I Ranked Every Amex Credit Card (Best Cards in 2025)

00:00:00.080 | American Express is often seen as the premium player in points and miles, but between flashy

00:00:05.600 | perks, high annual fees, and more than 30 different consumer and business cards, it's hard to know

00:00:10.960 | which ones actually make sense for all of us. So today I'm breaking down all 32 Amex cards,

00:00:16.560 | reviewing and ranking each one, and calling out the few that absolutely deserve a spot in your

00:00:21.920 | wallet. But that's not all. I'm also going to unpack how membership rewards really works,

00:00:26.400 | including how to get the most from your points and share tips on everything from

00:00:30.640 | hidden credits to approval rules, to upgrade downgrade strategies, tips for retention offers,

00:00:35.680 | and a lot more. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, please share with a friend or leave

00:00:40.240 | a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money and travel, click

00:00:44.480 | follow or subscribe. So I got my first Amex card since 19 years old, and it's pretty easy to track

00:00:50.640 | these things because they have a thing on the front of the card that says member sense, and they have

00:00:54.160 | the date. And I've been accumulating millions of Amex points ever since. In fact, I most certainly

00:00:59.360 | have earned more Amex points than any other points program out there. And between my wife and I,

00:01:04.480 | we currently have 15 different Amex cards. Now, not all of them are the same. We might have two platinum

00:01:09.920 | cards, but we have 15 different individual cards. And it's a program I've gone really, really deep on.

00:01:15.200 | And so today I'm really excited to share a lot more. First, I'm going to run through all of their

00:01:19.360 | cards. There's 31 of them. So there's a lot. I will try to be quick. I'm going to include co-brand

00:01:23.680 | cards like Hilton and Delta and talk about all the features and benefits, giving my opinion and ranking

00:01:28.800 | them on a tier list as I go. And then I'm going to dive into their points program, membership rewards,

00:01:33.280 | and how to get the most out of it, how I like to use it. I'll touch on some of the exciting things

00:01:37.680 | available to all Amex card holders, like Amex offers, retention offers, referral offers.

00:01:43.200 | And then I'll share some of the nuances of Amex's rules for opening cards, getting bonuses,

00:01:48.000 | and a lot more. Finally, we'll see how an Amex-only card combo stacks up against other issuers.

00:01:53.680 | And note that we do have links to all the Amex cards and their offers on our website,

00:01:57.360 | allthehacks.com/cards. The offers I'm going to talk about today and the exact amounts are good

00:02:02.160 | as of today. I'm recording on June 26, 2025. However, those links on our website, at least

00:02:08.000 | right now are not affiliate links because it turns out Amex affiliate links don't always have the best

00:02:12.960 | bonuses. So right now we've transitioned to start sharing referral links from our members because

00:02:18.080 | those referral links usually do have the best bonuses. And while we're not making money on those

00:02:22.560 | links as a business, our members are getting a bunch of bonus points, but more importantly,

00:02:26.960 | those links have the best offers. So please go ahead and use them, support our members,

00:02:30.960 | or if you want to have your referral links in rotation to earn your referral bonus points,

00:02:35.440 | you can join the membership at allthehacks.com/join. All right. So let's start with the cards that earn

00:02:41.680 | Amex's famous currency membership rewards points. But before that, there's just a few benefits that I'm

00:02:46.880 | going to skip for every single card as I run through this episode, because they are consistent

00:02:51.440 | across the entire Amex portfolio. So unless I mentioned otherwise on a card, they all have extended

00:02:57.200 | warranty protections and purchase protections. They all have no foreign transaction fees or

00:03:02.160 | authorized user fees. Again, I will point out when that's not true. And for all the co-brand cards,

00:03:07.440 | the Marriott, Hilton, Delta, they have baggage insurance and secondary rental insurance. They might

00:03:12.880 | also have some of those things with some of the premium cards. But in general, if I don't mention it,

00:03:16.800 | all the co-brand cards do have that. So let's jump in to the membership rewards cards. So the

00:03:22.320 | first card we're going to talk about is the Amex green card. It earns membership reward points,

00:03:26.160 | has an annual fee of $150. Right now, the signup bonus isn't that exciting. It's 40,000 points

00:03:31.840 | on $3,000 of spend in six months. It's been as high as 60 or 50,000 points in the past. Not a

00:03:37.680 | lot to love about the signup bonus, but I actually think it's an underrated card that doesn't get

00:03:41.360 | talked about nearly enough. It earns 3x points on travel, transit, and dining worldwide. So that's

00:03:48.480 | really awesome, right? There aren't a lot of cards that are hitting all of those categories

00:03:51.920 | at a lower annual fee, $150, and then 1x on everything else. Similar card might be the city

00:03:57.760 | premier card where you get 3x on flights, hotels, and dining, but you're not getting it on all other

00:04:03.600 | travel. This used to be comparable to the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which now is 4x flights, 4x hotels,

00:04:09.040 | but 1x travel in other categories. So 3x travel, 3x transit, 3x dining. I like this card, even though

00:04:16.800 | the signup bonus isn't high. It's not a card a lot of people want to add to their portfolio because

00:04:21.040 | they've got those places covered. As for benefits, not a lot. $199 clear plus credit. So if you

00:04:27.520 | want to sign up for clear to expedite security, you can do that and get reimbursed. Has trip delay

00:04:31.680 | coverage. And like the other green, gold, platinum, centurion business and personal versions, it is a

00:04:38.000 | charge card. Which means that at the end of the month, you pay your bill off in full. It doesn't

00:04:41.600 | just automatically accrue interest unless you enroll in Amex pay over time feature, which we'll talk about

00:04:46.080 | later. So there is no set fixed limit either. Now, obviously, there is some limit. You can't just get

00:04:51.040 | the card and spend $500,000 on it, but there's no specific limit that you're forced to stay under each

00:04:56.240 | month. And so as you spend more and pay off your card more and more, you're able to spend more and

00:05:00.560 | more. Now, it seems from people I know that spend a lot with Amex that once you hit the $100,000

00:05:06.560 | balance on all of your charge cards limit, especially on the business side, they might reach out and do a

00:05:11.440 | little bit of a financial review or want to review your business statements or tax returns just to make

00:05:16.000 | sure that you actually have the money to pay off these cards. As for the tier list, I'm going to put the

00:05:20.960 | green card at the A tier. It is 3x travel, 3x transit, 3x restaurants for $150. Membership rewards

00:05:28.480 | points are awesome. Might not have that many awesome perks to offset the annual fee, but very few cards

00:05:35.280 | have this much going on for them in terms of earning. So I really like it. Not an S tier card, right? And

00:05:40.640 | you still got to pay the annual fee to get these perks. But especially with the fact that most of the

00:05:45.420 | other cards out there don't have anything in the travel category, I think it's pretty interesting.

00:05:49.580 | Now, on the flip side, there is a business version of this card. The business green card has a $95

00:05:54.220 | annual fee, earns 1x points on everything. The only elevated earning is 2x on prepaid travel booked

00:06:00.560 | through Amex's travel portal. Not exciting. 15,000 point signup bonus. Not exciting. You can sometimes

00:06:07.200 | find 25,000. It does come with baggage insurance as an added benefit that isn't on every Amex card.

00:06:12.640 | But as far as I'm concerned, that's a D tier card, right? It's bottom of the barrel. You're getting

00:06:16.760 | 1x points on everything and an annual fee. So many better cards. I don't see any reason anyone should

00:06:22.340 | be holding this card. Next, we're going to talk about the Amex gold card. And that's a personal card,

00:06:26.540 | earns 4x on groceries and 4x on restaurants. But the grocery spend has a $25,000 a year cap.

00:06:33.980 | The restaurant side has a $50,000 a year cap. And then it earns 3x on flights, 1x on everything else.

00:06:39.920 | It does also get 2x on prepaid hotels through Amex travel. But again, I don't really like booking

00:06:44.920 | hotels in the travel portal and especially not for one extra point. So I'll set that aside.

00:06:49.620 | But it's a 4x grocery, 4x dining card, 3x flights. I really like this card. This card is one that I keep

00:06:56.260 | in my wallet. It is my primary dining and grocery card out there. I have other cards for more points

00:07:01.820 | on flights, but I'm using this a lot. The signup bonus right now as of recording is as high as it

00:07:08.120 | has ever been at 100,000 points for $6,000 of spend in six months. However, Amex has this new

00:07:15.080 | phrasing where the signup bonus is labeled as high as 100,000 points. So you might not get the full

00:07:21.060 | 100,000 points. And you go through this process where you apply for the card, they tell you what

00:07:25.540 | you get, your credit hasn't been hit with a hard inquiry, and then you get to decide how to go

00:07:29.740 | forward. It's a real pain that you have to go through all of that to find out your bonus. So I can't

00:07:33.700 | promise what your bonus will be. And I don't know if this is something Amex is going to move to for

00:07:38.260 | all of their cards going forward, where they kind of look at your profile and decide whether you're

00:07:43.120 | going to get a bonus. There also is a bunch of family language around Amex bonuses. So I'll talk

00:07:47.720 | about that a little more at the end. But at the high level, you know, generally within each group of

00:07:52.180 | cards, so membership rewards cards on the personal side, you can't get the bonus for the gold if you've

00:07:58.020 | already had a higher tier card. So once you have a platinum, you can't get the bonus for the gold or the

00:08:01.940 | green. So if you're going to try to maximize all the bonuses, you'd want to get the green bonus,

00:08:05.760 | then later get the gold bonus, then later get the platinum. Because if you go in reverse,

00:08:09.300 | you actually can only get the platinum bonus and none of the others. Right now at 100,000 points,

00:08:13.700 | if this is a card you've been interested in, now is the time to get this card. The perks it comes with,

00:08:17.940 | you get $7 a month at Dunkin' Donuts, which is a strange perk for a card like Amex to have.

00:08:24.140 | But you can load your Dunkin' app with the $7 each month, and then use it as like a loaded gift card

00:08:30.260 | balance later. Even though it's not marketed as such, you could use it at Baskin Robbins. So if

00:08:34.520 | you ever go to Dunkin' Donuts or Baskin Robbins, you can cash it out and you don't have to do it on

00:08:37.840 | a monthly basis. You get $50 every six months at Resi restaurants. And similar, if you find

00:08:43.740 | restaurants that are on Resi that use the toast platform for their point of sale system, you can

00:08:47.860 | usually buy gift cards for those restaurants. And you can do that online and use them later. So you

00:08:52.200 | can optimize if you're not going to be at a restaurant in the January to June range. But there are a ton of

00:08:57.440 | great restaurants on Resi. So that one's pretty easy to get use out of. There's a $10 a month credit

00:09:02.700 | for dining at Grubhub, Cheesecake Factory, Goldbelly, Wine.com, and Five Guys. It's a strange mix of

00:09:10.580 | venues. Grubhub for pickup seems to be the easiest one for me to get use out of. I haven't really ever

00:09:15.920 | used it at any of the other locations, but we do carry out at least probably once or twice a month.

00:09:21.440 | And so we use the Grubhub credit and get pretty good value. Now last, there is a $10 a month Uber

00:09:27.280 | credit, which gets automatically added to your Uber account. If you didn't know this, you can use one

00:09:32.040 | Uber account. And if you and your partner have multiple Amexes, you can add all of those Amexes

00:09:36.500 | to one account and then share that login across multiple phones and multiple people. And that way,

00:09:41.560 | you can pool all that Uber credit in one place. So you are able to stack your Uber credit from multiple

00:09:47.420 | golds or platinums for multiple people in one account and use it. So if you add all those up,

00:09:51.980 | I think it makes up for the $250 annual fee if you're able to use it well, especially if you factor

00:09:57.800 | in that you're getting 4x on groceries, 4x on restaurants. And obviously, if you're spending

00:10:02.040 | way more than $50,000 on restaurants or $25,000 on groceries, maybe that's not as good of a deal as

00:10:07.700 | it is for other people. But for me, this is my primary card that I keep in my wallet because

00:10:12.700 | dining spend seems to be one of the few things that sometimes you need a physical card. So it's a

00:10:17.000 | primary bias for why I have it in my wallet, but I use it all the time. It's an S tier card for me.

00:10:22.140 | And you know, I'm really happy with it. All right. So the business version of the gold card,

00:10:26.240 | higher annual fee at $375. You get 4x points on two categories, but it's the top two categories of

00:10:33.500 | all of your spending. And that could be advertising, electronics or software, restaurants, gas, transit,

00:10:39.380 | and phone. But that's only up to $150,000 a year on those two combined categories. Otherwise,

00:10:45.800 | it's a 1x on everything card. The signup bonus right now, if you're on the website looks like

00:10:50.160 | it is only 100,000 points. But on the business cards, you can actually sometimes find much better

00:10:56.420 | signup bonuses. So it's 100,000 points on 15,000 spend in the first three months. And you get a 0%

00:11:01.560 | APR for six months. So it's an intro APR. And when I say you can find better offers, sometimes if you

00:11:08.140 | find a referral offer, and you open that referral offer in a new browser, or you change your VPN location,

00:11:14.200 | you sometimes find out that the offer isn't 100. Maybe it's 150. Maybe it's all the way up to

00:11:18.560 | 200,000. And so you could search around, I would say using those referral offers is sometimes the best

00:11:24.460 | starting point. But opening them in different browsers, opening them in private browsing,

00:11:28.340 | incognito, trying a different VPN location, sometimes you'll end up pulling a higher offer.

00:11:33.440 | Now, I'm not sure how that will play out. Right now, the super high version offers on the business

00:11:39.180 | platinum card have been announced that they're going to end at the end of June. I don't know if

00:11:43.480 | the same is true of the business gold, it's possible that all the offers are shifting to this

00:11:47.880 | as high as system, instead of whatever the offer says when you land on the page. So I don't know what

00:11:53.900 | the future holds, I'll give an update when I find out. But as of right now, the offer you would get of

00:11:58.780 | 100,000 points certainly isn't the best offer. Getting an offer somewhere else that is 150 to

00:12:04.340 | 200,000 points is great. And I'll remind everyone that sometimes you get these offers in the mail

00:12:08.840 | that are targeted mailers that say, hey, we want you to sign up for this card. And if you read through

00:12:13.580 | the language, the language that says you can't get this bonus if you've already had it is not in those

00:12:18.220 | mailers. So we've gotten these cards multiple times. And so that's really helped us rack up a lot

00:12:23.240 | of Amex points. But as for perks, you get a $20 a month credit for FedEx, Grubhub or office supply

00:12:29.500 | stores. A lot of office supply stores sell a lot of great things that you can use to resell and kind

00:12:34.680 | of recoup that you get free Walmart plus I should probably mention this above you get three x points

00:12:38.640 | on amextravel.com if you book flights and prepaid hotels, but you've got to book them in the portal.

00:12:43.820 | So I kind of view that as a side perk, not a primary earning thing. You get access to Amex's hotel

00:12:48.900 | collection, you get baggage insurance, trip delay insurance and cell phone protection.

