The writer understood why travel creators were talking about these cards—but he was curious why so many personal finance writers covered them (enter: yours truly). Travel credit cards are about as close to “controversial” territory as we have in the tactical world of compound interest calculators and high-yield savings accounts, because credit cards (and debt in general) have long been associated with irresponsibility. 

But as I told the Post, travel rewards were a semi-integral part of my financial awakening. In a time when I had little disposable income and a desire to experience my twenties in places other than my apartment complex’s courtyard, they enabled me to take weekend trips I wouldn’t have been able to easily afford without them. 

More than that, they were fun. 

There was so little in my financial life at the time that felt within my scope of control: I was quietly making responsible choices about what to do with my $1,600 bimonthly paychecks, living within my means, and notching up my 401(k) contributions like the good little aspiring retiree I was, but as every finance book I read at the time reminded me, there weren’t shortcuts on this path. Compounding took time, and time had to be spent somehow. 

But the ability to research which cards had the best bonuses, and how to cobble those bonuses together for a free stay at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas (the absolute lap of hedonistic luxury as far as 25-year-old Katie was concerned)? The freedom to execute a strategy that would afford me a $75 breakfast credit every day of my trip? (This was more than I spent on weekly groceries at the time.) Titillating. An amusement park for the mind. In October 2021, I published a post about my love affair with travel rewards that included the well-adjusted and not-at-all concerning line, “Pay for my coffin with points and host my funeral in the Centurion Lounge.” I didn’t grow up traveling, and this mystical universe of points and miles is what enabled me to leave the US for the first time at the age of 23.

Forget a path with shortcuts—this was an entire world of shortcuts, loopholes, and free upgrades, readily retrofittable to my new personality of Fiscally Prudent Young Person. Credit card points were like extreme couponing for people with a superiority complex. 

I never carried a balance on the cards (and therefore paid no interest) and my credit score was rapidly approaching 800 (leaving me unworried about long-term financial damage), so travel credit cards felt like a game I could play…and win. In retrospect, I think I derived more enjoyment from finding ways to get trips for as cheaply as possible than I did on the trips themselves.

Credit card points were my cheat meal in a world of rice and beans. In the grand scheme of my portfolio accumulation process, they didn’t play an outsized role, but they were a treat for all my other boring, sensible choices. Every time my Ultimate Rewards points transported me from the trappings of my normal life of meal prepping and working overtime to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico, I felt like I was taking a magic carpet ride into a rich person’s life, an experience I documented at the time with delirious wonderment. 

Often the debate about whether travel rewards (and the plasticware you must obtain to participate) are “worth the hassle” focuses tangentially on the question of credit card debt more broadly, or attempts to dissect the trade-off of time spent. On the latter question, Nick Maggiulli suggests you’re wasting your time on maximizing rewards if you make more than $200,000 per year. 

Because there’s a payoff in the form of fake tokens you can redeem for real travel, it’s assumed that the only gauge by which you can judge worthiness is whether the effort spent engineering the trip generates a commensurate amount of money saved. The idea that it’s “not worth your time” usually rests on the assumption that your time could be better spent doing something more valuable, like, I don’t know, negotiating a raise. But we don’t use the same language about leisure activities like Netflix (TV isn’t worth your time!), because we don’t expect things we do for fun to meet stringent ROI requirements. Some people find enjoyment—find pleasure—in pulling one over on the fine folks at American Express or scoring a really gratifying redemption. 

I’m in a different phase of life now (and mostly pay for my travel with real money, as I can finally afford to), but I still get a secret thrill from swapping out my accumulated points from regular spending for $1,000 off an international round-trip ticket. I don’t spend hours scouring the internet for the best redemption value (…very often) anymore, but nothing compares to the illicit joy of falling asleep in a hotel room you didn’t actually “pay” for—and I stand by that. 

The good news, though, is that if you don’t enjoy it, can’t be bothered, or, to Nick’s point, already “earn more than $200,000 per year,” you can get a simple cash-back card and ignore the influencers in their business class suites. Get a little somethin’-somethin’ for the money you’re going to spend anyway, but know that points and miles aren’t required for your journey.

When to pay with cash

The magic number you want to isolate to make this decision is called the redemption value. Luckily, all you need is:

• A 4th grade understanding of long division

• The price in points

• The price in dollars

Once you’ve got that, you want to run the following equation:

[the cost of the flight or hotel in dollars] ÷ [the cost of the flight or hotel in points] * 100 = the value of each point for this transaction in cents, which tells you whether or not it’s a good time to use your points.

Let’s pretend you’re debating between spending $200 on a flight or spending 18,000 points on Southwest, where Rapid Rewards points are valued—on average—at about 1.5 cents apiece.

$200 ÷ 18,000 * 100 = 1.111111, which means your 18,000 points are worth 1.1 cents/each.

So what do you do? 1.1 cents per point isn’t a great redemption value—remember, the average value is about 1.5 cents.

Now, what would happen if you paid $200 for the flight?

You could earn an additional 1,500 points by buying the flight with cash, which would (on average) be worth about $22.50 in the future when you redeem them (1,500 points * 1.5 cents average = $22.50).

If it’s really close and you’re torn, you can treat those earned points almost like “money off”: $22.50 in points makes your $200 flight’s net cost $177.50. In that way, it’s like you’re comparing spending 18,000 points vs. $177.50.

In situations like these, it really could go either way—if you have tons of points (and a Southwest Companion Pass), it’s probably not a big deal. But if you have, say, 20,000 points total, this might not be the most worthwhile flight to spend them on.

Here’s the average value per point for the major loyalty programs we covered on the show this week

• Chase Ultimate Rewards: 2.05 cents per point

• American Express Membership Rewards: 2 cents per point

• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards: 1.5 cents per point

• United MileagePlus: 1.21 cents per mile

• Marriott Bonvoy: 0.84 cents per point

But there’s another factor to consider: While it’s not a hard and fast rule, generally speaking, you’ll achieve much higher redemption values by transferring points from Chase Ultimate Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards to a partner hotel or airline than you will booking travel directly in the credit card rewards portal.

You’d think the numbers would be similar, but they can actually vary substantially: A Delta flight might cost 30,000 Membership Rewards points in the American Express travel portal, but only 18,000 Delta points. Transferring your points to Delta (rather than booking directly in the portal) can change the calculus of whether or not the redemption is “good.”

