Dan Miller lives in Cincinnati, married with six kids. The family reunion was in Lake Tahoe. Getting eight people across the country would have cost a small fortune. So he churned them there.
Miller is a credit-card churner, one of thousands of people who pry travel, cash, and other perks from credit-card rewards programs. Their common traits are a keen eye for deals and an obsessive determination not to pay when they can make somebody else pay for them. They meet up online to share strategies, including in a Reddit forum with 42,000 subscribers, double the number a year ago, and contribute to dozens of blogs on the subject.