00:12:52.320 | Overall, I think if you are spending a ton of money, but not more than $150,000 in some of those

00:12:59.560 | categories, it's hard to find a business card that's going to give you 4x points. So if you spend a ton

00:13:04.480 | of money on ads prior to the launch of the Chase Sapphire Reserve card for business, which has 3x

00:13:09.220 | uncapped on ads, being able to get 4x on ads, 4x on gas, 4x on restaurants for a business card or

00:13:15.960 | electronics or software, which a lot of different recurring subscriptions kind of code in that camp.

00:13:20.920 | This is a great card, right? I think if you're a business owner, and you spend a lot in those

00:13:25.220 | categories, the Amex business gold card is an S tier card. But if you are not, then I'd move it way

00:13:30.860 | down the list. So I think it has the ability to be an incredible card, because the ability to earn a ton

00:13:35.940 | of points, the ability to take advantage if you have a lot of employees of some of the Amex employee

00:13:40.760 | offers, which I'll talk about a little later, make this a really awesome card. So I think for

00:13:45.720 | that use case, it's great. If you're not someone who's going to spend a ton of money on your business

00:13:49.200 | card, then this card is not that interesting. And so I would not for that person call it an S tier

00:13:53.160 | card. So let's talk about the platinum cards. There are four variations. On the personal side,

00:13:57.740 | there are three and on the business side, there's one. And I think the platinum card is really

00:14:01.800 | interesting because it has a lot of historical brand recognition. Oh, it's a platinum card. It's super

00:14:06.160 | fancy. But from an earning potential, it's actually not that exciting. So let's talk about why you might

00:14:10.800 | want it. I have one, but I would say it's primarily for the perks, not for the spend. And I'll also flag

00:14:16.620 | that after the launch of the new Chase Sapphire Reserve, Amex has come out and said this year,

00:14:21.260 | they're going to refresh and update the platinum and the business platinum. So I'm gonna try to keep

00:14:25.040 | this quick, because if these cards are going to get completely refreshed, this is going to be a little

00:14:29.240 | out of date. But I at least want to give you an overview now because who knows what that refresh

00:14:33.260 | might look like. So all these cards right now have the same annual fee of $695. All right,

00:14:38.420 | so the personal version of this card, the standard consumer platinum card is 5x points on flights up

00:14:43.960 | to $500,000 a year, and then 5x on prepaid hotels and on Amex travel. Now that's flights can be booked

00:14:50.100 | with Amex travel or can be booked directly with the airline. So you can book straight on the airline

00:14:53.920 | websites. So that's a primary use case I have for this card, because it's 1x points on everything

00:14:59.020 | else. So whenever I see someone using their Amex platinum, anywhere out and about other than buying

00:15:04.000 | flights, all I can think about is why are you spending your money like that? A couple reasons

00:15:07.840 | that I do like this card and why I have this card, and it's not only because I spend a ton of money on

00:15:12.220 | flights. One, the signup bonuses have historically been good, but they've never been as good as they

00:15:16.720 | are right now. So right now you can get a signup bonus as high as 175,000 membership rewards points

00:15:22.120 | after spending $8,000 in six months. That's the highest one that's ever been out there. I've never seen a

00:15:27.160 | higher bonus. I've looked historically nothing better. Obviously, it says as high as so I don't

00:15:31.460 | know what the success rate will be for most people. But you can find out whether you're going to get

00:15:35.440 | that 175k without having to accept it. So it's worth doing if that's interesting does have an authorized

00:15:41.560 | user fee. And we'll talk about which of the perks carry over to that. But that's $195. The big benefit

00:15:47.060 | of this card is access to Amex's lounge collection. Now, one of those lounges is priority pass, which you can

00:15:52.800 | get lots of other ways. But some of the other lounges you have access to are a lot harder to get.

00:15:57.140 | So you get the Amex Centurion lounge, which you can only get with the Amex Platinum or the Amex Black

00:16:02.000 | card, the Centurion card. It used to include free guests, but now you can only bring free guests if

00:16:07.620 | you spend $75,000 a year on the card. You also get access to the Delta Sky Club when traveling on Delta.

00:16:14.800 | Again, you don't get guests, so it's just for the primary cardholder. And then there are a couple other

00:16:19.620 | lounges like the Escape lounges, which there are about 15 around the country, I think. But there's one at

00:16:24.480 | the Oakland Airport that we frequent quite a bit. Lufthansa Airport lounges, Plaza Premium lounges,

00:16:28.820 | there's a few edge case lounges. But the primary thing that you get here are you get access to Amex's

00:16:33.140 | Centurion lounges, which is about 25 around the country, Delta Sky Clubs when flying Delta and Escape

00:16:38.320 | lounges. That's a pretty big perk for someone who travels a lot and wants access to those lounges.

00:16:42.400 | The other big perk is that you can offset a lot of the annual fee with a lot of the credits and bonuses

00:16:47.000 | you get from this card. Now, some people might not like playing that game, in which case I would say

00:16:51.540 | this card is definitely not for you. It's a bit of a coupon book. But you do get a $200 airline credit.

00:16:57.220 | So you have to select one airline for the year and you can spend up to $200 on incidentals, so not

00:17:03.440 | airline flights. Now, there are sometimes other things that count towards those incidentals.

00:17:07.540 | There's a bunch of posts on Flyer Talk if you want to go deep on what counts for each airline.

00:17:11.400 | So that's $200. You get $20 a month towards entertainment, which includes Disney+, ESPN+,

00:17:18.380 | Hulu, New York Times, Peacock, and Wall Street Journal. So if you're already spending money on

00:17:22.240 | one of those, you could probably recoup most of that value. You get $15 a month on Uber and then

00:17:27.480 | $35 a month in December for $200 a year. So if you take Uber regularly, that's an easy one. Also works

00:17:33.700 | for Uber Eats. There's a $50 every six months credit to Saks Fifth Avenue, which used to be a lot

00:17:40.020 | easier to use. And lately, we've been struggling to find anything that we want that by the time you add

00:17:45.920 | on the cost of shipping and the extreme prices of buying things from Saks, it's pretty tough to use.

00:17:51.520 | If you have a Saks locally, sometimes you can go in and just buy a $50 gift card and maybe you can

00:17:55.620 | stack a few of those over time. But this has become, for me, harder and harder to use. So I probably

00:18:00.600 | wouldn't value it much more for me than like $30 or $40 a year. You get $199 towards Clear+. So if you use

00:18:08.060 | Clear+, that's great. You get a credit towards TSA Pre and Global Entry every four years. So if you

00:18:13.180 | don't have a card that has it, that's awesome. We have a ton of cards that have the TSA Pre credit.

00:18:16.980 | You get Hilton and Bonvoy Gold Status. You also get a $300 a year credit at Equinox. And so if you

00:18:24.260 | regularly use the Equinox gyms, that's great. That'll pay for maybe one month of your Equinox

00:18:28.920 | membership. However, if you don't, you can sign up for Equinox at home, which is like an online fitness

00:18:33.500 | class. If you don't use Equinox or have a friend that uses Equinox, it's really hard to get almost

00:18:37.540 | any value out of this. I would describe that value very, very low. But if you do pay for Equinox,

00:18:42.000 | then that's a huge value of having the Platinum card. You get Walmart Plus. You get premium status

00:18:47.060 | on a bunch of car rental programs. Now, for some reason, they stopped saying specifically which ones

00:18:52.260 | they are. But the last I look, I think you get it in Hertz, National, maybe even Avis. But you might want

00:18:59.680 | to look that up because for some reason they stopped marketing that. But I know on Hertz,

00:19:03.520 | they have an Amex Platinum corporate code that not only gets you a discount, but the one unique feature

00:19:08.220 | is it gives you a four-hour grace period. So if you have a car, you could effectively rent it for 28

00:19:13.540 | hours for the price of a one-day rental. And there are a couple times where we've done airport rentals

00:19:18.280 | where because of our flight times, we might need to pick it up at one o'clock and drop it off at four

00:19:22.480 | o'clock. And by using the Amex code, we only had to pay for one day. But any other way, we would

00:19:27.480 | have had to pay for two days. Now, obviously, we didn't say we were going to drop it off at four

00:19:31.080 | o'clock. We'd rent it from one to one and drop it off three hours late. And that would be covered.

00:19:35.320 | You also get a trip delay, cancel and interruption insurance, cell phone protection, return protection

00:19:41.180 | on purchases. And then a few other things you get access to. You get Resi's Global Dining Access,

00:19:45.900 | which is supposed to give you more restaurant table availability for certain restaurants in their

00:19:50.820 | special program. Haven't been able to get a lot of value there. And then there's this

00:19:54.640 | international airline program. Now, it used to be something where you'd get two for one

00:19:58.760 | on full fare business class international flights. Now, it's just kind of discounts on international

00:20:04.040 | airfare. And those discounts are real. They're typically greater for international business and

00:20:10.380 | first class, but they're not like 50% off. It might be like five to 10% off on certain airlines. So

00:20:16.380 | if you're regularly paying for international business and first class travel, that might be a really big

00:20:20.840 | perk. But if you're using points and miles, you know, that perk is worth nothing. And then finally,

00:20:24.760 | Amex has their Fine Hotels and Resorts program, which is like their elevated tier of hotels that you can

00:20:31.160 | book through them and get access to perks like free breakfast, upgrade on availability, property credit,

00:20:38.040 | that kind of stuff. Now, you don't need a platinum card to get access to those. If you go to allthehacks.com

00:20:42.260 | slash upgrade, we have the same program. It's also self-serve. You can use it without having any special

00:20:46.940 | card. But if you do have a platinum card, you get $200 a year of credit towards a Fine Hotels and Resorts

00:20:52.480 | stay. And that stay doesn't even have to be in your name. But the person who's checking in and staying there

00:20:58.220 | does need to have an Amex card, but it doesn't have to be a platinum card. So you can also use it on a broader

00:21:03.660 | selection of hotels. They call the hotel collection. But on those days, they need to be a minimum of two night stays.

00:21:08.620 | Now, that's a platinum card. I do like having the platinum card. I use it for 5x flights. I think the coupons,

00:21:14.380 | if you will, can offset most of the annual fee for people that use it in that way. But I really think

00:21:20.900 | it's missing a little something to be an S tier card. But if you use those coupons effectively and

00:21:25.520 | make it a no annual fee card, then you're getting 5x on flights and a lot of lounge access. So for me,

00:21:30.220 | that's an A tier card, especially if you factor in the signup bonus. But if you are not someone who

00:21:34.380 | wants to use coupon books, then I don't see a world where you'd be very excited about this card.

00:21:39.540 | Now, let's talk about the other variations. The two primary personal variations are a Schwab version

00:21:44.380 | and a Morgan Stanley version. They are very similar to the personal platinum card with a couple subtle

00:21:49.400 | differences. On the Schwab side, the signup bonus right now is way lower. It's 80,000 points after

00:21:54.560 | 8k spend in six months. Recently, it was as high as 125,000. So not the best time to get it. Again,

00:22:00.320 | there's these family rules. So once you get one platinum bonus, you can't get another.

00:22:03.640 | So keep in mind that unless you have a targeted mailer with special language, you can't go getting

00:22:07.960 | all of these different bonuses. The two unique perks that you get with the Schwab card is that one,

00:22:13.840 | you can use Schwab's platinum card to liquidate your membership rewards points at 1.1 cents up to a

00:22:20.820 | million points a year, then it drops to 0.8 cents. Now, if you're someone like me who likes to use those

00:22:26.060 | points to transfer to airlines and hotel groups and book flights, then I think you have a lot better

00:22:30.760 | options. If you have an Amex business platinum, we'll talk about how that card lets you redeem

00:22:35.420 | your points at about 1.54 cents booking travel in the portal. So I'm not interested in liquidating

00:22:41.480 | my points at 1.1 cents. However, if you're someone like I was talking to Tim Ferriss in his podcast

00:22:46.440 | recently, that just has so many points and doesn't know what to do with them. And it's a lot of hassle.

00:22:50.880 | If you were going to try to cash them out and you wanted a way to do that, you could cash out a

00:22:55.060 | million of them a year at 1.1 cents. That's better than a lot of other options. It's better than

00:22:59.760 | statement credit or Amazon. But for the most part, it's not something that's exciting to me.

00:23:03.620 | The only other difference is depending on your balance at Schwab, you get an annual credit towards

00:23:09.100 | the card. So if you have $250,000 at Schwab, you get $100. If you have a million dollars with Schwab,

00:23:13.960 | you get $200. And if you have 10 million with Schwab, you get $1,000. Otherwise, perks, benefits,

00:23:19.140 | fees, it's almost exactly the same as the personal platinum card. You still get the 5x flights,

00:23:24.320 | 1x and everything else. And that's the same for the Morgan Stanley card. The difference there,

00:23:28.760 | similarly, different bonus. Right now, its bonus is also 80,000 points. After 8,000 spend in six

00:23:33.600 | months, it has been as high as 150,000 points. The one unique thing you get differently at Morgan

00:23:38.700 | Stanley is your first authorized user is free. So the platinum cards, the authorized users I mentioned

00:23:43.640 | are $195. The bonus is those authorized users get access to Centurion lounges, Sky Club, Hilton Marriott

00:23:50.540 | status, and a global entry credit every four years. So you can have a way to give other people access to

00:23:55.940 | those lounges without having to spend $75,000. And I would argue the opportunity cost of putting

00:24:02.220 | $75,000 on another card is probably much greater than $195. So if you really want to get someone

00:24:08.460 | else access to those lounges, it might make a lot more sense to use the $195 to get an authorized user

00:24:14.840 | card and spend that money somewhere else. Or if you're looking to get a platinum card, and you can get a

00:24:19.560 | Morgan Stanley version of the card, why not do that where your first authorized user is free?