When to pay with points

Let’s say you’re perusing the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal for a hotel room and you stumble across a room that costs either $266 or 21,820 points (I pulled this example for the Residence Inn by Marriott in Big Sky, Montana, because I’m trying to drop hints to the universe that I really want to go).

Using our earlier formula: $266 ÷ 21,820 points = about 1.22 cents per point

Hmph. This isn’t great, especially for Ultimate Rewards points.

Let’s try another hotel from the same list: $354 ÷ 25,512 points = about 1.4 cents per point

That’s a little better! Anything encroaching on 1.5 cents per point is usually fine by me. As we’ve already hinted, a lot of the value assigned to the “average” Ultimate Rewards points value comes from the fact that they can become ludicrously valuable when you transfer them (like to a partner airline for a flight worth $1,400 for 35,000 points, making the flight redemption value worth a whopping 3.7 cents per point).

Where you’ll probably find the most extreme discrepancies between points & dollars

The American Express Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards portals will usually have (relatively) consistent ratios. In other words, you probably won’t often find situations in which the points are worth a lot more than the standard two cents each.

One thing to note: The AmEx Platinum Card’s Fine Hotels & Resorts Collection does make certain redemptions extra valuable, since the booking comes with so many more perks (resort credits, free breakfasts, late checkout, etc.).

Where you’re more likely to see point values fluctuating is when you directly book with the hotelier or airline. This is because the airlines and hotels offer peak and off-peak pricing models, in a lot of cases.

In other words, if you’re looking at Hyatt, you know you’ll always be able to find a “Category 1” hotel for, say, 5,000 points per night, and that the most you’d ever spend for a “Category 4” hotel is 90,000 points/night.

Without standard award charts like the example above, a flight or stay could cost as little (or as much) as the vendor wants for reasons we’ll never know, which makes it less predictable (and usually, more expensive).

Making sense of the complicated algorithms that determine what things “cost” in Points & Miles Land

The weird thing about this dilemma—when to pay with points and when to pay with cash so you can earn more points—is that while we can usually analyze these decisions in a pretty straightforward way, it can be a little…emotional.

I’ve found myself agonizing over whether I should burn the points on a certain trip or just use “real money,” even when I’m looking at a good redemption value, just like I’ve found myself burning points like they’re Monopoly money when I knew the redemption value wasn’t all that great.

Oftentimes the financial context of our life from month to month can impact this decision. If you’re already over budget, it can be painful to tally another few hundred bucks in the Travel category when your points bank is sitting there staring at you from Loophole Central. It’s not always cut and dried (even when it technically should be).

In summary

Your best bet is to use the “dollars divided by points” equation every time and determine if the redemption value is strong compared to what the geniuses of the internet say is the average.

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Editorial Disclosure: Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. 

My friends, allow me to introduce you to – without hyperbole – the greatest discovery of my twenties: The Hyatt Zilara properties.

I’ve been to the Cancún location four times (confessions of a #Texan) and the Punta Cana location once, for my honeymoon.

Allow me to grace you with the high points:

• They’re five-star, all-inclusive resorts, and not the kind of all-inclusive where you can tell the kitchen threw 47 DiGiorno pizzas in the oven for poolside lunch: The kind of all-inclusive resort where they’ll custom-make eggs Benedict with so much care and concern that you’d think their life depended on the perfection of the poached egg. These are nice all-inclusive resorts with great drinks, beautiful facilities, and friendly staff.

• They have three locations: Cancún, Punta Cana, and Rose Hall (in Jamaica) – but I can only speak to Mexico and Punta Cana, as those are the two I’ve been to.

• There’s a sister property that you’ll have access to, the Hyatt Ziva. Hyatt Zilara is adults only, while Ziva allows children. They have distinctly different vibes, but having access to both (especially in Punta Cana) is great. You can book at either, but know that if you have kids, you won’t be able to bring them to Zilara – but if you can pawn them off on a well-meaning patron of the resort, you and bae can head next door. This is why I’m not a parent.

• I consider this the best discovery of my twenties because of how cheap it is – but not cheap dollars-wise, cheap points-wise: I just ran a search for November (a great time to check out Cancún) and the cost is $663 per night:

• But if you were to book with Hyatt points, you’d only pay 25,000 points per night! How does one get 25,000 Hyatt points, you ask? Easy. You sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (at 60,000 points) and transfer them to Hyatt. Bada-bing, bada-boom – you’ve got 2.25 free nights.

(For an article fully dedicated to how to transfer your points to Hyatt, check this out.)

The only thing I’ll note: You need to be flexible with your dates. For some time periods, the cost is 40,000 points per night, so you’ll need to click around the calendar and find a date range where every night is 25,000 points.

But if you assume the average cost is $600 per night, 2 x $600 = $1,200 value for your 60,000 points!

Other considerations

• Transportation: I recommend booking your transportation through the resort as well. They have two options (a van and an SUV) and while they’re expensive (I believe it’s $150 roundtrip), having safe, reliable transportation is priceless in other countries. The Cancún airport is a bit of a feeding frenzy and we’ve had drivers pretend to be ours before, so try not to engage with the drivers who flag you down as you’re exiting – look for the Zilara employee with your name on a sign, and only go with him. (Trust me – the schemes and scams are extreme.)

• Tips: Bring cash for tips. I know, I know – I said it was a free trip – but the staff are amazing, and you’ll want to tip them generously. We usually tip $5-$10 per meal (depending on how much we ate and drank) and $1 per drink, so you can extrapolate from there. $30 per day is probably fine, but bring cash ahead of time and don’t plan on relying on the ATM in the lobby or cash advances unless you love paying extra fees (I assume you don’t).

• Vibe: This is definitely a place to go and relax. The Punta Cana resort has a literal waterpark with crazy slides (which is super fun), but it’s (generally speaking) a laidback vacation. If you’re interested in eating and drinking delicious food and beverages and lounging by an infinity pool, this is the trip for you. If you’re trying to go on crazy hikes and see the sites, maybe not.

• Spas: The Hyatt Zilara in Cancún has a spa day pass for $25 (an amazing value) where you can use the sauna, steam room, cold plunge, and other amenities. I did this once on a day where it rained, and it was lovely. The Punta Cana resort’s spa day pass is far more expensive (like, $200) so I didn’t bother. Just something to note if you’re planning to use the spa.

