is a PenFed 3-yr CD at 1.85%. But that locks in your money for three years.

P.S. For those of you not familiar with PenFed (Pentagon Federal Credit Union), they have some of the best rates on loans. I recently bought a new house and got a 2.75% 5-yr ARM with NO closing costs. I didn't need the loan but I saved the closing costs and can pay the loan off at any time of my choosing. And you have to qualify for the loan.

Anyone can join PenFed with a $20 donation if you don't qualify for free membership.

They have a 5% gas card which is free money. I like free.

I think another way to say it is that if the cost of money goes up, Bank Direct would have to give you more miles to make their program competitive. Which, it turns out, they likely would. If banks could make higher interest loans, they would pay more for your money, whether in miles or dollars or whatever else.

Here's the key to bankdirect -- they pay less to AA for miles than the rest of us can. So, they can afford to buy the miles in lieu of paying you interest, and you get a mile that is worth more to you than the foregone interest. Win-win.

Is Phil Mickelson a flyertalker?

360,000 miles a year is a pretty good start is what you meant to say. Gimme the 200k and I would play coin on a string with some of my favorite banks. Oh wait a minute, BTDT. And the RoR is multiples higher than 5%. The downside, of course, is that you pay no taxes.

Great thread and after reading it, i realize that what i thought was good was merely me getting the scraps from the table. Time to pick up my game some, let's just hope it doesn't lead to an FR or anything. I knew i'd be behind some of the business spenders, though. Thanks for the insight everybody.

The question is while we can join PenFed via the Internet with an opening deposit made via credit card, how much is the max deposit?

This thread is a BIG eye opener! 2012 was my first year churning cards netting 355K in bonuses. I thought I was on a good start until I read this thread. Can some one tell please what these acronyms stand for:
IB
OD
GC

Regarding manufactured spend, can someone point me please on how to do it on Amazon Payment and other potential methods? Excuse my ignorance.
I got the Bank Direct method.

Men & women of FT, you are amazing!!!!

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milesbuzz-370/

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milesbuzz-370/

Before everyone gets their eyes opened on the manufactured spend thing, please realize two things:

-It's generally not free.

and

-It generally takes a decent amount of time.

There is no free lunch.

And there is some risk, in some cases, quite a bit of risk if you get shut down and have money held up.

Yes - this all takes money that you don't otherwise need anytime soon.

Further risk: tax forms.

I'm not saying everyone should stay away, but these techniques take time and research. Don't just jump in and hit something until you really understand all of the nuances - especially the true costs.

true nothing is free nowadays. It does cost something... and the main goal is to minimize the cost as much as possible..and yes it takes a lot of time...