00:24:23.780 | Now you can also liquidate your membership rewards points, transferring them to your brokerage account

00:24:27.680 | at Morgan Stanley. It's uncapped here. So you get one cent per point at as many points as you want

00:24:33.220 | versus Schwab. It was 1.1 cents on the first million, 0.8 cents after that. If you do spend $100,000

00:24:40.300 | on the card, you get $500 back, which adds about half a percent return to your spend. So that maybe makes

00:24:47.060 | it a 1.5x card on everything. And then if you have a cash plus account with Morgan Stanley, which is $15

00:24:55.680 | a month, which also gets waived if you have $2,500 a month of deposits, or a $10,000 balance in your

00:25:03.080 | cash plus account and an investment account, it's a little bit complicated, you'll have to go read all

00:25:07.000 | the nuance. But for a reasonable amount of money stored in your cash plus Morgan Stanley account,

00:25:12.000 | you have no annual fee on the card. So I think if you're looking for a platinum card, and I kind of

00:25:16.840 | regret not doing this myself, the Morgan Stanley card is pretty interesting. You get your authorized

00:25:20.300 | user free. If you decided to spend a ton of money on this card, for some reason, you'd at least get

00:25:24.200 | a higher return. And you could probably get that annual fee waived without putting too much money

00:25:28.560 | at Morgan Stanley. So those are the two kind of off versions of the card. And when I think about them,

00:25:36.000 | they're not enough different about them that I'm going to put them any higher than the A tier,

00:25:40.200 | I could probably make a case that Morgan Stanley card might bump up to the S tier. And in fact,

00:25:45.140 | I think I'm going to do that only because if you can get the annual fee waived, and you can get the

00:25:50.660 | authorized users, and you can get all the perks, that would be amazing. So I'll bump that one up as

00:25:55.240 | I'm doing this in real time. But the other two, I'll leave at the A tier. Now on the business platinum

00:25:59.900 | side, it's a little bit different. You don't get the 5x on flights, but you do get one and a half

00:26:04.960 | points on all spend over $5,000, as well as on construction materials and supplies, electronic

00:26:12.040 | goods, software, cloud systems and shipping. Now, one and a half points on your spend is not that

00:26:17.580 | exciting all around in general, right? There's plenty of 2x everything cards. So this doesn't

00:26:22.760 | make sense for me as a place to spend money. It's a 1x on everything else card. And then you get 5x on

00:26:27.600 | flights and prepaid hotels, but only in Amex travel. So I can't make a strong case for spending a lot of

00:26:32.600 | money on your business platinum card, unless you have a lot of employees. And I'll get to that in

00:26:36.520 | a little bit. However, the signup bonus on this card makes it an easy card for many people with a

00:26:42.600 | business to justify having. And that's because depending on when you get it, and depending on

00:26:47.560 | what browser you're in, I've seen offers and I've taken advantage of offers myself as high as 250,000

00:26:54.400 | points, after spending $20,000 in three months. Now, obviously, you need to have $20,000 of spend

00:27:00.840 | to make this work. But 250,000 points, especially if you can cash them out at let's call, at least you

00:27:07.360 | could get one and a half cents of value. That's almost $4,000 of benefit for the card. And at a $695

00:27:13.920 | annual fee, that makes a lot of sense. So if I get a flyer in the mail, offering me a 250,000 point offer

00:27:19.400 | on this card, even though I already have one, I'm signing up again, if they want to give me that

00:27:23.740 | bonus again. So the website right now has 150,000 point on $20,000 spend in three month offer. They

00:27:30.680 | also are going to give you $500 credit after you spend $2,500 on flights, we could book those flights

00:27:36.120 | directly with airlines. So if you're going to spend $2,500 on flights in the next three months, you could

00:27:39.720 | bump that bonus up even more. And I think that $500 credit on flights applies to those $250,000 offers as

00:27:46.600 | well. Now they have announced that those $250,000 offers are going away on June 30. So four days after

00:27:52.820 | recording before this episode will come out, who knows what they will be in the future. But I just

00:27:57.340 | want to flag that the really exciting thing about the business platinum card, similar to the Amex

00:28:01.280 | personal platinum is the lounge access. But it's also the fact that you get really, really wild welcome

00:28:06.680 | bonuses. And the business platinum specifically has a feature where when you book flights in their

00:28:13.760 | Amex travel portal, you can actually get a rebate of 35% of the points you use. What that

00:28:19.980 | effectively means is if you had a flight that cost 100,000 points, because it was $1,000 flight, you'd get

00:28:25.260 | back 35,000 of those points, which means it only actually cost you 65,000 points, which means your points are

00:28:31.540 | being worth 1.54 cents. Now, I had this fun conversation on Tim Ferriss's podcast, where I helped him figure out how to

00:28:38.400 | burn his 15 million points that he's accumulated and never used. And my message to him was the easiest

00:28:44.300 | way for you as someone who doesn't have a lot of flexibility is just book your flights with Amex travel

00:28:48.460 | on your business platinum card, and get that 35% rebate and cash out all your points effectively at

00:28:54.120 | about 1.54 cents. However, one thing to note, you only get that 35% rebate on a million points rebated a year,

00:29:01.580 | which is about 2.8 million points redeemed in total. So in that case of Tavares trying to liquidate 15

00:29:07.780 | million, it would take him somewhere around five and a half, six years to get through all of them because

00:29:12.540 | there is a cap on that 35% rebate. Now, recently, they made one change, which is a little bit

00:29:16.780 | disappointing, which is that you're no longer going to be able to do that on any international airline

00:29:22.980 | flying business class. You're only able to do it on the airline you've selected each year. So if you're

00:29:29.140 | someone who flies the same airline a lot, and most of those airlines have to be US airlines. So if

00:29:33.140 | you're flying United or Delta or American a lot, you can use your business platinum card and get 1.54

00:29:38.120 | cents on your Amex points. Now, obviously, I think you could transfer them to airlines and get a much

00:29:42.000 | better value than you would get there. But I think it's a really compelling option if you're trying to

00:29:47.280 | cash out your points. Now, almost all of the benefits and perks of the personal platinum apply here,

00:29:53.300 | except some of those credits. And so I'm just going to go through the credits here because they're

00:29:57.440 | different. And so perks wise, you still get the lounge access, you still get fine hotels and resorts, you

00:30:02.940 | still get the global entry, you still get Hilton and Marriott status, you get the car rental statuses, you get

00:30:08.640 | their trip delay and cancellation insurance. The things that are different is you get a $10 a month wireless

00:30:14.580 | credit for paying your wireless bill, you also get cell phone protection, you get a $90 a quarter Indeed credit,

00:30:20.000 | which I've never used in any way, shape or form, you get $150 a year credit with Adobe Creative Cloud,

00:30:25.440 | I've never used ever on any of my cards. So I value that at zero, you used to get $200 every six months

00:30:30.720 | at Dell. Now you get $150 a year plus another 1000 if you spend 5000. So if you're someone who for your

00:30:37.120 | company is buying computers at Dell, then getting 1000 off 5000 plus $150 that's going to pay for the annual fee

00:30:43.660 | on its own. So that's pretty amazing. So the other credits you get, you get $50 a quarter at Hilton,

00:30:48.440 | you do also get that airline credit of $200 and the $199 clear credit. So you're not getting the

00:30:54.080 | Saks, Uber and entertainment and fine hotels and resorts credits. But I think you're getting everything

00:30:58.920 | else. Oh, and you're not getting the Equinox credit. So I think that sums up the business platinum

00:31:02.940 | card. When it comes to how I would rank this on the list, I would have to put the business platinum at

00:31:08.560 | the B tier. And the primary reason I put it below the personal, yes, you still get the lounge access.

00:31:13.160 | Yes, you get a lot of things. However, there's just no compelling reason to spend on this card.

00:31:17.800 | With the personal platinum, you can spend 5x on flights. I think that's really, really compelling.

00:31:21.600 | I think that the perks and the benefits are a little more interesting to the average person.

00:31:26.160 | I think it's pretty hard to get value from the Indeed credit or the Adobe credit, or maybe even the

00:31:30.940 | Dell credit. So the credits are a little less valuable, the spending bonuses are a little less

00:31:33.840 | valuable, but you still get that lounge access and huge welcome bonuses. So that's why I put it at

00:31:38.380 | B tier. This episode is brought to you by Kik. If you're anything like me, bookkeeping is one of

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00:34:01.480 | slash delete me or click the link in the description. So three more cards in the membership rewards

00:34:06.160 | family. The two Centurion cards, the black cards. I will just briefly run over them because I think

00:34:10.620 | it's interesting to understand what they have. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time because

00:34:14.380 | I actually don't think they're that compelling. So the interesting thing about them, I'll kind of go

00:34:18.800 | over them together, is that they both have a $10,000 initiation fee, plus a $5,000 a year annual fee,

00:34:26.300 | plus another $5,000 per authorized user fee. From what I understand, you need to be spending over

00:34:32.000 | $250,000 a year with Amex to even be invited. But I know lots of people who have spent that much and

00:34:36.860 | not been invited. The primary thing you get from this, aside from, you know, supposedly a much better

00:34:41.980 | concierge and much better travel advisors, I've only probably known two or three people that have ever

00:34:46.200 | had the card or had a close friend with the card. They haven't really been using those things as much

00:34:50.560 | because at that level of spend and at that level of income, you probably have an assistant that can

00:34:55.820 | do a lot of that. What you do get is you do get Delta Platinum status, which has a lot of value if you

00:35:00.580 | are flying Delta, not enough to earn the status, but enough to value it. You get Hilton Diamond,

00:35:05.540 | which you can get for free with a Hilton Aspire card. You get IHG Platinum, which you can get free

00:35:09.600 | with a Chase Sapphire Reserve. You get Marriott Gold status, which isn't worth that much. You used

00:35:13.760 | to get Hertz Platinum status. TBD, if you still do, which is this kind of like super hidden secret

00:35:19.020 | status that I've heard is actually really awesome. You also get Avis President's Club, which is not

00:35:22.740 | that exciting. You get $250 a quarter at Saks, which just sounds like more money to not be able to

00:35:28.480 | spend efficiently. You get $369 at Clear, which is enough to cover multiple people. And then you actually get

00:35:34.260 | your full Equinox membership covered. That's $300 a month. Now the Equinox membership is not part of

00:35:39.700 | the business card, but it is part of the personal card. But otherwise, I think most of the perks are

00:35:44.260 | similar between business and personal. Obviously, they're not on the website. So I can't kind of

00:35:47.980 | answer that perfectly clearly because they don't have a published list of all these benefits. You do

00:35:52.160 | get access to the Centurion lounges and you don't have to have any fees or spending amounts for your

00:35:57.020 | guests. So you get free guest access. If you're flying Lufthansa, you get access to their first class

00:36:01.380 | lounges, which are really nice. You get a PS membership, which is like a private terminal in

00:36:06.180 | LA and Atlanta. And I think now Dallas, but you still have to pay to use the private terminal,

00:36:12.500 | but the membership fee that goes before the usage fee is covered. And the other big things, I think

00:36:17.640 | on the personal side, you get a 20% rebate in Travel Portal, which makes your points worth 1.25 cents.

00:36:23.060 | On the business side, you actually get a 50% rebate, which means your points are worth 2 cents,

00:36:27.060 | which is really, really awesome. So I don't know if you had millions of points to burn and you got an

00:36:31.860 | invite to the black card and you wanted to burn them all up. This would probably be a compelling

00:36:35.940 | reason to get this card. It's capped at 3 million points a year. I think that's redeemed. So it's

00:36:41.380 | probably 6 million points a year spent. So that's one reason to get the business version of this card.

00:36:46.260 | But gosh, really not much other reason. Obviously, it has great purchase protections and travel

00:36:50.820 | protections and all those kinds of things. But I'm not excited about this card. If I got invited to this card,

00:36:55.860 | I don't think I would accept the invitation because the costs and the fees are too much.

00:37:00.180 | If you want to really burn your Amex points, if that is your MO, then the business version of the

00:37:05.700 | Centurion card would totally be worth being an A tier because it's just there's no way to get

00:37:10.420 | 2 cents of value from your Amex points. As for earning, it's one and a half points on purchases

00:37:14.660 | over $5,000, 1x on everything else. As for the tier list, I think it's pretty hard for me to put the

00:37:20.020 | personal version of this card any higher than the C tier. It's just so egregiously expensive.

00:37:25.060 | The perks don't necessarily make up for it. Maybe if you're already spending $300 a month on your

00:37:31.220 | Equinox membership, that's one of the only arguments that I could make that this would be interesting.

00:37:35.700 | That's not me. It's not most people. And it's hard to imagine spending $10,000 to sign up for a card

00:37:42.580 | and then $5,000 a year. And if you wanted your partner to have it, another $5,000 a year.

00:37:48.420 | The business card, I'll put a B tier only because of that ability to cash out your Amex points at 2

00:37:53.220 | cents. Obviously, if you have this card, you're probably earning those points really inefficiently,

00:37:57.700 | but to at least be able to cash them out that efficiently is pretty cool.

00:38:00.420 | The only other card that earns membership rewards points is the Blue Business Plus card.

00:38:06.100 | And it's a business card. It has no annual fee and it gets 2x on all your spending.

00:38:11.380 | However, there's a 50,000 cap on that 2x and then it just becomes a 1x card.

00:38:16.100 | The signup bonus is pretty weak. 15,000 points on $3,000 spend in three months.

00:38:20.420 | You do sometimes get a 0% intro APR right now. At least you do for 12 months.

00:38:26.020 | There have been targeted offers for this card. So you can sometimes get targeted for it and you'll

00:38:30.660 | find out that you're being offered as much as 50,000 points. And so that is really interesting

00:38:36.500 | to me. 50,000 points for a no annual fee card that will keep your membership rewards points alive.

00:38:42.180 | Keep in mind that if you cancel any of these cards and you have no more membership rewards

00:38:45.860 | earning cards, your points now go away. So if you have a ton of Amex points,

00:38:50.740 | but you don't want to be paying annual fees, the Blue Business Plus is an option.

00:38:53.780 | Unlike all the other cards, it does have a 2.7% foreign transaction fee. So I wouldn't be using

00:38:59.140 | it overseas. But if you want a 2x card on Amex, up to 50,000 of spend with no annual fee,

00:39:05.300 | that'll keep your points alive. As for the tier list, I'm going to put it at a B tier.

00:39:08.980 | I like that it earns 2x points, right? 2x points, no annual fee in a very valuable currency is

00:39:14.340 | interesting. The cap of $50,000 makes it a lot lower. The foreign transaction fees makes it a

00:39:20.180 | lot lower. So I'm going to put that at B tier. Okay, so that's all the membership rewards points

00:39:23.700 | earning cards. I think that's the bulk of what people are excited about when they think about

00:39:27.220 | American Express. So I'm going to try to speed up through the rest of the cards. I'll focus on some

00:39:31.620 | of the really interesting ones, but some of them just aren't that exciting to me. And I don't think

00:39:35.060 | they're going to be that exciting to others. So I'll try to be pretty quick. They also don't have

00:39:37.940 | as many coupon books and things to run through. So let's first start with cashback cards. The first

00:39:43.060 | cashback card is the blue cash everyday card. It's a zero annual fee card. It earns 3% back on groceries,

00:39:48.660 | 3% back on online retail, and 3% back on gas. Each of those individual categories is only on the first

00:39:54.580 | $6,000 a year. And then after that, it is a 1% card. The signup bonus right now is $200 on 2000 spend in

00:40:00.980 | six months. There's a 0% intro APR for 12 months. That signup bonus hasn't been higher since 2022.

00:40:06.740 | And there aren't a lot of perks on this card $7 a month towards your Disney bundle. And it also has

00:40:12.500 | a 2.7% foreign transaction fee. Given that there are cards out there that like the Robin Hood card

00:40:18.340 | that are 3% on everything, and there are plenty of cards that are going to reward you 3x points or 3%

00:40:23.540 | back or more on groceries and gas, and the online retail category is only up to $6,000 a year,

00:40:30.100 | so are the others. This card is not that exciting to me. Yes, it's a no annual fee card, but you're not

00:40:35.220 | getting access to membership rewards. You're not earning that much. This card for me, I'm going to

00:40:39.540 | put in the C tier. It's just not something that I'm going to be excited to be using on any regular basis.

00:40:45.940 | So that one's C tier for me. Next card is the Blue Cash preferred card. It's the premium version

00:40:50.740 | of the Blue Cash series. It's $95 annual fee, though right now they're waiving it for the first year.