Which Hyatt Zilara resort do I like most?

Objectively speaking, the Punta Cana location is nicer and has more restaurants (it was opened in late 2019, so it’s practically brand new as there weren’t many guests in 2020), but I actually think I’m going to pledge my allegiance to Mexico for a few reasons:

• Poolside: The cabanas are free/first come, first serve. In Punta Cana, you have to reserve them for $100 per day, which annoyed me.

• Size: Cancún’s resort is a lot smaller, so it’s easier/faster to get around. I felt like we were walking a lot in Punta Cana (which is fine!), but it seemed to take longer to do everything as a result.

• Familiarity and ease of access: Since I’ve been to the Mexico location four times, I feel like it’s a second home. I know exactly how to order my free room service cake after dinner. I know the room layouts. I know where I’m eating breakfast every day. I like the familiarity of the experience, because it helps me relax more – that said, if you’ve never been to either, you could theoretically achieve the same in Punta Cana with ease. The only shortcoming to Punta Cana (in the Dominican Republic) is that (for me, in Colorado) it’s harder to access. I have to take a connecting flight and have a longer, more expensive day of travel than when I fly nonstop to Cancún. When I lived in Dallas, we could do weekend trips to Cancún because it was so close.

Speaking of travel, what about flights to the Hyatt Zilara?

This is a trickier answer, as it fully depends on where you live.

For example, if you live in Atlanta, your best bet is Delta. Dallas? American or Southwest. Denver? Probably United or Southwest.

The point is, your location will impact which airline deserves your loyalty, but in general, the best “points redemption” programs are Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program and United’s MileagePlus program.

I’d recommend picking an airline card and snagging it a few months after you grab the Sapphire card (90 days is generally a safe bet for a second application).

This blog highlights my favorite, and why.

Interested in leveling up your travel rewards game?

Check out my full breakdowns:

• My overall strategy and 5-step process for achieving travel rewards world domination

• My strategy for couples specifically, to generate nearly $10,000 in free travel

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All right, I have a confession to make: The primary reason I was drawn to this card is because it’s pink.

I know, I know – beneath all my math and rationale is still a woman on whom corny marketing tactics very much work.

I mean, just look at this baby:

So yeah – maybe I was attracted for the wrong reasons, but rest assured that ultimately, I found my footing.

As a refresher, my current portfolio is as listed:

1. Discover It card (my first credit card acquired in 2016; I keep it to boost my credit age but don’t use it)

2. Chase Sapphire Preferred (my first travel rewards card and definitely top recommendation for anyone dipping their toe in the water of travel rewards; it’s at 60,000 points right now and I do most of my spending on this card)

3. The Platinum Card® from American Express (the high-value, high-annual fee card that gets me loads of perks that I outline here)

4. Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority (the airline card that I nabbed to both get Companion Pass and ensure I wouldn’t be paying for flights for a while)

5. Marriott Bonvoy Boundless (the hotel card that enables me to stay for free at Marriott properties)

And as another refresher, right now, I don’t put hardly any spend on the airline or hotel card (#4 and #5) – I primarily use my Sapphire Preferred and Platinum cards, as those are the two with point programs I value most.

Where the American Express Gold card came in

As I looked back at my top spend categories over the course of the year, I realized that there were a few main ones:

• Housing (primarily paid for through my checking account, though I can now pay rent via Venmo)

• Miscellaneous (read: Amazon) – goes on Sapphire Preferred

• Travel (self-explanatory) – goes on Platinum

• Food – used to go on whatever card I had handy, usually Preferred

And while my strategy was formerly paying for everything with my Sapphire card to rack up as many Ultimate Rewards points as possible, groceries aren’t a “special” category for Sapphire Preferred – which means I typically earned 1 point per dollar on my grocery spend.

I figured I could do better.

The search for a card that had great food perks

While the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express was the first card I looked at (as it has notoriously good grocery earning potential at a whopping 6% cash back), I noticed the Gold card included restaurants, too, whereas the “food” category for the Blue Cash Preferred Card was specific to supermarkets.

(So at this point, it’s good to know whether or not you (a) would prefer points or cash back, and (b) whether or not you’re also spending at restaurants. The Blue Cash Preferred waives the $95 annual fee for the first year, too, so if you’re a cash back lover who doesn’t travel or dine out much, Blue Cash Preferred may be the move.)

But the allure of the rose gold card was strong, and when I saw the benefits, I decided it was worth it:

• 4x points on supermarkets and restaurants, including Uber Eats and takeout

• Up to $120 Uber Cash (similarly to Platinum, add your Gold Card to your Uber account and each month get $10 in Uber Cash for Uber Eats orders or Uber rides in the U.S., up to $120 per year – enrollment required)

• Up to $100 hotel credit to spend on qualified expenses when you book through American Express Travel

• $250 annual fee

Calculating the value of my grocery and restaurant spend

If I buy the groceries and pick up the tab for my family (read: Thomas and me), it’s about $1,000 per month total: $600 on groceries and $400 on restaurants in a busy month.

$1,000 per month x 12 months in a year = $12,000 spent on the two of us, at 4x points per dollar = 48,000 points per year

American Express points are worth about 1 cent per point, which makes 48,000 points worth about $480, depending on how I redeem them.

Add the $120 of Uber Cash and $100 hotel credit (again, only really applicable if you travel) and I calculated the final estimate recurring value to be:

$700

Subtract the annual fee ($250) for net value, and you get $450.

The welcome bonus when I signed up was 60,000 points, so call it another $600 in value in year one.

Making the determination

You can take your grocery and restaurant spend and do the same calculation to figure out how many points your spending would generate to see if it would be worth it. If you haven’t yet nabbed the Sapphire Preferred card yet, I wouldn’t get the Gold card – but if you’re ready to level up a little bit, the Gold card can be a great way to earn more points on a category all humans have to spend in: food.

And hey, did I mention it’s pink?

Check out the Gold Card

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Yes, that title is a direct dig at me – over the past few years, I’ve become Miss Travel Rewards Pusher.

Pay for my coffin with points and host my funeral in the Centurion Lounge. 

It’s hard not to get lit up about one of the largest personal finance cheat codes: Take one free vacation to a five-star resort and you’ll be hooked, too. 