00:40:55.860 | You get 6% back on groceries, but only up to $6,000 a year. 6% on streaming, 3% on transit,

00:41:03.380 | 3% gas, 1x everything else. Those other categories are not capped. Signup bonus right now is $250 on 3k

00:41:10.420 | spend in six months. You've got a 0% intro APR for 12 months. That signup bonus has been

00:41:15.860 | as high as $300 or $400 in the past, but not higher this year. Similar $7 a month credit

00:41:21.220 | towards Disney, 2.7% foreign transaction fee. You've got return protection as a bonus on this card.

00:41:26.580 | At the surface, I think I like this card because I'm like 6% on groceries really high,

00:41:31.780 | 6,000 is a lot of spend. But if you compare it to the Blue Cash everyday card where you're getting 3%,

00:41:37.060 | that extra 3% on groceries is worth only $180 a year. Meaning that extra 3% on $6,000 is only $180. Now,

00:41:45.220 | if you spend a ton on streaming, maybe this is interesting. If you spend a ton on transit and

00:41:49.620 | gas, you know, those categories are uncapped. But compared to other cards where you're going to

00:41:53.940 | probably get 3% on everything or 3x on all these categories, this card is going to maybe add an

00:41:59.140 | extra $180 of value a year. Now for a lot of people, $180 extra dollars a year for a $95 annual fee card,

00:42:04.340 | that's great. But keep in mind that $95 is half of that incremental amount. So you're actually going to

00:42:09.540 | be getting less than $100 of incremental value. And the intro offer on this card isn't that

00:42:14.580 | compelling, right? If you compare other cards where you might get 100,000 points worth $1,000,

00:42:19.460 | you can more than make up for, I don't know, 5 to 10 years of the bonus you're going to get on the 6%

00:42:25.140 | on groceries on this card. So I do think this card offers more value than the Blue Cash Everyday card,

00:42:31.540 | but not that much more. I'll probably put it at B tier. I know some people are going to be

00:42:35.620 | disappointed by that because they love this card. They love getting 6%. That's a real amount of value.

00:42:39.860 | However, paying $95 to get at most $180 over another card that there are lots of cards that

00:42:46.820 | offer 3% on groceries. So for me, that's just not going to cut it for being too much higher on that

00:42:51.700 | list. On the business side, there is a Blue Business Cash card similar to the Blue Business Plus. It's

00:42:56.660 | 2% back on everything instead of 2x points, has a $50,000 cap, then it goes to 1%. You get $250 signup

00:43:04.020 | bonus right now on 3k spend in three months, 0% intro APR for a year. That signup bonus has been as high

00:43:09.380 | as $500 back in 2023, but nothing better since. It also has a 2.7% foreign transaction fee. I'm not

00:43:16.420 | stoked about this card. I feel like on one argument, I should put it at B tier because it's similar to

00:43:21.300 | the other card, right? It's both 2x cap to 50k. But the other card is 2x points. And I can get a lot

00:43:26.180 | more value out of my Amex points than I can out of cashback. And if I'm looking at 2% cashback cards,

00:43:31.540 | there's just so many of them on the market. So there aren't as many 2x points cards as there are 2%

00:43:36.020 | cashback cards. I'm going to put this at D tier. I don't see

00:43:38.900 | any reason to get a no annual fee 2% cashback card that has a cap when there are so many cards out

00:43:44.020 | there with uncapped 2% back. And the welcome bonus just isn't there to make up for it.

00:43:48.500 | Last cashback card is the plum card. It's a strange one. It's a $250 annual fee card

00:43:54.820 | that earns no points on spending. However, if you pay the card off within 10 days of your statement close,

00:44:02.500 | you get one and a half percent back. So it is a one and a half percent back card on all your spending

00:44:07.620 | if you pay it within 10 days. The interesting thing is the marketing behind this card that I believe

00:44:13.220 | kind of resonates most with some business owners is that you actually get 60 days to pay off the card.

00:44:18.500 | So unlike a lot of cards where you are owing your balance within 25 days of the statement close,

00:44:23.460 | here I think you get 60 days to pay off the card. And so depending on your business, having 60 days

00:44:28.020 | to pay off your card might be incredibly valuable, more valuable than any type of points out there.

00:44:32.820 | And so I can see a use case for the right business owner that they would rather get a

00:44:37.140 | kind of 60 day loan every single month on all of their spending over getting any amount of points.

00:44:43.700 | But for the average person who's paying off their balance each month and not running a business

00:44:47.780 | on their cards, this card, whether it was a personal or business version, it obviously happens to be a

00:44:51.300 | business version. I just don't see any use case. So I'm going to put it at the C tier because

00:44:54.740 | it does have a unique feature that no other cards have and then you get 60 days to pay it off.

00:44:59.540 | But you're not earning a single thing on that card unless you pay it off in 10 days, in which case

00:45:03.460 | it would be a D tier card if you were doing that. So for the right business, I can see where this might

00:45:07.540 | have a little more than no value, but for the average person, it won't. Next, we're going to

00:45:11.060 | talk about the co-brand cards, Delta, Hilton, Marriott, and Amazon. And let's start with Delta.

00:45:15.460 | So first off, all Delta cards are going to get you 20% back on in-flight purchases.

00:45:19.220 | Then all the cards except the blue card, you're going to get a few things. You'll get zone five boarding,

00:45:24.900 | first bag free for up to nine people on your record. And a big perk of having a Delta card is 15%

00:45:30.900 | off award travel. That means all flights booked with points use 15% less points when you're a

00:45:36.260 | holder of any of the Delta cards, except the blue card. You also, as of today, June 26, 2025,

00:45:42.980 | you get a free Uber one membership, meaning that 999 fee is going to be reimbursed for 12 months.

00:45:48.900 | If you have either of the platinum or reserve cards and six months, if you have one of the gold cards.

00:45:53.460 | Now, the way it's worded is it's a 12 or six month perk. It's not an ongoing perk.

00:45:58.180 | So whenever you activate it by spending on that card sometime in the next year,

00:46:02.340 | it'll work for 12 or six months. I asked someone to try to clarify that because I got an email from

00:46:06.740 | Delta announcing it and I haven't heard back yet, but I assume it is a one-time promo that may get

00:46:11.700 | extended beyond that. So let's run through the cards. So first is the Delta blue. It's a $0 annual fee card.

00:46:17.540 | You get two X points on Delta, two X points on restaurants, one X on everything else. That's

00:46:21.620 | not exciting on its own. The welcome bonus hasn't been higher in the last five years than it is now,

00:46:26.500 | which is just 10,000 points on 1000 spend in six months. The only reason I see to have this card is

00:46:33.620 | if you had one of the other Delta cards and you don't want to pay an annual fee, but you want to

00:46:38.100 | continue to have this card hitting your credit, you could downgrade to the blue card with no annual fee and

00:46:43.220 | keep that card helping your credit and the history because you've had it for a long time.

00:46:47.540 | Otherwise, I see no real reason to have this card. As far as the tier list goes, I would put it at the

00:46:53.460 | very bottom. It is a D tier card. There's no real reason to use it. If you're spending a lot of money

00:46:58.820 | on Delta, you could earn a lot more Delta points. By the way, you'd earn a lot more Delta points on

00:47:03.300 | a Amex platinum card than any of the Delta cards and Amex points transfer to Delta. So none of these

00:47:09.460 | cards are that great for even earning Delta miles. So the reason to have them is primarily that you're

00:47:16.260 | going to be able to earn medallion qualifying dollars, which is how you earn status with Delta

00:47:20.740 | with some of these cards. And many of the cards also give you a head start towards that status.

00:47:25.860 | So the primary reason to have a Delta card is that you either fly Delta a lot and want some of the perks

00:47:30.660 | or you want to help boost your way towards status. That is why you would get a Delta card,

00:47:34.820 | not because it's going to be an amazing ROI card on your spend. Or I guess the other reason,

00:47:40.420 | which is why I have a Delta card is that the 15% off is worth having. So I've racked up a few

00:47:46.020 | hundred thousand Delta miles over the years, and now I will get 15% discount on all my redemptions of

00:47:52.740 | those miles. And I think the perks make up for the annual fee. I chose to get a business card. So that

00:47:57.620 | means that it's not really going to affect my credit because it's not going to show up on my credit

00:48:00.980 | report. So for me, that made sense. But let's run through them. So we've got the Delta gold card,

00:48:05.300 | $150 annual fee, 2x on Delta, 2x on restaurants, 2x on grocery, 1x on everything else. Right now you've

00:48:11.620 | got an 80,000 point signup bonus. Hasn't been higher since 2021. It's not that unique. It's been

00:48:16.740 | 80,000 a lot and that's on 3,000 spend in six months. You get a $200 Delta credit after you spend

00:48:22.580 | $10,000 in a year and you get $100 credit towards Delta stays, which is their hotel portal. On the business

00:48:28.420 | side, kind of similar. $150 annual fee, 2x Delta, 2x restaurants. Instead of groceries, you get ads

00:48:34.020 | and shipping as a 2x category up to $50,000 each. The signup bonus is about 10,000 points higher. So

00:48:40.100 | 90,000 on 6k spend in six months. Hasn't ever been higher, but it's not really a unique thing.

00:48:45.140 | You also get $200 Delta credit after $10,000 spend. And instead of $100 Delta stays credit,

00:48:50.660 | you get $150. So in summary, the gold version of this card, whether it's personal or business is

00:48:56.260 | primarily beneficial, not for someone who's chasing status because the Platinum and Reserves are going

00:49:00.820 | to really help with that. But for someone who flies just enough Delta that they're going to value

00:49:04.980 | checked bags or maybe Zone 5 boarding or has enough Delta miles that they want to get 15% off award

00:49:10.420 | travel. However, that's not that many people because it's not too hard to get the base tier of status on

00:49:15.540 | Delta if you're flying Delta a lot. So it has to be someone that knows they're going to fly Delta a

00:49:19.460 | couple times a year and they're going to check bags for that to really make sense.

00:49:23.300 | That said, the signup bonus of this is pretty high, 80 or 90,000 Delta miles. So that could

00:49:27.860 | be another reason to get the cards. They do have similar family language on Delta cards. If you want

00:49:32.500 | to rack up a lot of Delta miles opening Delta cards, you're going to want to start low and go gold,

00:49:37.380 | then platinum, then reserve, because you can't go the reverse direction. Once you've had the reserve,

00:49:42.020 | you're ineligible for the bonuses on the lower tier cards. As for ranking these,

00:49:45.380 | I'm going to put them both at the C tier because I just don't think there's enough value other than

00:49:50.100 | the free check bags and the award discount. So they might be a good place to downgrade,

00:49:54.260 | but I think the perks you're going to get from the higher fee cards are going to give you a better ROI.

00:49:58.260 | So if you look at the Delta platinum card, you similarly get 2x on restaurants and 2x on groceries,

00:50:03.300 | just like you did on the gold, but you get 3x on Delta and 3x on hotels, 1x on everything else.

00:50:09.060 | Signup bonus is a little higher, 90,000 points on 4,000 spend in six months,

00:50:14.660 | instead of 80,000, but you get a lot more credits. And obviously those credits can be for many people

00:50:19.860 | a pain to track. But here's why I think this is going to be more valuable. You get $10 a month at Resi,

00:50:24.820 | which if you live in a major city, it's not too difficult to find a Resi restaurant.

00:50:28.980 | Or if you don't want to dine out every single month, get a $10 gift card at one of those Resi restaurants

00:50:34.180 | for four or five months and then go spend $50. You also get a $10 a month rideshare credit,

00:50:38.820 | Lyft, Uber, whatever rideshare program you're using. And then you also get an annual companion certificate.

00:50:43.940 | This one doesn't come until after your first year, but for travel in the US, Mexico,

00:50:48.260 | Caribbean, and Central America in main cabin, you get a buy one, get one free other than taxes and fees.

00:50:54.420 | If you add up those credits, two $10 a month credits plus an annual companion certificate,

00:50:59.620 | but you're only paying an extra $200 for the card, I think it's worth the upgrade.

00:51:05.220 | On top of that, if you're chasing Delta status, the platinum card gives you a 2500 MQD head start

00:51:11.540 | towards status. I won't dive into the Delta program because you probably only care about this if you

00:51:16.180 | know about Delta. So this will give you a head start towards status. In fact, getting to silver status,

00:51:21.140 | the lowest tier of status at Delta is only 5000 MQD. So this gets you halfway there. So that's pretty

00:51:26.180 | generous. And you can have multiple Delta cards that combine towards multiple MQD head starts.

00:51:32.340 | So if you had the platinum and the platinum business, you'd be all the way at silver status already.

00:51:36.420 | So the Delta platinum business, same annual fee, same 3x on Delta and hotels,

00:51:40.820 | instead of 2x on restaurants and grocery, you get 1.5x on transit and shipping and purchases over $5,000.

00:51:47.860 | And that's on a cap of $100,000 a year on those categories.

00:51:52.500 | The signup bonus is $100,000 on 8,000 spend in six months, hasn't been higher, similar. Actually,

00:51:58.020 | all of these bonuses are at the highest they've ever been, but not necessarily rare and unique.

00:52:03.060 | They've been this high before. You also get the same credits, $10 resi, $10 ride share,

00:52:07.700 | annual companion cert. The only real difference is you get $200 at Delta stays instead of on the

00:52:13.380 | regular personal platinum, you get 150. And then on both of those cards, you get Hertz five-star

00:52:17.620 | status, trip delay insurance, and a TSA pre and global entry credit every four years.

00:52:22.900 | And you'll be put on the upgrade list. Now I don't fly Delta that often, but I can pretty much say that

00:52:27.540 | if you're getting on the upgrade list from a credit card, you're probably never going to clear

00:52:31.700 | over all of the other people that have status. So I wouldn't think of that as a major perk.

00:52:36.340 | So like I said, you get $2,500 head start on the medallion qualifying dollars you need.

00:52:40.660 | And then for every $20 you spend, you get another medallion qualifying dollar.

00:52:45.380 | Now that doesn't really sound like that much, and it really isn't, right?

00:52:48.260 | If you wanted to get to gold status, you need 10,000 medallion qualifying dollars.

00:52:52.180 | Having this card will get you 2,500 of the way there. So you need 7,500, which means you need to

00:52:57.140 | spend $150,000. And that's just a gold, the second tier of status. So now it's hard to spend your way

00:53:02.980 | to status on the platinum tier of Delta cards because you're getting one MQD for every $20.

00:53:07.940 | When you get to the reserve level, you're getting one MQD for every $10.

00:53:10.740 | So if you're really trying to use your spend to get Delta status, getting multiple Delta cards to get

00:53:16.420 | multiple head starts and then spending on the reserve cards is going to be your best way to do it.

00:53:20.980 | But I would push back and say, at some point, if you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars

00:53:25.380 | on a Delta card to try to get Delta status, you got to ask yourself what the opportunity cost of that

00:53:30.820 | spend is. And I went through an email exchange with someone who was asking me about this.