The skeptics? Trust me, I get it. It seems utterly too good to be true. 

That said, I talk to a fair amount of people who are interested in taking advantage of travel rewards, but don’t really know where to start or feel that the entire process sounds too tedious. 

That’s probably my fault (since I make the entire thing feel like the “white woman doing math with floating numbers” meme), but think about this logically:

The Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus right now is 60,000 points (plus an annual $50 hotel credit, which is #new and exciting): That means the total value of this credit card in Year 1 is $1,250 at the least, if you assume each point can be redeemed for approximately 2 cents. 

How long do you work to make $1,250?

Depending on how much money you make, this might equate to a full week of work or more. 

(To quickly figure this out, simply think about how much you receive on one paycheck for two weeks of work — more or less than $1,250 after taxes?)

Let’s assume you make $1,250 per two-week pay period. 

That’s 80 hours of work, if you work 40-hour weeks. 

If you went on a $1,250 vacation, it would cost you two weeks’ worth of work…

Or you could spend 30 minutes signing up for a credit card, going about your life putting your regular spending on it for three months, and paying a $95 annual fee. 

I don’t know about you, but it feels like an obvious decision to me. 

If you’re only up for the challenge of getting one travel rewards card (maybe more than that feels like too much to manage and keep track of), the Chase Sapphire Preferred is the one I’d snag, and I wouldn’t think twice. 

My gut feeling, though, is that once you take your first points trip, you’ll be hooked. 

My full strategy is linked here — and it breaks down my strategy that encompasses a few major types of cards:

• The “big value” starter card (Chase Sapphire Preferred)

• The “expensive but provides luxury travel” card (American Express Platinum)

• The hotel card (Marriott Bonvoy Boundless)

• The airline card (Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card)

If you’re playing this game in two-player mode, check out the Couples’ Guide to Travel Rewards (with the potential to offer more than $9,000 in free travel).

And if you need to pull a Katie and make a spreadsheet to keep track of your cards, point values, and credits, go for it — I promise the ROI of the 15 minutes it takes to create a tracker for yourself will be paid off handsomely in free rides to the Virgin Islands.

Once you get your points, these posts can help you make the most of them: 

• How to Transfer Your Points to a High Value Transfer Partner

• Guide to Chase Travel Transfer Partners

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The new perks build on some momentum (and an existing underrated perk)

In my original review, I explained how the Fine Hotels & Resorts collection is basically a steal in and of itself.

When you book those properties in the AmEx portal (5-star properties), you get a slew of benefits when you arrive:

• $100 resort credit

• $75 daily breakfast credit

• Early check-in and late checkout

The value of the new additions – keep in mind you’ll also have to enroll for some of these

(Anything with “Enrollment Required” just means you need to remember to go into your Account and click a button for each to enroll.)

The revamped Platinum card retains all of the above, as well as adds:

• Up to $300 in statement credits semi-annually on prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts® or The Hotel Collection bookings. Minimum two-night stay required. (So… that alone justifies an increase and is a net positive, especially when you consider that the credit’s value multiplies when you apply it to the aforementioned Fine Hotels & Resorts)
• Up to $400 Resy Credit on eligible purchases through Resy. Enrollment required.
• Up to $120 in statement credits each calendar year for Uber One.
• Up to $300 lululemon Credit (up to $75 in statement credits each quarter). Align fam, rise up!

So there you have it. I think the hotel reimbursement alone justifies the increase (if you would’ve spent $200 at hotels anyway over the course of one year, which is probably pretty easy for most).

But assuming you intend to use the lululemon credits (guilty), the Resy credit, or the hotel credits, you’ve got an additional $300–$600 in value each year.

It’s also worth mentioning…

AmEx often has really good offers that are rolling – they aren’t part of the annual benefits, but are often valuable nonetheless. For example, I got $100 off at Best Buy when I bought a $330 iPad for Thomas.

Just a random offer added at the bottom of My Account that I “added” to the card before checking out. There are usually lots of them. Last year, for example, there was $100 off at Dell, and I used it to buy a monitor. I know – sexy.

The welcome bonus right now is at 100,000 points

Sitting right at 100,000 points, valued between $1,000 and $1,500.

If you found this article helpful and are interested in joining the PlatFam (I hate myself), you can apply below.

One quick note on my referral link below: You can learn more about the card below, and follow the prompts to get your own AmEx Platinum. It’s a nice way for me to receive a small kickback for your application. Love you. Mean it.

Check it out

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Editorial Disclosure: Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. 

Last updated Oct. 2021

Disclosure: This content is not sponsored or endorsed by any of the card brands described here and is accurate as of the posting date, but some of the offers mentioned may have expired. Money with Katie is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as MileValue.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on my site, and this site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers.



One of the most common questions I get any time I talk about travel rewards is, “Katie, how are you so smart AND so beautiful?”

Just kidding. I wish.

In reality, it goes like this: “I see the sign-up bonus; that’s awesome. But what about after that?”

And trust me, I get it – I was initially very skeptical, too. The massive points windfall was undoubtedly exciting, but I couldn’t help but wonder: What the hell am I going to do with this credit card after I spend the initial bonus? I’m not a consultant on an expense account – I’m frugal as hell. How am I going to keep earning?

While I wrote a post recently about my spend strategy across my different travel cards, today I want to do some #sexymath that breaks down how and why the Sapphire Preferred card is worth the $95 fee on an ongoing basis despite not having any travel credits, certificates, etc.

(Some cards, like the Platinum Card® from American Express, have exorbitant annual fees but equally impressive repetitive annual benefits that make the fee feel null. Those cards are funny because people are always super resistant at first, despite the fact that – logically – the card’s benefits far outweigh the cost, if you travel or shop at all.)

I digress – back to our low annual fee friend, Sapphire Preferred.

How to calculate the potential ongoing benefits of Sapphire Preferred based on your spending

Let’s do an exercise. As we all know by now, I’m a scrub with Excel and a public relations degree – so while I’d love to code some fancy calculator that could do this for you directly into this post, unfortunately, you’re just going to have to Calculator App it up on the side and follow my methodology.

How much do you spend every month? Every year?

If you’re anti-budget (don’t worry, I’ll crack you eventually), this might be hard for you to figure out – but if you’re a loyal Wealth Planner enthusiast, this should be easily answered.