00:53:34.900 | And it turns out that by not using, let's say, a 2.625% cashback card, they were effectively spending

00:53:41.700 | $4,000 on Delta status each year to try to get all the way to Delta diamond.

00:53:46.500 | Now, if you think that that's worth it, and you understand the benefits and the perks,

00:53:49.700 | awesome. But if you're actually thinking, wow, I don't fly Delta that often.

00:53:53.780 | If I just took that $4,000 and just paid for comfort plus or paid for business class,

00:53:59.220 | I'd probably be a lot happier. And maybe I wouldn't even fly Delta all the time.

00:54:02.900 | That said, when it comes to the tier list, I'm going to put both the platinum cards at the B tier.

00:54:06.580 | I think they are better cards than the gold cards, because I think all those perks and the companion

00:54:10.500 | certificate make them more valuable than the increase in annual fee. And so I don't really see a strong

00:54:15.380 | reason to get the gold card. So now let's go on to the last tier, the reserve cards.

00:54:19.060 | On the personal reserve, you get 3x on Delta and 1x on everything else. So you lose all the bonus

00:54:23.940 | categories of spend, which is a bummer. You do get a higher signup bonus, 100,000 miles on 6,000

00:54:28.980 | spend in six months. It used to be 125,000 a lot up until 2023. And then it hasn't really ever crossed

00:54:35.940 | 100,000. What you do get on this card is access to lounges. And that's why the annual fee is so much

00:54:42.260 | higher. It's $650. You get 15 visits to the Delta Sky Club. You get four guest passes. And you don't

00:54:49.940 | get any guests other than those guest passes unless you spend $75,000. Now, similar to the fact that on

00:54:55.780 | an Amex platinum card, you get access to Delta Sky Clubs. On the Delta Sky Club, you get access to the

00:55:00.820 | Centurion Lounge when you're flying Delta. So you can go to those Amex lounges, but you can't bring your

00:55:05.940 | guests in like the Amex card works on Delta. You also get instead of a 10, you get a $20 a month

00:55:11.780 | credit towards Resi. You get an annual companion certificate, just like the platinum card, except

00:55:16.340 | this one works in any class of the plane. You also get that $10 a month rideshare credit. You get a $250

00:55:21.780 | Delta stays credit and you get Hertz president circle status. You get the TSA pre and global entry.

00:55:27.380 | You get trip delay, cancellation, interruption insurance. You do also get on the upgrade list,

00:55:31.460 | which I said probably doesn't matter, but you do get priority over other similar people.

00:55:35.780 | So if you had two Delta platinum flyers and one of them was going to be decided whether they got an

00:55:41.060 | upgrade, the person who has the Delta reserve card is going to be higher than the person who doesn't.

00:55:46.100 | Now, chances are both of them have it, and that's not going to be the deal breaker,

00:55:49.700 | but just something to keep in mind. Like the platinum cards, you get $2,500 MQD Head Start.

00:55:55.060 | Like I mentioned, you get one MQD for every $10. So spending your way to gold status instead of

00:56:00.660 | $150,000 on the platinum card would be $75,000 on the reserve cards.

00:56:05.620 | Again, I think it's a very expensive proposition to spend your way to status.

00:56:08.660 | But if you have a business and you're spending tons of money, maybe that's fine.

00:56:11.300 | You also get return protection and cell phone protection on the Delta reserve.

00:56:16.100 | The Delta reserve business, almost the same card, a couple of subtle differences.

00:56:21.060 | You get one and a half X on office supply and transit,

00:56:24.100 | And you get one and a half X on all your spend after $150,000 a year of spend.

00:56:28.580 | Spending $150,000 a year on this card again comes at a real cost. If you're not spending it on Delta,

00:56:35.060 | office supplies or transit, you're earning one Delta mile. And that one Delta mile, I think most people

00:56:40.180 | value at like 1.3 cents. So you're earning 1.3% on a card. Now, any other card out there is probably

00:56:47.300 | going to earn you at least 2%. So every dollar you spend on the Delta card, you're getting less value

00:56:52.340 | than other cards. So just keep that in mind because I know a lot of people really want status. So they

00:56:56.980 | spend a lot of towards it and they realize, Oh wow, if I had done that spending on another card,

00:57:02.020 | I would have been much better off. Now the Delta reserve business has the highest signup bonus of

00:57:06.100 | all the cards, 110,000 Delta miles for 12K spend in six months. Again, it's never been higher than that,

00:57:11.860 | that I found, but it's at this level quite a bit. Same other benefits as the personal card,

00:57:16.180 | other than you get a $250 Delta stays credit. Now, these are two cards where there is a fee for

00:57:21.380 | authorized users and that fee is $175. And the reason that fee is high is because those authorized

00:57:26.340 | users also get access to the Delta sky club also get access to the Centurion lounge when they're

00:57:31.140 | traveling on Delta. Now there is for both the Delta reserve cards and authorized user fee of $175 a year.

00:57:36.500 | And the reason that's so high is that those authorized users do also get access to the lounges.

00:57:41.140 | So that's a reason to have this card, but I would say if you really want access to Delta lounges and

00:57:45.060 | that's it, maybe find someone with the reserve card and see if they'd add you as an authorized user

00:57:49.300 | so that you don't have to spend the full 650, but that companion certificate, $20 a month on resi,

00:57:54.820 | $10 a month on rideshare, maybe value the Delta stays credit at something like there is value here.

00:58:01.300 | And so I think if you travel enough on Delta that you want access to the sky club, then I would say

00:58:07.620 | this is a valuable card to have. Note the limited number of visits, right? If you're flying Delta

00:58:12.980 | hundreds of times, you need to spend money on this card to be able to get access to those sky clubs.

00:58:17.300 | So I'm going to put the business version of the card a little higher. I'm going to call it an A tier

00:58:22.500 | card because it's the best way to spend your way towards Delta status. You get into Delta lounges,

00:58:26.980 | you get into Amex lounges, you've got companion certificates and $30 a month of credits that I think

00:58:32.580 | are pretty easy to use. And so I think it's a pretty good card. The signup bonus at 110,000 points,

00:58:37.460 | the fact that it doesn't show up on your personal credit report is great. I'll put the personal one with a

00:58:42.180 | same card, but lower signup bonus counts towards 524 shows up on your credit report down at the B

00:58:47.220 | tier, but they're pretty similar cards. And there's probably just a slight edge to the business version

00:58:51.620 | of the card. That is why I moved it up next. Let's talk Hilton. This is one where I know a lot more

00:58:55.700 | because we've had a couple different versions of the Hilton card and keep in mind when you're looking

00:58:59.780 | within these co-brand cards, you can move around them. So if you have the Delta reserve, you can downgrade

00:59:04.500 | to the platinum. If you have the Hilton surpassed, you can upgrade to the aspire and you can kind of move

00:59:08.260 | around as you see fit. As long as you're not upgrading within the first year of having the

00:59:12.020 | the card that you have to wait one year because of some nuanced legislation about changing the

00:59:16.340 | annual fees in the first year. So on the Hilton side, there are four cards. Okay. On the standard

00:59:22.580 | Hilton card, $0 annual fee, 7x points on Hilton, 5x on gas, grocery and restaurants, 3x and everything

00:59:29.460 | else. Now it's important to understand that Hilton points in general are much less valuable than airline

00:59:34.820 | miles or transferable membership rewards points. You can often buy them for as little as half a cent.

00:59:39.380 | So when I hear 3x everything, that's, oh, wow, there aren't a lot of 3x everything cards.

00:59:44.100 | But when it comes to Hilton points, I think you should view that as a one and a half x everything card

00:59:47.940 | at the maximum. So 7x Hilton sounds like a lot, but it's probably the equivalent of three and a half percent

00:59:54.420 | back on Hilton. If you value Hilton points at half a cent. Now, can you get higher value? Yes.

00:59:58.980 | But if you could just buy them at half a cent, it would be hard to value them at much higher than that.

01:00:04.660 | Sign up bonuses are also pretty generous in terms of number of points. But keep in mind,

01:00:08.740 | the points are less valuable than many other points. So on the standard card, you've got 100,000

01:00:13.540 | points plus $100 statement credit after spending $2,000 in six months. It has been as high as 150,000

01:00:19.220 | points once. Otherwise, 100,000 is pretty much as high as it goes. There's not a ton of perks on this

01:00:24.740 | card. You get Hilton silver status. And unlike almost every other card, you don't even get your extended

01:00:29.620 | warranty or any baggage coverage on this card. Not a huge fan of the standard Hilton card. I'd

01:00:34.740 | probably put it in D tier if it didn't have 100,000 point signup bonus. So I'll put it at C tier. But

01:00:39.700 | it's not a card I'm really excited to have unless you stay at Hilton a lot and want to earn seven points

01:00:44.180 | on Hilton. I could probably make an argument to put it down in D tier. But I do think that being able to

01:00:48.580 | earn 7x on Hilton for a zero annual fee card is not terrible. And actually getting 5x gas grocery

01:00:54.420 | restaurants, if you're really into the Hilton ecosystem is like a two and a half on all of

01:00:58.820 | those categories. So that probably makes it slightly better than a D tier card. But there's not a lot to

01:01:03.380 | love about it. However, I do like the next two cards. So you've got the Hilton surpass, which is $150

01:01:08.420 | annual fee card, you get 12x points on Hilton. So a lot more 6x on gas grocery restaurants, 4x on online

01:01:15.700 | retail and 3x on everything else. Now again, Hilton points aren't worth as much as a lot of other points.

01:01:21.060 | So it's hard to kind of reset your brain. I view this more as, you know, 6% back on Hilton,

01:01:26.100 | 3% back on gas grocery restaurants, 2% back on online retail and one and a half on everything else.

01:01:31.700 | That's not a bad lineup of earnings. The signup bonus is pretty generous right now. It's 130,000

01:01:36.900 | points on 3k spend in six months, it has been as high as 150,000 points. And it's also been the same

01:01:41.940 | amount at 130,000, but also included a free night certificate, which I find really valuable.

01:01:46.740 | So I would say, maybe hold off for the opportunity to get a free night certificate,

01:01:51.140 | if you're really interested in this card. You do get Hilton gold status, which is a daily food and

01:01:57.700 | beverage credit or continental breakfast, but you don't get diamond status unless you spend $40,000

01:02:02.020 | on the card. You also get a $50 a quarter Hilton credit. So if you stay at Hilton's four times a year,

01:02:08.420 | it pays for the annual fee. And then if you spend $15,000 a year on the card, you get a free night

01:02:14.260 | certificate. And that free night certificate can be super valuable. We're about to go to

01:02:18.260 | the Waldorf Astoria in Costa Rica. We're going to use six of them on stays that would have normally

01:02:22.340 | cost over a thousand dollars a night. But I could have used 120,000 points on each of those stays.

01:02:27.380 | And so if I could buy those points at half a cent, it's hard to value those certificates at more than

01:02:32.980 | $600. But even if you're getting a $600 certificate on $15,000 to spend, that's like 4% back on top of all

01:02:39.940 | the other points you're earning. So if you're earning 4x points on online retail or 2% in Hilton

01:02:44.740 | value, and then you're also getting another 4% towards that free night certificate, that's like

01:02:49.460 | a 6% back on online retail card, which is pretty interesting. And that goes to 7% on gas, grocery,

01:02:55.460 | and restaurants. So spending $15,000 on this card to get that free night certificate is a no-brainer.

01:02:59.620 | You also get national executive status, which is cool. So I like this card. We've held this card

01:03:04.340 | multiple years in the past. So I'm going to put it at the A tier. I really like the surpass card.

01:03:08.500 | Definitely great for getting access to Hilton free night certificates, but you do have to spend to get

01:03:12.500 | it. Let's talk next about the Hilton Aspire card. And this is a great card. It's one of my favorites.

01:03:17.140 | We hold two of them right now. It has a higher annual fee at $550, but I think it makes up for

01:03:22.100 | it every year. You get 14x on Hilton, 7x on flights, rental cars, and restaurants, and 3x on everything else.

01:03:29.140 | A huge signup bonus. It's never actually been higher of 175,000 points on 6k spend in six months.

01:03:35.620 | You get free Hilton diamond status, which gets you access to executive lounges, daily food and beverage,

01:03:40.340 | or continental breakfast. You get $200 resort credit every six months. So we're actually timing

01:03:46.740 | our stay for the end of June and the beginning of July. So we're going to actually get that $400

01:03:51.300 | credit all in one stay. You get an annual free night certificate, then you get another free night

01:03:55.940 | certificate at $30,000 spend, and then another free night certificate at $60,000 spend.

01:04:00.900 | So if you figure you're that free night is worth at least $600. Now, because you could have bought

01:04:05.700 | those points, that means that you're getting an extra 2% back on this card on that free night

01:04:10.180 | certificate. So already, I really like this card. You also get $50 a quarter booking flights,

01:04:16.260 | just any flights on any airline. It's just credited back. You get a clear credit of $199 a year.

01:04:22.020 | And then one perk that I don't ever use that I don't think is valuable, you get $100 property

01:04:25.860 | credit at Waldorf and Conrad. But you have to do a two nights day, you have to book it through their

01:04:30.180 | site. And I just don't think the rates and the deals are as compelling. So that one I write off at

01:04:34.340 | nothing. Beyond that, you get national executive status, return protection, trip delay, cancellation,

01:04:39.220 | interruption, and cell phone protection. So a lot more purchase and travel protections than the

01:04:44.020 | average Amex card has. So I love this card, because if you figure you're getting an annual free night

01:04:48.740 | certificate, and you're getting a bunch of resort credit that you can use on the stay,

01:04:52.980 | that you're probably using that free night certificate credit. Now keep in mind, it's

01:04:56.020 | only Hilton Resort, so it's not every hotel, plus $50 a quarter of flights. So when I look at this,

01:05:01.700 | I'm getting at least $200 on the flight credit, because I just can either buy a flight or buy travel

01:05:07.300 | credit on an airline I fly. So $200 there, at least $600 of value from the free night certificate,

01:05:13.220 | and $400 on the resort credit. Let's say you only use that once a year. So it's only $200.

01:05:18.100 | You're still getting over $1,000 of value on a card that you're paying $550 for. And that's valuing

01:05:24.340 | the clear credit at nothing. That's not including the fact that if you were to spend $30,000 on this

01:05:29.140 | card, you get another free night certificate. So I love the Hilton Aspire card. Oh, and also,

01:05:34.180 | you're getting Hilton Diamond status, their top tier of status. So I think the Hilton Aspire card's

01:05:38.180 | an S tier card. It's one of my favorite cards. I don't think we'll ever not have this card. Now,

01:05:42.260 | one advanced strategy is you could downgrade and upgrade between these cards. If you search online,

01:05:45.700 | you'll find a few articles of people that detail how it works. And I think that doing that is a

01:05:50.660 | even further way to optimize your Hilton cards. So love the Hilton Aspire. Last one's a Hilton

01:05:55.060 | business card. It's $195 annual fee. You get 12x on Hilton, 5x on everything else, no other bonuses.