The tricky thing here is that you’re most likely going to be removing rent/mortgage (i.e., probably your largest expense) from the equation, because paying rent with a credit card typically triggers a pretty hefty fee (interestingly, you can use AmEx cards via Venmo without a fee – a nifty trick when trying to hit AmEx spend thresholds).

While paying your rent with a credit card in order to hit a sign-up bonus threshold is worthwhile if you need to, it doesn’t make sense on an ongoing basis. Here’s why:

• Each Ultimate Rewards point is valued at between 1 cent and 1.5 cents (depending on how you use it; typically, you’ll get about 1 cent’s worth of value from 1 point if you use it in the Ultimate Rewards portal, while you can really stretch the value if you transfer the points – for example, we booked a $2,500 hotel room with 100,000 points by transferring them to Hyatt, making each point “worth” about 2.5 cents)

• Most likely, you’re charged a 3% transaction fee for paying rent with a credit card – that means a rent payment of, say, $1,000 would trigger a $30 fee

• That same $1,000 rent payment would earn 1x points = 1,000 points

• Even at 1.5 cents per point, that’s only about $15 worth of points earned, which isn’t enough to offset the $30 fee

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can conclude:

To figure out how much value your card will generate, we have to determine how much spend you’ll put on it per year

Let’s do a breakdown:

I spend about $3,000 per month now with our higher rent payment ($1,500). The other $1,500 per month goes onto a credit card – I don’t even carry a debit card anymore. I only use credit.

$1,500 per month * 12 months = $18,000 per year of credit card spend

That’s assuming I’m perfectly “on-budget,” of course.

Of that $18,000, on average, I spend about $3,000 per year on “travel-related” expenses – i.e., travel expenses that aren’t covered by points.

Similarly, about $2,000 of that $18,000 goes toward purchases that code as “dining,” or eating out at restaurants.

Why do those categories matter, you ask?

Because travel and dining are the two categories that earn 2x points per dollar. Bada bing, bada boom.

Of my $18,000 of credit card spend, $5,000 generates 2x points per dollar, while the other $13,000 goes toward purchases that earn 1x point per dollar.

Math time:

$5,000 x 2 points per dollar = 10,000 points

$13,000 x 1 point per dollar = 13,000 points

Total points earned in one year: 23,000 points

That probably doesn’t sound like much

And it’s not, relative to the 60,000-point sign-up bonus. But there are a few key things to keep in mind:

• I’m fairly frugal, and I’m only spending for myself. If I were spending for two people (in a combined finances situation) or a family, those numbers would be a lot higher. Make sure you use your own numbers when determining whether this makes sense for you. You might spend a lot more (or a lot less) on things like travel and dining, which would heavily swing the outcome. (For reference, my $2,000/year dining budget is equivalent to about $166 per month. In my days as a proud materialist crop top queen before my financial reformation, I was easily spending $700 per month at restaurants – which would’ve earned me nearly 20,000 points per year on its own.)

• Since the annual fee is only $95, the bar is pretty low. You don’t have to spend much to make the annual fee worthwhile.

How my 23,000 points stack up

23,000 points per year is slightly less than enough to book one night at the 5-star, all-inclusive Hyatt property mentioned above – 25,000 points = roughly $500, give or take, when you transfer to Hyatt.

That makes 23,000 points worth about $460.

What about transferring them to an airline, like United, for an international flight?

It costs roughly 30,000 miles to fly from Denver to Paris – or $767.

That makes each point worth about 2.5 cents – making your 23,000 points worth $575 if you transfer them to United for international flights.

That’s an average value of $517 when transferred to a high-value partner like Hyatt or United.

Using your points like currency in the portal

Of course, if you’re not interested in transferring your points to a partner and you’d rather book directly in the portal (the easiest, but least value-efficient way to do it), you can take advantage of the fact that you can apply your points like currency to a booking and split payment between points and dollars.

Since transferred points can only be used to book rooms or flights in whole numbers (meaning you can’t apply 23,000 points to a 25,000-point room), you have to wait until you have enough to make the booking. This can be a cruel exercise in patience.

However, in the points portal, you’re able to redeem points in tandem with dollars – almost like a discount.

Notice how 21,680 points can be redeemed for a room worth north of $271 – not an amazing redemption value, but you’d cover your costs completely for the night.

And if you don’t have 21,680 points (as I don’t, since I just redeemed a ton and was left with about 9,000 leftover), you can split your payment:

I’d be redeeming 9,611 points to get $120 off – and paying $185 out of pocket.

In summary

What’s the headline here?

Putting your regular, every day spending – even if you’re frugal! – on a Sapphire Preferred card can still generate enough value every year to more than offset the annual fee.

The breakdown was:

• My $18,000 of spending per year generated 23,000 points

• When transferred to a high-value partner like Hyatt or United, the average value was $517

• When redeemed directly in the travel portal, the average value was about $300

With an annual fee of $95, the net gain was between $205 and $422 in free travel – just by doing your normal spending.

Your spend could generate a lot more than 23,000 points (or a lot less!). This is part of why I shamelessly harp on the importance of budgeting and knowing how much your life costs. To write this post, I literally pulled out my Wealth Planner and – in seconds – was able to calculate how much spend I put in various categories in the last year.

That begs the question: What’s the minimum spend you’d have to put on the card each year for it to pay for itself in free travel?

Even without ongoing credits, the $95 Sapphire Preferred fee pays for itself as long as you earn 6,500 points per year.

That’s the equivalent of spending $540 per month in categories that earn 1x point per dollar, or $270 per month in categories that earn 2x points per dollar.

That means the Sapphire Preferred card would pay for itself if you only spent $270 per month at restaurants, and put no other spend on the card.

And hey, if you decide after a year (and the 60,000 points) that it’s not for you, you can always call the number on the back of the card and downgrade it to a Chase Freedom card – a solid cash back card with no annual fee. No harm, no foul. It’s risk-free, baby!

In my mind, it’s a no-brainer.

Check it out

*Heads-up: My “affiliate link” for this card looks funky. The link below will take you through a portal with my logo, and then redirect from there to bankrate.com. This is the way in which I receive credit for your application, and it’s up to you whether you want to go that route. Either way, make sure you get those points!

Disclosure: This content is not sponsored or endorsed by any of the card brands described here and is accurate as of the posting date, but some of the offers mentioned may have expired. Money with Katie is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as MileValue.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on my site, and this site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers.