01:06:01.780 | It does have a really high signup bonus right now, 150,000 points after spending 8k in six months,

01:06:06.580 | plus another 25k if you spend 2000 more in six months. So that's 175k total. In the past,

01:06:14.580 | there has been 150k plus a free night certificate, which I would prefer. So in general, anytime these

01:06:20.340 | cards all offer a bonus free night certificate for signing up, that's a great time to get them.

01:06:24.180 | It comes with Hilton gold status or diamond. If you spend 40,000, it comes with national executive

01:06:29.780 | status and it comes with a $60 a quarter Hilton credit. So this card is not that exciting to me.

01:06:34.980 | I think for the signup bonus, it's kind of somewhat interesting, right? If you can get 150,000 points

01:06:39.860 | plus free night certificate for a business card with $195 annual fee, I think the ROI is there.

01:06:44.980 | I think getting 5x on everything in the form of Hilton points is like a two and a half percent back card.

01:06:51.860 | So that's not the worst card out there. There are not that many cards that earn that much,

01:06:55.620 | but your points are locked up in Hilton versus a lot of other cards where if you were just earning

01:07:00.420 | two and a half percent in cash and you use that to buy Hilton if you want it or not, but there's no way

01:07:04.820 | to earn free night certificates on this card. So I would probably call this a C tier card because I just

01:07:10.100 | think that if you're going to go all in on Hilton, get the aspire, the surpass, the business card is just

01:07:14.740 | not as exciting. So that's a Hilton cards. Let's talk about Marriott cards. So first is the Marriott

01:07:18.820 | Bonvoy card. And you can't apply for this card directly. It was formerly the SPG card. You can

01:07:23.860 | product change to it. I actually have it from having the old SPG card. And it's not that exciting of a

01:07:29.220 | card. It's a $95 annual fee card. You get 6x points on Bonvoy, 2x on everything else. You get free

01:07:35.860 | silver status. And if you spend $35,000, you get gold status. Now it does include one free night

01:07:40.820 | certificate every year on anniversary, but it's only up to 35,000 points. You can use 15,000 other

01:07:45.860 | points to top it up. But finding a hotel that you want to stay at for 50,000 points for a big vacation

01:07:53.780 | or in a major metro area is really difficult. If you're going to a smaller town or you're going to

01:07:58.980 | a lot of international places, it might be a lot easier. But we've actually struggled to get use out

01:08:03.540 | of this. You're not going to find those kinds of things in a major metro area and a really nice hotel

01:08:09.060 | or a luxury resort or anything like that. So I think it's a little tricky to get use out of,

01:08:13.220 | but probably easy enough to get $95 of use out of that stay. You also get 15 elite nights that count

01:08:20.340 | towards the number of elite nights you need for status with Marriott. So one reason I have this

01:08:23.940 | card is to boost you towards your status level on Marriott. They're not cumulative on the personal

01:08:28.900 | side. So if you have a bunch of personal cards on Marriott and they all give you 15 nights,

01:08:32.980 | you only get 15. Whereas if you do have a business card, the business 15 and the personal 15 will

01:08:38.260 | stack to 30. So if you're going for Marriott status and you want to boost, this is the cheapest card

01:08:43.380 | to be able to do it. But unless you get a lot of value out of one free night a year at a 35 to

01:08:48.260 | 50,000 point property, it's a pretty expensive card for a somewhat low ROI on all your spend.

01:08:54.580 | So for that reason, I think it's probably a break-even card. You can't even get it as a

01:08:58.980 | new card. There's no signup bonus. I'm not really excited about this card. I'm going to put it at C tier.

01:09:05.540 | Next card on the list is the Bonvoy Bevy card. You'll notice that all of the Marriott cards have

01:09:10.580 | a B name. So Brilliant and Bevy and Boundless and that kind of stuff. So a little bit of alliteration.

01:09:15.620 | This is a 250 annual fee card. You get 6x on Bonvoy, 4x on grocery and restaurant up to $15,000 a year,

01:09:23.540 | and 2x on everything else. I kind of value Marriott points at 0.6 to 0.7 cents,

01:09:28.580 | which makes the what is this card really worth math a little trickier. So it's like 2.8% on grocery and

01:09:34.580 | restaurants and 1.4% on everything else. So on a spending basis, not an exciting card. Signup bonus

01:09:41.620 | right now is 135,000 points. You get 85,000 on 5,000 spend in six months. Another 50,000 if you

01:09:48.820 | spend 2,000 more in six months. Somewhat regularly, it goes up to 155,000 total. One of the perks here,

01:09:55.460 | if you do a lot of stays at Marriott, I guess this could be lucrative. You get an extra 1,000 points for

01:10:00.260 | every stay as long as you book that stay directly. You do get Bonvoy gold status, which is not that

01:10:05.220 | exciting. And then you get a 50,000 point free night certificate, but only after you spend $15,000.

01:10:11.060 | You get trip delay coverage, which isn't always normal for every card and you get premium internet.

01:10:15.060 | For $250, I want more out of a card, right? If I'm getting a hotel card, if I look at the Hilton card

01:10:21.380 | and I look at what I'm getting with the surpass, it's just so much more than I'm getting or could get

01:10:26.660 | with this Bonvoy bevy card. And so I'm not excited about this card. I'll put it in the C tier.

01:10:31.940 | It's probably better than, you know, the cards I'm putting in the D tier, but I'm not very excited

01:10:37.460 | about this card at all. Next is a Bonvoy brilliant card. This is a card I actually have. It has a really

01:10:41.620 | high annual fee at $650. It still earns the same 6x at Bonvoy, but you get 3x flights, 3x restaurants,

01:10:47.540 | 2x everything else. So on the earning side, again, if you value Marriott points at 0.7 cents,

01:10:53.460 | 2.1 on flights and restaurants, 1.4 on everything else, not an exciting card to spend on.

01:10:58.100 | Sign up bonus right now is 150,000 points. You get 100,000 after you spend 6k in six months,

01:11:03.620 | another 50,000 after you spend 2000 more in six months. It has been recently a few times as high

01:11:09.380 | as that same 150, but you also get a free night certificate. So if you're looking at this card

01:11:14.500 | and you can wait for a free night certificate, that'd probably be a much better offer.

01:11:18.180 | The primary reason you'd get this card and the reason I got this card was that you get free

01:11:22.180 | Bonvoy platinum status, which includes the breakfast offering and includes upgrades and the upgrades

01:11:27.220 | include standard sweets. So that's one compelling reason. And the other is that the high annual fee

01:11:33.140 | can be offset by primarily two of the benefits. So one, you get a $25 a month dining credit.

01:11:39.140 | So that $25 a month is at any restaurant. You just spend $25 or more at a restaurant, you get a credit.

01:11:44.580 | So for me, it's pretty easy to spend $25 a month at a restaurant. That's easily worth that $300 a year

01:11:50.900 | because we use that credit every month. I think there was one month we forgot and I just bought

01:11:54.420 | a $25 gift card at a restaurant and that credited as well. So that brings the annual fee down to 350.

01:11:59.620 | And then you get an annual 85,000 point free night certificate. Now you can also add on up to 15,000

01:12:05.220 | points, making it a 100,000 point stay. You can't go past that. But at 100,000 points, there are a lot

01:12:10.980 | of Marriott Bonvoy properties you can stay at that are really nice, that will probably fit into almost

01:12:15.300 | any vacation or trip you're staying at in a major metro area. So that's something that I think is pretty

01:12:20.740 | easy to get way more than $300 of value out of. You're probably not getting $1,000 of value like you

01:12:26.020 | would with the Hilton certificates that could be used at any property, but I definitely think

01:12:30.020 | you're going to get at least enough value to cover the rest of the annual fee and effectively negate

01:12:35.220 | the annual fee. And I haven't gotten my first one for upgrading to this. The reason that I got this

01:12:39.940 | card was actually that you can get to lifetime platinum status with Marriott if you have platinum

01:12:45.300 | status for 10 years and I think you need 600 nights at Marriott. Now the elite nights you get on

01:12:50.500 | this card count towards that. And so I'm two years away and I just wanted to hit that lifetime

01:12:54.660 | platinum status. It was just a target. I wanted to hit it and be done. And originally when I got

01:12:59.220 | this card, I thought I'm going to hit that and I'm going to cancel this card. I'm not going to hold onto

01:13:02.420 | it because now I have platinum for life. Who cares? And that might still be the case. But as I was

01:13:07.540 | thinking about it, the $25 a month dining credit, there's a little overhead to having to do it,

01:13:12.100 | but it's pretty easy to get that value out of. And that free night certificate, I'm fairly certain

01:13:16.020 | I'm going to be getting more than $350 of value because 100,000 Marriott points is probably worth $500

01:13:21.940 | plus in terms of the stays that I would regularly book with it. So maybe I'll keep this card for a

01:13:27.540 | long time. I haven't hit that free night yet. So let's see how I'm able to use it. But all the other

01:13:32.020 | benefits aren't that exciting to me. If you spend 60,000 points, you get an earned choice award,

01:13:37.140 | which is five night upgrade certificates, another 85,000 point free night certificate,

01:13:41.460 | 50,000 points or $1,000 off a bed, which I hope no one's choosing. You get $100 property credit,

01:13:46.740 | but like that Hilton deal, you have to book it through their link. And it's only at St.

01:13:50.500 | Regis and Ritz Carlton properties. I don't think I'll ever use that. You get your TSA pre global

01:13:55.140 | entry credit covered, which I have so many of those credits. It's not really much value to me.

01:13:59.060 | 25 elite nights. So if you're gunning for Marriott titanium or ambassador status,

01:14:04.100 | this is going to be the most helpful way to get you a headstart than all the other personal cards.

01:14:09.140 | You also get premium internet return protection, cell phone protection, trip delay, cancellation,

01:14:13.940 | interruption. So pretty good travel benefits on this card. So that's a Bomboy Brilliant card.

01:14:17.700 | I'm actually going to put this card up at A tier. Having gone through this process of evaluating it,

01:14:22.340 | I think if you stay at Bomboy properties enough, you've got a card with a high signup bonus.

01:14:27.700 | You got a card that will reward your Bomboy stays. You get free platinum status. That's breakfast on

01:14:32.260 | your stays. If you're going to do a five night stay at the St. Regis and Bora Bora, which we've done,

01:14:37.540 | having platinum status saved us hundreds of dollars, being able to get free breakfast every single day.

01:14:42.900 | On top of that, being able to offset the high annual fee with the dining credit and the free

01:14:47.380 | night certificates is pretty easy compared to some other high annual fee cards. So I'm going to put

01:14:52.260 | this at an A tier and I'm probably not going to cancel it. So the last card is the Bomboy business card.

01:14:56.740 | I have this card and I'm not quite sure why. And so we'll talk about that as I go through this.

01:15:01.540 | It's $125 annual fee. You get 6X on Bomboy, 4X restaurants, gas, telecom, shipping, 2X everything

01:15:08.260 | else. Right now, the offer is three free night certificates up to 50,000 points after you spend

01:15:12.980 | 6K in six months. It has been as high as five nights as a free night certificates, which is a

01:15:17.860 | really awesome bonus. If you add on points to get that to 65,000 points as a free night certificate,

01:15:24.020 | I think you can find a lot more properties than at that 35,000 point level I talked about.

01:15:28.260 | They do give you a Bomboy business rate of 7% off. I've never tested that. You do get 15

01:15:33.620 | elite nights. And unlike all the personal cards that don't stack, the business ones do. So if you had

01:15:38.420 | that Bomboy brilliant and you had the Bomboy business, you'd get 40 nights towards status.

01:15:43.540 | So obviously you wouldn't care about platinum because you already have it from the card.

01:15:46.340 | But if you're going for titanium status, you'd be 40 of the 75 nights you need to get there,

01:15:51.140 | which is pretty great. You also get the anniversary free night certificate here for 35,000

01:15:54.980 | point stay. I think you can get a couple hundred dollars of value of that, but it's kind of a pain,

01:15:59.380 | at least for our travel style. If you spend another 60,000 points, you get a second one.

01:16:03.780 | This is definitely not as compelling as the Hilton cards where spending 60,000 gets you a free night

01:16:09.300 | at any property versus here, you're getting a free night at any property up to 35,000 points.

01:16:14.820 | You get Bomboy gold, you get premium Wi-Fi, and that's about it. So Bomboy business card,

01:16:20.180 | way less compelling than a lot of the cards here. So the saving grace here, which is why I'm going to

01:16:23.620 | put it at B tier, which is a little bit surprising how I described it, is that one, if you can get it

01:16:27.620 | when it's a five free night certificate signup bonus, that is massive. I genuinely think those

01:16:32.100 | free night certificates could probably be worth, let's say, $300 to $500. And so five of them is worth

01:16:37.060 | $1,500 to $2,500. So awesome signup bonus.

01:16:38.580 | So awesome signup bonus. Forex Bomboy points on restaurants, gas, telecom shipping,

01:16:43.140 | probably worth around 2.8% back in Marriott points. Not that exciting. But getting a bonus 15 elite

01:16:49.300 | nights, if you're someone going for Marriott status, if you're going for titanium, which ends up also

01:16:53.860 | getting you silver on United. So you get free check bags there. I think it also maybe gets you

01:16:58.420 | some Air Canada status. I can't quite remember. There's definitely some value to having a business

01:17:02.020 | card because you can stack those elite nights. And I do think you can get more than $125 of value

01:17:07.060 | from the anniversary free night certificate. So net net, I think it's a worthwhile card,

01:17:12.020 | but I'm not extremely excited to have it. So like I said, I'm going to put it at the B tier.

01:17:16.660 | So that's almost every card on Amex that we're going to run through. There are a few cards that

01:17:20.580 | you'll notice I missed and I didn't include both the everyday and the everyday preferred card.

01:17:25.060 | They're not available to new customers anymore, and you can't product change to them. So I'm excluding

01:17:29.300 | those. I'm also excluding some of the third party cards that aren't ones you would necessarily get

01:17:34.340 | from American Express. So the Coinbase card that's coming out, which by now I will have talked about

01:17:38.820 | briefly.

01:17:39.300 | And then there's a Schwab investor card that you don't get from Amex. So I'm excluding those cards.

01:17:47.460 | So last two are the Amazon cards. There's the Amazon business, Amazon business prime. If you don't have

01:17:52.020 | an Amazon prime, you're getting 3% on Amazon, 2% on gas, restaurants, and phone, and $100 signup bonus.

01:17:59.940 | This is not exciting to me at all in any way, shape, or form D tier card.

01:18:04.100 | Now, if you have Amazon prime and you get the Amazon business prime card, you're getting 5%

01:18:08.900 | on Amazon, and then the same 2% on gas, restaurants, and phone with a $125 signup bonus.

01:18:15.460 | So $125 over $100, no one's getting this card for the signup bonus. That's not really exciting to me at

01:18:20.900 | all. However, the reason to get this card is if you spend a lot for your business on Amazon,

01:18:25.620 | you're getting 5% back. And so where this card falls on the spectrum really depends on how much

01:18:29.860 | you spend on Amazon. If you're a business that spends a ton of money on Amazon, this is an A

01:18:33.460 | tier card. And I'll probably put it on A tier because 5% back on a place you can buy an extremely

01:18:39.460 | large quantity of stuff for no annual fee is interesting. But $125 signup bonus, no extra

01:18:45.460 | benefits or perks makes it really hard to move it up to the S tier in any way. But that 5% on Amazon,

01:18:50.580 | we have an Amazon prime card, we have the personal one, and we use it for all of our Amazon spend.

01:18:54.900 | Now that it's pretty tough to get Amazon gift cards for any less than that.

01:18:59.540 | So that is all the Amex cards. I'm going to put a link to the photo of the tier list I made in case

01:19:04.900 | you want to take a look at it and see where everything's stacked up. Hopefully that was

01:19:07.780 | really helpful. Let's talk about the nuances of Amex and some of the perks and the benefits.

01:19:12.900 | And then let's talk about membership rewards, wrap up with some of the application rules and how

01:19:17.220 | Amex stacks up against other earning platforms. So first off, a few other things about the Amex platform

01:19:22.500 | that I really love that I want to talk about. So first off is Amex offers. So every single one

01:19:27.300 | of these Amex cards we've talked about has the ability to enroll in offers. And how this works,

01:19:32.180 | we've talked about card linked offers before. I think Amex has some of the best. So you can go in

01:19:37.220 | and you can look at all of these offers with different brands and add them to your cards.

01:19:41.060 | And I looked and amongst all the Amex cards I've had over the lifetime of those cards,

01:19:46.420 | I've earned over $2,000 in Amex offer rewards. And on one card, the card I've held almost the

01:19:52.740 | longest, it's been almost $1,000, $979. Things like earning $45 at Mint Mobile, earning $25 at

01:19:59.940 | Love Every, $100 at Home Depot, $100 at Best Buy, $100 at Dell, $60 at Marriott, $60 at Delta,

01:20:05.300 | and so on and so on. A ton of great offers. I love adding Amex offers and seeing what's in there

01:20:10.420 | because every time I look, it feels like there's at least one thing that I might be spending money on.

01:20:14.740 | Now it's a lot of overhead to keep track of them. And once you add one of the offers to one card,

01:20:20.180 | even though you might see it on multiple cards, it typically goes away from those other cards,

01:20:24.660 | unless you add it on all cards at the same time. That's something really hard to do manually on

01:20:28.900 | your own. But if you use the Card Pointers app and you have Card Pointers Pro and you use their browser

01:20:34.260 | extension, every time you log into Amex, it's going to add all the offers from all the cards at the same

01:20:40.020 | time so you can get them as many times as you want. That means that if you had a $50 off $200 Home Depot

01:20:45.140 | credit, you could use that on all of the Amex cards you have and get it multiple times. So that's

01:20:51.220 | probably why I've been able to get so much value because sometimes there's an offer and it might be

01:20:55.300 | $100 at Best Buy and I can put it on three different cards. And that's amazing. So I love Amex offers,

01:21:00.180 | but I really love Amex offers paired with Card Pointers. If you haven't checked out Card Pointers,

01:21:04.340 | go to allthehacks.com/cardpointers. You get 30% off. You also get 50% off if you're an All The Hacks member.

01:21:09.860 | So that's allthehacks.com/join. So I love Amex offers. Definitely check them out.

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01:23:04.180 | in the description. A couple other few things that I like about Amex. You get a free credit

01:23:07.300 | score and it's a FICO score from Experian. So that's awesome. If you're applying for cards,

01:23:12.020 | almost every single card, they have this safe to apply feature where you can basically enter all of

01:23:17.940 | your information and they will tell you whether you're going to be approved before they do a hard

01:23:22.180 | pull on your credit. And if you have an Amex card already, they often don't even do a hard pull for a new

01:23:26.980 | application anyways. So I've found that if my credit is completely locked, I can still apply for

01:23:32.580 | a new Amex card and get approved without ever needing to unlock my credit. Never get the hard

01:23:37.780 | inquiry. Love that about Amex. A few other things. For some cards, you get an instant card number.

01:23:43.220 | I've gotten it recently on the business gold and I think a business platinum card. Those new card numbers

01:23:47.700 | do have a $10,000 limit, but allows you to spend that money instantly. So if you see one of those awesome

01:23:52.420 | signup bonuses and you have an opportunity to spend at the same time, getting an Amex business platinum

01:23:57.860 | and being able to spend right away is a really great way to start working towards that bonus.

01:24:02.100 | I mentioned before that all the membership rewards cards except the Blue Business Plus are charge cards

01:24:06.340 | and so they don't have a set limit and you have to pay them off in full at the end of the month.

01:24:09.780 | Well, Amex also has a program called Pay Over Time. While I don't love the idea of paying a high

01:24:14.100 | interest fee to pay a card over time, there have been times where Amex targets you for a,

01:24:20.340 | hey, if you enroll in pay over time, you can get 10 to 30,000 membership rewards points.

01:24:25.060 | So I've enrolled in pay over time as many times as I can to get the points, but I've never used

01:24:29.300 | it because I have no interest in paying really high interest rates on my credit cards. A couple other

01:24:33.060 | awesome things. Amex does offer retention offers. So if you have a credit card and has a high annual fee

01:24:38.820 | and you're not sure you want to keep it, you can live chat or call in with Amex and ask them,

01:24:43.220 | are there any retention offers right now? And I've in the past gotten annual fees,

01:24:47.940 | even as high as the platinum card waived. I've gotten offers to spend a certain amount of money

01:24:53.300 | and get 10, 20, 40, 50, 60,000 bonus points, all kinds of stuff like that. So if you have a card

01:24:59.940 | with an annual fee coming up and once it hits, you want to call or chat and see if their retention

01:25:04.340 | offers, it can be a great way to boost your points balance or maybe reduce that annual fee for that

01:25:08.500 | year. A couple other great things. If you have a membership rewards card and you use Rakuten,

01:25:12.660 | the online shopping portal, you can link your Rakuten and Amex account.

01:25:16.660 | So instead of earning 10% back on Rakuten, you'll earn 10x Amex points. And because I've

01:25:22.660 | consistently been able to get one and a half to two or more cents of value for my Amex points,

01:25:27.300 | it means that everything I'm earning on Rakuten is one and a half to two times more valuable

01:25:32.020 | than it's being marketed, which is amazing. Amex also has a referral program. So you can go to refer

01:25:37.060 | a friend at the bottom of the page and see which cards you're eligible to refer from. And then you can

01:25:42.100 | share those links with people. And if they sign up for cards, you earn membership rewards points.

01:25:47.540 | Or if you're referring cards in the Hilton or Marriott or Delta portfolio, you might earn points

01:25:52.340 | and miles in those programs. And it doesn't have to be that someone signs up for the exact card you have.

01:25:57.860 | I know if you look at my Hilton referral link, it actually shows all the Hilton cards. And sometimes

01:26:03.380 | someone could go from that page and even navigate over to another Amex card and you'll get that bonus.

01:26:09.380 | So I will say look at what the bonus is on each link. If you had a gold card bonus that was 10,000

01:26:14.980 | points and a platinum card bonus that was 20,000 points, even if someone was going to apply for a

01:26:19.300 | gold card through your link, maybe send them the platinum card bonus so that they click through the

01:26:23.460 | gold card from that link and you get the 20,000 points instead of the 10. So definitely go read

01:26:27.700 | through those terms. But those referral links are often better than some of the affiliate links on a

01:26:32.020 | lot of blogs. And so that's why for all the Hacks members, we've been collecting Amex referral links

01:26:36.820 | so that when you go to all the hacks.com/cards, you're actually seeing the best offers out there,

01:26:40.820 | but they're not affiliate links where we make money. They're all of our member referral links.

01:26:44.660 | So if you want to get some of those deals, or if you want to join the membership so you can share your

01:26:48.660 | referral links, go to all the hacks.com/join. Just know that as you earn membership rewards or points and

01:26:54.420 | miles from Amex with referrals, you should expect to get a 1099 at the year. Those bonus points are going to be

01:27:00.180 | taxable income for you. Let's see on the business cards. One of the other things I really like about

01:27:04.660 | Amex is they sometimes offer bonuses for adding employees to your cards. So let's say you have

01:27:09.460 | three employees. They might say if you add an employee card and they spend $4,000 on the card,

01:27:13.780 | you might get 7,000 membership rewards points. So this is only going to show up on your business cards.

01:27:18.580 | It's not always an offer. It just comes from time to time and it's usually only for the first five

01:27:23.380 | employees. But if you have a business with lots of employees and you can get some extra bonus points

01:27:27.860 | issuing those cards in their name, you can do that. And for a lot of the cards with annual fees,

01:27:32.020 | they will give you the option to add an authorized user or employee card with an annual fee, but they'll

01:27:36.420 | also give you an option to add a zero annual fee card. It won't have any of the perks and benefits,

01:27:40.980 | but it will count towards those bonuses. One other thing, which maybe isn't a thing to love,

01:27:44.580 | but it's a thing to know is that because Amex cards do not come with primary rental car coverage,

01:27:49.460 | Amex has created this premium rental car protection program where if you enroll almost every Amex card

01:27:55.060 | in it, you do get primary coverage for up to 42 days on any of your rental cars. However, you pay $20

01:28:01.940 | to $25 per rental and you can't selectively enable it. So once you enable it for a card,

01:28:08.020 | anytime there's an Avis charge, anytime there's a Hertz charge, you're going to get charged that $25

01:28:12.580 | or $20 and it's going to activate for that rental. So keep that in mind. I don't ever use this except

01:28:18.420 | for a couple of reasons. There are a few vehicle types. Maybe it's a truck that might not be covered

01:28:22.820 | by your other rental car coverage. So maybe this could make sense. It's never been a thing for me,

01:28:26.820 | but throwing that out there. And then also, if you have a really generous Amex offer,

01:28:31.940 | let's say you've got $100 off a Hertz rental and you have a $300 rental, well, you're going to save

01:28:37.140 | $100 booking through Amex and paying for that card on your Amex versus paying for a car with primary

01:28:42.900 | rental car coverage. I would absolutely rather get a hundred free dollars and pay $20 for the rental

01:28:48.180 | coverage than get no free hundred dollars and get free rental car coverage. But I would enable the

01:28:52.980 | rental car protection, use it for that rental, and then I would turn it off before the next time I rent

01:28:56.980 | a car. One last thing. On credit limits, when you have a charge card, there is no limit. But for the

01:29:01.620 | cards where you do have a credit limit, you can go online and reallocate credit between those cards.

01:29:07.380 | You can do it between a Delta and a Marriott and a Hilton card because those are all credit line

01:29:13.780 | cards that have credit limits, but you can't do it from business to personal. So you can do it within

01:29:17.700 | personal cards, within business cards, across co-brands, but you can't do it to your charge cards,

01:29:22.260 | your gold, platinum, green cards, because they are not cards with credit limits.

01:29:26.660 | Okay, so that's all some of the nuances and things I like about Amex. Let's talk membership rewards.

01:29:30.980 | So membership rewards is probably the longest standing transferable points currency.

01:29:35.860 | It is awesome. I have tons of them. I'm very happy I have them. There are some terrible ways that you

01:29:40.660 | can use to redeem them, but for the most part, the best value is going to be transferring them to

01:29:45.220 | airlines and hotels. But let's knock some out of the way that are not great.

01:29:48.660 | Gift cards, Amazon, statement credit are all going to give you 0.6 to 0.7 cents.

01:29:53.220 | Terrible use. Booking travel through Amex travel is going to give you one cent.

01:29:57.140 | Now, if you do have the business platinum card, you'll get 35% of those points back,

01:30:01.220 | which makes it 1.54 cents, but only if you're booking travel on the airline you've selected.

01:30:06.820 | And it's the airline you've selected for your $200 a year travel credit.

01:30:10.100 | So great way to redeem points if you don't want the hassle of transferring,

01:30:13.700 | but you want to get a higher value than one cent. If you have the business centurion,

01:30:17.460 | you can go up to two cents. I'm guessing most people listening to this do not. I've only seen

01:30:21.460 | maybe one in the wild ever. If you have a Morgan Stanley or Charles Schwab card, like I mentioned,

01:30:26.340 | you can transfer your points to your brokerage account. Charles Schwab, you get 1.1 cent of value

01:30:30.100 | up to a million points. Then it goes down to 0.8. And Morgan Stanley, you get one cent of value

01:30:34.260 | unlimited. So that's a great option. Or if you have an Amex business checking account,

01:30:38.980 | and you have the Amex business platinum card, you can transfer from your Amex membership

01:30:44.340 | rewards balance to your checking account balance, and you can get one cent per point up to a million

01:30:48.980 | points. And then it also drops down to 0.8 cents like the Charles Schwab one does. And on the business

01:30:53.780 | checking account, they have often had signup bonuses for opening a new business checking account,

01:30:58.420 | get up to 70,000 points for doing it. So that's a pretty cool offer to earn some extra membership

01:31:03.540 | rewards points. Just keep in mind, never close that account. I thought maybe I would want to have

01:31:08.500 | one again after having had one in the past, because I thought, wow, if I ever need to cash

01:31:13.940 | out my Amex points, it's nice to have another option. However, they have some rule where once

01:31:18.820 | you've had it, the same business can never have it again. If it's been close, they have no way to get

01:31:23.380 | you a new one. So you have to go create a new business to be able to get one. So not something

01:31:27.460 | that I have found a way to work around yet. I guess I just need to start a new business or set

01:31:31.620 | it up as a sole proprietor. But one of the other features of the business checking account is that

01:31:35.540 | you can earn one membership reward point per $2 spent on a debit card. So 0.5 X points.

01:31:42.020 | Now, that's not compelling if you could otherwise spend money on a credit card.

01:31:46.020 | But if there are places where you can spend money on a debit card that doesn't otherwise take a credit

01:31:50.180 | card or has really high fees, that is a way to earn membership rewards points.

01:31:54.260 | I have been told it does not work for tax payments, but I have not done a lot of testing.

01:31:58.660 | And I would encourage you to search around on fire talk or Reddit to see if you can find some more

01:32:02.260 | reports, but could be an interesting opportunity to earn points on things that you might not otherwise

01:32:07.460 | be able to earn points on. So there are three ways to kind of cash out your points without having to

01:32:11.380 | book travel at way better rates than statement credits or gift cards or Amazon.

01:32:15.620 | That said, the way I like to get the most value out of my Amex points is by transferring them to

01:32:19.540 | different airlines and hotel groups. Amex has 19 airlines, three hotels. I think they either have

01:32:24.900 | or are tied for the most number of transfer partners out there with Capital One, but tons of great options.

01:32:29.860 | I already recorded an episode about the best transfer partners, so I don't want to go down a deep rabbit

01:32:34.580 | hole of every single transfer partner I love. Some of the highlights from Amex are

01:32:38.580 | Avios, whether that's British Airways or any of their other Avios partners, Air France flying blue,

01:32:43.300 | especially for families. Virgin Atlantic has some great sweet spots, but you got to be careful of the

01:32:48.420 | fees that come with those bookings. Air Canada Aeroplan is probably one that I've used more than any other

01:32:53.940 | one because they just have so many partners and access to so many different Star Alliance airlines.