If you’ve ever lusted after Companion Pass (the perk that lets a friend fly free with you for an entire year or more, depending on when you earn it), the credit cards are a no-brainer. You can take the extreme shortcut and apply for a consumer card and a business card (an admirable feat of commitment), or you can get the Priority card and throw literally all of your spend on it for the year.

For the uninitiated, the Southwest Companion Pass is arguably the best benefit in all of travel rewards: it’s unlimited BOGO for flights. Any time you book a flight, you can add your Companion your free (you just have to pay taxes, which are $5.60 one-way for domestic flights and vary for international travel). As such, it takes a bit of strategy: You have to earn 125,000 Rapid Rewards points in one calendar year (January through December). 

Book a $900 one-way from Punta Cana to Denver, as we did recently? You’ll pay the 34,000 points for yourself — but then you can add your Companion and get their ticket free. It basically cuts the cost of your air travel in half, and it’s incredible if you fly Southwest.

The bad news? It’s really difficult to earn that many points by flying a lot.

The good news? It’s relatively easy to do by a little credit card creativity. 

Before I go about explaining how *I specifically* earned Companion Pass, it’s worth mentioning that — usually once per year — the Southwest credit card will offer a Companion Pass welcome offer where, if you get approved for the card and meet the minimum spend threshold, you’ll get Companion Pass through the end of the year. That’s probably the easiest way to get Companion Pass if you don’t have the card yet, but it obviously requires waiting for the offer.

The second-easiest way to all but guarantee getting the Companion Pass quickly is simply applying for the personal card (the regular Rapid Rewards credit card) and then applying for the Rapid Rewards business credit card 90 days later. Combining the welcome bonuses should almost always get you Companion Pass.

How I got Companion Pass in 2020, when I wasn’t flying

I earned Companion Pass in likely the strangest year possible: 2020. 

It ironically worked in my favor that Southwest was super generous with their rewards last year; at one point halfway through the year, they gave every Rapid Rewards member 25,000 tier-qualifying points as a, “Sorry you can’t fly because of this worldwide pandemic thing,” gift. 

I had JUST gotten the Southwest credit card during an 80,000 points welcome bonus period, the highest offer I had seen in a long time. Between my welcome bonus, the points from meeting the spend threshold (I had to spend around $6,000 in 6 months to get all 80,000 points), and the 25,000-point gift, I had:

• 80,000 points from the welcome bonus

• 6,000 points from spending to earn the bonus

• 25,000 points for surviving a pandemic

= 111,000 points

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Bitch, that sounds too easy. How am I supposed to recreate those conditions?”

But I think the point is almost exactly that: It’s easier than you think. You don’t have to recreate these exact conditions to get the card, but it’s worth timing your application appropriately (more on that below).

From there, I used the Rapid Rewards Shopping Chrome extension to earn points on online shopping. I’m not a crazy online shopper, but every time I’d get the pop-up window with “2x points per dollar” or “3x points per dollar,” I’d use it. 

(And it may go without saying, but keep in mind that for the entire time I was trying to earn Companion Pass, I put all my spending on the Rapid Rewards credit card. Even if I were just purchasing regular stuff that earned 1x point per dollar, it still meant adding a few thousand points to my balance every month. 

The only notable exception here is rent. Most apartment complexes charge a fee of 3% or $50 to pay rent with a credit card; while this can be worth it to get the initial sign-up bonus, I wouldn’t recommend putting ongoing spend on a credit card. The 1,000 or so points you’ll earn won’t be valuable enough to offset a $50 fee. 

I should also mention that I haven’t yet gotten the Companion Pass for 2022 yet. I’m working on it, but this is more of a, “Here’s how you FIRST get Companion Pass,” strategy. Once I get it a second time, I’ll share those specific tips.

115,000 points later

After several months of attempting to earn Companion Pass (welcome bonus + points earned from spending to get the bonus + the 25,000 bonus gesture of goodwill from Southwest for all Rapid Rewards members), I had about 115,000 points. Only 10,000 to go.

By this time, it was October, so I was getting desperate, as I knew I had to earn the rest of my points before my December statement closed.

I did what any good person who uses social media would do — I took to the internet and posted about the card to get the remaining 10,000 points in a referral bonus. 

If I hadn’t had any success doing that, I would’ve simply referred Thomas (my husband, and eventual Companion Pass beneficiary) and blackmailed him with the carrot of Companion Pass to get him to apply.

The cool thing about Rapid Rewards is that you can transfer your points to another member, so theoretically I could’ve referred him (to get the remaining 10,000 points I needed), then had him transfer his welcome bonus of 65,000 or 80,000 points to me to double the value (as we could buy two-for-one flights with those points). 

This is an easy, built-in referral, as the person who will ultimately benefit from your Companion Pass is incentivized to apply for the card as well to earn their eventual BOGO flights. While I got the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card for the ongoing benefits ($149 annual fee), you can refer your Companion to the Plus card if they’re not into the $100+ annual fees, which only has a $69 annual fee. Nice.

Other things worth mentioning

As I said before, the most “I’m lazy and I just want Companion Pass” approach involves simply combining a personal card with a business card. The only difficulty there is meeting two spend bonuses; you’d want to make sure you have the time (and spend capacity) to do so. 

Knowing how Companion Pass works is important, too — you get it for the entire rest of the year in which you earn it, as well as the entire following year. This means that — if you somehow earn it in January — you get it for the rest of the current year and entire following year, getting nearly 24 months of Companion Pass.

In practice, the way you’d finagle this is getting a high-welcome bonus card offer (e.g., if the 80,000 bonus were launched in Q4 of the year), then wait to hit the spend threshold until January – that way, you’re doing most of the spending in the previous year, but hitting the threshold that triggers the bonus early in the following year.

For example, applying and getting approved for the card in late October (if it has 65,000 points or more as a welcome bonus) then spending almost enough to trigger the welcome bonus through the end of the year, then spending the rest in January, would trigger the points windfall to happen in the very beginning of the year. If you can complete the mission in Q1, that gives you the entire rest of the year (and the following) with Companion Pass.

Other resources

• Check out the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card (at 40,000 points right now).

• Check out my comprehensive travel rewards guide.