01:32:59.060 | I've used them a ton, especially flying United flights to Europe and Asia. I haven't used a lot of

01:33:04.020 | Singapore and Avianca miles, but sometimes they have some good options. So that's something to keep

01:33:08.260 | in mind. They can also transfer to Delta, which I don't think you get a ton of value from, but it

01:33:12.340 | is an option out there on the hotel side. I don't really like transferring to choice or Marriott,

01:33:17.460 | even though they have them as options. Maybe if they have a transfer bonus, it could be worth it.

01:33:21.940 | The one that makes the most sense on the hotel side is probably Hilton. And I still don't love

01:33:26.740 | transferring to Hilton at a one to two ratio because Hilton points typically are worth about half a cent.

01:33:31.380 | And so that's really not getting more than a cent of value from your Amex points. However, when they do have

01:33:36.580 | a transfer bonus, I think Hilton can be a compelling destination for your points. Transfer bonuses are

01:33:41.460 | pretty common with Amex. They do about 17 to 25 of them every single year. And pretty consistently for the

01:33:47.700 | past few years, they've done every year one to Hilton, Avianca, Marriott, Air France, Virgin, Cathay Pacific,

01:33:53.540 | and Avios. So a lot of ways to get your points transferred out. We've talked a ton about why transferring

01:33:58.740 | your points is really valuable. So I won't cover that here, but Amex gives you so many options.

01:34:03.780 | And if you want a free award search tool, and if you're not familiar with the word search tools,

01:34:08.500 | I'll link to an episode in the show notes, but basically a way to search for flights using your

01:34:12.180 | points and miles. As an Amex cardholder, you get access to point.me for free.

01:34:17.620 | Now it is a limited version of point.me that only shows you results from Amex transfer partners.

01:34:23.620 | However, if you have a bunch of Amex points and you want a free search tool to go see how you can get

01:34:28.020 | the most value from those points, you can get access to a free tool without having to pay any fees.

01:34:32.420 | So I'll link to the Amex point.me link in the show notes. I think it's a great option.

01:34:36.500 | As for moving points, Amex is unfortunately one of the most restrictive programs.

01:34:40.260 | If you and your partner both have membership rewards accounts, you cannot move membership

01:34:44.980 | rewards points between people. So both of you, as long as you have membership rewards points that

01:34:49.700 | you don't want to lose, will need to keep at least one membership rewards point earning card.

01:34:54.100 | However, if you have an authorized user on one of your cards, or you have an employee card,

01:34:59.460 | and they've been active for 90 days, you can transfer those points, not between Amex accounts,

01:35:06.020 | but to the loyalty programs of those authorized users.

01:35:09.460 | So I could transfer to my wife's Aeroplan account and not mine.

01:35:13.540 | So if we wanted to combine our points, we couldn't combine Amex points,

01:35:17.220 | but we could combine them at the destination of the airliner hotel program.

01:35:21.060 | So that's how you move points with Amex.

01:35:22.900 | So coming up on the end, I want to talk about the rules for opening up Amex cards.

01:35:27.060 | So obviously, I mentioned earlier, you can check to see if you're approved without

01:35:30.900 | impacting your personal credit score. So that's great.

01:35:33.620 | I talked a little bit about the lifetime rules where you can't get the signup bonus more than once,

01:35:37.620 | unless you've gotten kind of a targeted offer that has this no lifetime language.

01:35:41.540 | So if you get those targeted offers, take a look, read them, see if they have that language.

01:35:45.220 | If not, which they usually don't, that's great.

01:35:47.140 | Otherwise, you're probably not going to get a bonus if you've already had the card.

01:35:51.220 | And Amex is pretty nice. They do a little pop up that says, "Hey, you're about to apply for this.

01:35:55.060 | You're not going to get the bonus. Are you sure you want to continue?"

01:35:57.620 | And so keep that in mind when you're applying. In case you do want the card, you might still want

01:36:01.540 | it even if you're not going to get the bonus. It seems like Amex forgets that you've had a card

01:36:05.460 | card after maybe seven years-ish. So maybe the lifetime rule is the seven-year rule,

01:36:10.420 | but with technology going forward, that rule might not be the same.

01:36:13.780 | When it comes to charge cards, you can only have 10 of them. So that's the green, gold,

01:36:17.860 | platinum, centurion, I guess the plum card. But we have not come close to hitting the 10 charge

01:36:22.660 | card max limit. On the credit card side, that is cards with limits. You can only have five.

01:36:27.620 | And so if you had maybe two Delta cards, two Hilton cards, and we're going for two Bonvoy cards,

01:36:32.660 | nope, you can't have any more. Like I mentioned, there are family rules. So it's a little bit

01:36:37.140 | confusing, but in a lot of the families, you can't get a bonus on a cheaper card if you've already had

01:36:42.020 | a more premium version of the card. So if you've had the platinum, you can't get the gold bonus.

01:36:46.020 | If you've had the Delta Reserve, you can't get the Delta gold bonus. And so you kind of run through

01:36:50.100 | that language. You can search around to look for Amex family rules. I'll put a link in the show

01:36:54.500 | notes to the Marriott rules because they're super confusing. But keep in mind the sequencing

01:36:59.220 | of opening cards if you're looking for bonuses. As for other rules, Amex has a one in five rule.

01:37:04.420 | It doesn't affect charge cards, but if you're applying for credit cards,

01:37:07.540 | you can only get approved for one in five days. So you could apply for a charge and a credit card

01:37:12.180 | on the same day. But do keep in mind that you have to hit those minimum spends. So make sure you

01:37:16.420 | can do that before getting more than one card in a day. But also keep in mind, it doesn't usually

01:37:20.500 | have a big impact on your credit score because once you have one Amex card,

01:37:23.700 | they typically only do soft pulls after that. So that's a great feature of Amex.

01:37:27.380 | The other one is a two in 90 rule. You can only get approved for two credit cards every 90 days.

01:37:32.340 | That means that if you apply for a third card within a 90 day window, you'll automatically be

01:37:36.260 | rejected. So keep that in mind. Again, that's only credit cards and not charge cards. So you can get

01:37:40.500 | as many charge cards as you want in that 90 day window. However, you typically can't get the same

01:37:45.700 | card within a 90 day window. So if you applied for a business platinum card and got approved,

01:37:50.420 | and then you got one of those mailers and you wanted to do another one, you'd get declined

01:37:54.100 | If you try to do that within 90 days. Finally, when it comes to product changing,

01:37:57.780 | Amex does allow you to move around cards. So if you had a gold card, you could move it up to a platinum.

01:38:02.340 | Sometimes you'll even get an upgrade offer. And so we've definitely seen upgrade offers going from

01:38:06.500 | business gold to business platinum, gold to platinum, sometimes Hilton surpassed to aspire,

01:38:11.300 | that kind of thing. So you can move around, you can't upgrade within the first year. And I think

01:38:16.740 | that's a rule across all cards and you can't cross over. So you can't go from membership rewards to

01:38:21.700 | cash back or to Hilton or to Marriott, but within each co brand you can. So you can change within the

01:38:27.620 | Delta cards, the Marriott cards within the Hilton cards, but you can't change within business and

01:38:32.180 | personal. So I think that's all the rules to summarize reasons. I love Amex. Awesome customer service.

01:38:38.820 | The lounge network is something that if you have a platinum or business platinum card is really unique.

01:38:43.380 | I guess also if you have a Delta card and you get access to Centurion lounges, we use those Amex

01:38:48.100 | Centurion and the escape lounges pretty regularly, multiple times a year, along with that great customer

01:38:52.740 | service, really strong purchase and travel protection. I've never had a challenge with a claim that we've

01:38:57.540 | made and we've done a few of them. So that's awesome. A lot of people like the Amex fine hotels and resorts

01:39:01.860 | program to get access to some perks at luxury hotels. I will say, I think they have 2200 hotels,

01:39:08.180 | the all the hacks upgrade program, I think has every one of those 2200 plus another 1800 for

01:39:13.220 | about 4000 total. So all the hacks.com/upgrade. I think that's a better option, but I'm a little

01:39:18.660 | biased. Amex offers, they could be so lucrative. I've gotten $2,000 of value from Amex offers and

01:39:23.380 | probably a few hundred in the last year. So pairing that with card pointers can be really great.

01:39:28.820 | You also get a pop up. If you're on a website and you use the card pointers extension, it'll say,

01:39:32.580 | Hey, wait, you've got an Amex offer at this website. Make sure to use this card. And sometimes I don't

01:39:37.780 | even realize that, you know, we were on the Chewy website to order something for our dog. And it was

01:39:42.100 | like, Hey, wait, go use this card because you've got a $15 card linked offer. Diversification versus

01:39:46.660 | other programs. Really solid, massive transfer partner list. But a lot of the unique programs

01:39:53.220 | that are only available to Amex are a little lacking, right? Up until three days from now,

01:39:58.500 | or four days from now, they've had Hawaiian, which can backdoor into Alaska. That's going away. They have

01:40:03.940 | ANA, which is unique and has some really good value, but the transfer times to ANA are long and

01:40:09.060 | the ANA points expire. So I'd say you really want to be a pro in using ANA before you transfer there.

01:40:14.580 | And then Delta, not a lot of reason to transfer to Delta because their points just don't have the

01:40:19.140 | same value that many other programs are. If there's a bonus on Hilton, I think that could be good.

01:40:23.700 | Maybe that's a unique, great option. So really solid list of partners, but none of them stand out as,

01:40:31.220 | wow, get Amex for this specific partner. More get Amex because there are a lot of partners. And

01:40:37.140 | maybe with the loss of Hawaiian, we'll see Amex add something else. I could imagine in the same way

01:40:42.500 | they're going to launch a new business and personal platinum card to compete with the CSR. Newsflash,

01:40:47.940 | right now, once you lose Hawaiian, Amex will not have the most number of transfer partners.

01:40:51.860 | So I could see them wanting to have the most number and add one just to make sure that they're one step

01:40:56.820 | ahead, Capital One. Less exciting is that they don't have a personal card with no annual

01:41:00.980 | fee that you can use to maintain your membership rewards points.

01:41:03.700 | And maybe more so internationally, Amex is not accepted everywhere. I don't think I've ever had

01:41:09.860 | an issue trying to use an Amex and have it not be accepted. But I just saw a post of someone talking

01:41:15.060 | about cards to use overseas in our membership. And they were saying, well, they live in Spain and

01:41:20.100 | sometimes it's a little bit challenging to use an Amex card. But either way, it could be challenging

01:41:23.940 | sometimes. And so finally, what I want to look at is the other least exciting thing about Amex is it's

01:41:29.460 | hard to make a case for Amex as your only platform for points. So if you just want to earn points in

01:41:36.020 | one program, I feel like that's where Amex doesn't shine. So I looked at all the programs. And if you

01:41:42.260 | look at Capital One, Wells Fargo City, if you have two cards with them, and by the way, those two cards

01:41:48.340 | total an annual fee of $0 to $95 in all three of those programs, for the typical household

01:41:54.900 | spending, and I use Bureau of Labor Statistics data to come up with this number, you're going to earn

01:41:59.540 | 2.26 to 2.33 points on all your spending. When I use my own spending, it's about 2.11 to 2.35x points.

01:42:08.900 | So that's me. And that's kind of general American population that I think has a 100,000 household

01:42:15.300 | income. I use the upper end of that spending data. So you're going to earn 2.26, 2.33. Let's round it

01:42:20.100 | off, say 2.3 points per dollar. If you just focus on Capital One, Wells Fargo, or City. If you just focus

01:42:25.940 | on Amex, the two card combo that you'd probably want that will maximize your earnings on the

01:42:31.140 | personal side is the Amex green and the Amex gold, you're going to have $400 of annual fees. So four

01:42:36.820 | times the annual fees, and you're only going to end up with about 1.96x points. For my spending profile,

01:42:43.380 | it was actually 1.85. So meaningfully less points. So for me personally, that'd be 20% less points. So

01:42:50.100 | don't love that. If you do add the blue business plus card, where you get 2x points on everything up

01:42:56.660 | to $50,000, and you pair that with the Amex gold or the Amex green, depending on your spending profile,

01:43:02.340 | and you don't spend that much, right? If you're only spending, let's call it $75,000 a year,

01:43:07.780 | that number does go up to about 2.37x. But keep in mind, you only have $50,000 of spend at that 2x. So

01:43:16.020 | it depends how much money you spend. So while I do love the Amex platform, I don't think I could

01:43:21.060 | make an argument that is the only place you should be accruing points. Now, it's still better than

01:43:25.540 | Chase, right? Now, if you look at my favorite Chase combo, which is the Chase Sapphire Reserve

01:43:30.420 | and the Freedom Unlimited, you've now got a $795 annual fee. And with the Bureau of Labor Statistics

01:43:36.580 | data, you're earning 1.87 points on average. And with my data, you're earning 1.75.

01:43:42.340 | So Chase is the worst program to have just two cards at, if you're really trying to optimize.

01:43:48.020 | Obviously, you could go for the Chase Sapphire Preferred instead of the Chase Sapphire Reserve.

01:43:52.500 | You'd go an annual fee down to $95 for those two cards. And that would probably end you up at about

01:43:58.100 | 1.8x points, which is still not as good as Amex, but lower than Capital One, Wells Fargo and City.

01:44:04.020 | So I still think the best option for everyday spending is to make sure you have a 2x everything card

01:44:09.780 | to pair with all of your bonus spending. And the reason why Capital One, Wells Fargo and City are

01:44:15.060 | such better performers is that all three of them have a 2x points card. Some of them, you do have

01:44:19.620 | to have other cards to get 2x points. So the City Double Cash earns 2% back. But if you have the City

01:44:25.140 | Premier, you can transfer those into points. Capital One, you could go venture venture X without having

01:44:29.700 | to worry about another card and have a 2x everything card. So all that said, Amex signup bonuses are better

01:44:36.580 | than all of the others. Where else can you get 200 to 250,000 points for a new card? And that's at least

01:44:41.860 | on the business side. But right now on the personal side, 100 to 175,000 points on personal cards.

01:44:47.940 | That is incredible. It's another reason to love Amex. And on top of the signup bonuses,

01:44:52.180 | when you start to layer in everything else, Amex offers, employee card offers, retention card

01:44:57.220 | offers, you add it all together. There's a reason I have more Amex cards than anything else. Especially

01:45:01.940 | if you're a business spending on categories like those 4x business categories, it can be really,

01:45:06.500 | really compelling. So I love Amex. I'm a huge fan. There's a reason we have all the cards. There's a

01:45:11.460 | reason we have all the points. But I think that it's hard to make a case to just accumulate Amex points.

01:45:17.300 | So I hope this episode was helpful. It was definitely a long one. We went through so much.

01:45:22.900 | And that is it for this week. Podcast at allthehacks.com if you want to get in touch. I will see you next week.

I Ranked Every Amex Credit Card (Best Cards in 2025)

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