And since we’re all about transparency here, this content was not commissioned or sponsored by a bank, but for some of the cards above where noted, I may receive compensation if you use my affiliate link to apply. Know that these are all my opinions and experiences described, and no bank, hotel, airline, etc. has approved or endorsed anything you see here – raw MWK hot takes, baby.

Last updated Oct. 2021

Disclosure: This content is not sponsored or endorsed by any of the card brands described here and is accurate as of the posting date, but some of the offers mentioned may have expired. Money with Katie is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as MileValue.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on my site, and this site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers.

To level-set at the start of this post, it pays to know which travel credit cards I have:

1. Chase Sapphire Preferred Card ($95 annual fee)

2. The Platinum Card® from American Express ($550 annual fee; Rates & Fees)

3. Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card (from Chase; $95 annual fee)

4. Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card (from Chase; $149 annual fee)

(If you’d like to review the breakdown of why I chose these cards, check out my full breakdown. It’s a hefty boi.)

My husband Thomas has all the cards above except for the Southwest card; since we have Companion Pass on my account (and he’s the Companion; only half the reason why he married me), there’s no point in him getting the Southwest card just yet. 

For starters, one of the first questions I had about travel rewards (and one of the questions I get the most) is whether or not having a bunch of credit cards hurts your credit score. I go into more detail about this in my exhaustive travel rewards guide, but the short answer is no – applying for a bunch of new credit all at once will raise some red flags, so I’d recommend spacing out your applications by 90 days each. 

(The credit bureaus just see you as a black-and-white entity on paper – things that make you look sketchy, like trying to get a whole bunch of credit all at once, lower your score. But having a lot of credit and only using a small amount makes you look like a responsible-ass adult. This is known as “low credit utilization.”)

The best way to earn a lot of points quickly

Aside from the welcome bonuses (Chase Sapphire Preferred is currently at 60,000 points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening; don’t sleep on it), referrals are the best way to earn points quickly – and you don’t have to be a clout-hungry personal finance blogger like me to get referrals. 

Before Money with Katie, I still maxed out my referrals for my cards each year by shamelessly shilling them on Boomer hotspot social media like Facebook. I’d post a picture of the dope vacation I went on, free of charge, with my referral link and a blurb that said something to the effect of:

“We got this [insert travel card here] and used the sign-up bonus to book this free trip to an all-inclusive resort.” Done and done. It’s easy to convince 5 people annually that these cards rock – because they do – and now you BOTH get a free vacation. 

It’s like an MLM, except it’s actually good for everybody. 

Most cards allow you a maximum of 5 referrals per year valued at between 10,000 and 20,000 points each. The Sapphire referrals, if maxed out, will get you 75,000 points per year. 

How I structure my ongoing spending across my cards

Because of the four cards I have, my strategy is simple – this becomes more complicated for people that have 10, 15, 20 credit cards (as some of my friends do), but if you’ve got the four listed above, here’s the strategy I use:

Almost all “regular” spending

Think gas, restaurants, grocery trips, etc. – I use my Sapphire Preferred card.

Why use your Sapphire Preferred card for most spending?

The answer is simple: While you only get 2x points on dining and 1x points on everything else, Chase Ultimate Rewards points are the most valuable points you can get. They’re simply worth the most, as they’re flexible enough to be transferred to a lot of other airlines and hotels – and they can be used in the portal for booking literally anything you can get on Expedia. 

A dollar that earns you 1 Ultimate Reward point is more valuable than a dollar going toward 1 Membership Reward (the American Express currency) point or 1 Rapid Rewards point (Southwest).

Expensive purchases worth insuring

I use my Platinum for anything expensive, though, because I’ve found that the American Express purchase insurance gives me a little more peace of mind when buying expensive stuff.

A few years ago, I booked a rental car in San Diego for about $140. The final charge on my card was $280 – they had tacked on all sorts of erroneous fees and charges that weren’t disclosed upfront. 

At first, I tried fighting it with Dollar Rental Car; they ended up giving me $40 back. Simultaneously, I fought the charge with American Express directly and claimed the charge didn’t match what I was told (lack of transparency) and within a day, they had refunded half of it. I just had to submit a picture of my original receipt vs. the final receipt, and it was a done deal.

That gave me a lot of faith in American Express as a means of fighting back against charges that are semi-fraudulent or, at the least, the result of a merchant trying to scam you (as is common with rental cars, I’ve found). 

That’s why I use my Platinum card when I buy expensive stuff. You also get 90 days of “warranty,” so to speak, if something is damaged or stolen. They’ll reimburse you up to $1,000 per claim if something you buy with the card is damaged or stolen within 90 days of purchase. 

Travel purchases

I use my Platinum card for travel purchases as well, as the AmEx points bonus for travel purchases is the best: 5x points per dollar spent. 

Even when I’m purchasing Marriott hotel rooms or Southwest flights, I still almost always use the Platinum card – because 5x Membership Rewards points are more valuable than 2x Rapid Rewards points (what you’d earn using the Southwest card for flights) or 6x Bonvoy points (what you’d earn using the Marriott card for hotel rooms). 

The Sapphire Preferred only gets you 2x points per dollar spent on travel, so the AmEx makes more sense. 

You’ve probably noticed I’m not putting much spend on the Marriott or Southwest cards

And you’re right, I don’t. 

Every once in a while, one of the cards will offer a crazy bonus: During the pandemic, for example, you could get 12x points on gas stations or groceries. In those instances, I used the card. Normally, though, it’s not really worth it to put ongoing spend on these cards – so why have them?
Glad you asked. 

Both of these cards are outstanding for ongoing rewards. 

The Bonvoy card gets you one free night certificate every year worth 35,000 points – I used mine this year on a room that would’ve cost about $300 per night. That’s a steal when you consider I only pay $95 for the annual fee – if you stay even just ONE night in a Marriott property per year, this puppy is worthwhile. 

The Priority card gets you 7,000 anniversary points, four Upgraded boardings (worth $40 each), and a $75 annual travel credit – well worth the $149 annual fee. 

In conclusion

My strategy is really simple, because I don’t spend enough money each year to warrant a really fancy points strategy. I have friends who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and really double down on the specificity with which they split up their spending – they have credit cards specifically for points rewards on their grocery spend alone, for example. 

I probably spend around $25,000 per year on the Sapphire card, which generates between 1x and 2x points per dollar. Even if my spending alone only generated 30,000 points, that’s still worth far more than the annual fee — no referrals needed.

I’m too frugal for spending strategies beyond that to matter.

Instead, I focus on:

• Getting cards that have excellent ongoing rewards regardless of how many points I earn (Platinum, Bonvoy Boundless, and Rapid Rewards Priority all give you more in credits and bonuses than you pay in annual fees)

• Putting majority of my spending on the Sapphire Preferred card, since those points are the most valuable

• Referring friends and family to the cards so they can travel for free, too

Other breakdowns

Curious to learn more about one of these cards? Check out these posts:

• How I Can Easily Justify the American Express Platinum $550 Annual Fee

• What to Do After You Get the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Card

• Why the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless is My Pick for Best Hotel Card

My entire breakdown lives here and gets into some of the details about how having more credit cards can actually help your credit score. 

New to this? Here’s a post about why you need a credit card. 

The fine print, since we’re talking about a credit card and I’m using an affiliate link: This post is not sponsored or endorsed by American Express. Money with Katie is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as Milevalue.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more.

Recently I posted about The Platinum Card® from American Express, and I received an incredulous DM:

“Wait, I can’t imagine you’d promote this card unless you actually thought it was worth the insane annual fee, right?”

You are correct, my friend.

I went to send her a quick post that outlined why the AmEx Platinum is worth its weight in… platinum, but realized – with great horror – that while I’ve written articles about the Platinum before, I’ve never expressly written about why I think it’s easily worth the $550 annual fee (and then some) per year (Rates & Fees).

When I first got the Platinum card, I treated it like an experiment

I’ll admit, I was skeptical. Friends and coworkers swore up and down that I wouldn’t regret it, but I wasn’t convinced. I decided to take the plunge when I received a targeted 100,000-points offer in the mail, and treated myself like a human guinea pig.

I’ll just keep track of all the value I get from this thing over the next 12 months, and if it far surpasses $550, I’ll keep it, I reasoned, And if it’s a total loss, then at least I know for sure and I’ll just cancel it and move on with my life.

Long story short is, I stopped keeping track when – after about six months – my tally for benefits had already surpassed $2,200.

It’s one thing to just take my word for it, and quite another to see it in action. Let’s begin!

(Unfortunately, I don’t have the original list anymore – but I do have a pretty good working memory of the types of things we were getting a lot of value from. The other thing worth noting here is that American Express did a truly outstanding job with amping up their unrelated-to-travel credits and benefits during the pandemic, so I’m going to assess 2019 and 2020 separately.)

2019 – before the world shut down

Airport lounges

In a pre-Coronavirus world, I traveled constantly. We went on at least one trip per month; I think I went on 19 total in 2019 (including two to Mexico and one to Amsterdam).

Almost every time I flew out of an airport with a Priority Pass or Centurion Lounge, I’d stop and eat a full meal and have at least two drinks – so would Thomas, or whoever was traveling with me.

I value this at about $30 per person, per trip to the lounge, since that same experience (a meal and two alcoholic beverages) in the non-lounge-y part of the airport would probably cost about $30 after tip.

The Centurion Lounges are like a secluded haven tucked away above the terminal with lush couches, dining, meeting rooms, and in some cases free massage and manicures. It sounds stupid, but it really enhances the travel experience because you want to get to the airport early and hang out, eat, drink and relax before a flight (or do so for free after you land).

While only major airports have Centurion Lounges (specific to American Express), the Priority Pass lounge system is pretty ubiquitous – most airports have at least one – and Platinum gets you free access for you and your guest (enrollment is required, so don’t forget to enroll first!). This is a really great way to become someone’s favorite travel buddy.

I like to list this one first because it’s a distinct difference from the Sapphire Reserve card (the Centurion Lounge, that is) and, in my mind, a differentiator.

Fine Hotels & Resorts Collection

This is one of those benefits that you can milk for a lot more than $550 depending on how much you travel.

For example, in 2019, we stayed at a 5-star hotel in San Diego called the U.S. Grant – I booked it in the American Express travel portal with points, and it was designated a member of the “Fine Hotels & Resorts” collection. See below:

The real kicker comes when you get there – you get guaranteed late checkout, (usually) early check-in, a $100 “resort credit” which is usually agnostic as to where you can spend it (we usually spend it at the restaurant) and daily breakfast for two valued at $75/day.

If you stay at a hotel in the FHR collection for three days, that’s $325 in value in one trip.

This is another big differentiator (for me) between Reserve and Platinum in ongoing, repeatable value.

Since the rooms are priced a little better (points-wise), they tend to always be a great redemption value. Check out this hotel that’s not FHR for comparison:

We’ve stayed in (if memory serves) three FHR hotels:

• The U.S. Grant in San Diego, pictured above

• The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas

• The Keystone Lodge & Spa in Keystone, Colorado

Each time, we used our $100 resort credit at a restaurant or spa, and took full advantage of the $75 daily breakfast credit (the cool thing is that you can pretty much use it for lunch, too, if you decide you don’t want to eat a big breakfast). I like to call the front desk and ask which restaurants on the property (if there are more than one) will receive the credit to be sure.

I would guess that we got $600 in value alone from this benefit.

Benefits where enrollment of some kind was required

All the benefits listed below required me to either (a) enroll in the benefit outright or (b) create and link a card or account, so be sure to check out the “Benefits” section of your account if you end up applying and getting approved for the card. Here’s a smattering of the ones from which I got the most value.

Up to $200 annual Uber credit

The annual Uber credit is $15/mo. (and $30 in December) to be used for Uber or Uber Eats. I love to use it as a “treat myself” takeout night and usually try to keep the charge at or around $15 so I don’t pay anything out of pocket. This one is a guarantee; you don’t have to go travel to use it (though I probably wouldn’t get this card unless I traveled a fair bit, since that’s really where it shines).

Up to $200 annual airline incidental credit, though this is being phased out

This one used to be way more valuable, because you could literally buy an airline gift card and get reimbursed as if it were an “incidental.” Unfortunately, they’ve caught onto that.

In 2019 I chose American Airlines as my “airline of choice” for the credit (it’s annoying, but you have to pick one) and would use the incidentals reimbursement for things like picking my own seat (booking a lower class fare and then paying for the better seat on the seat map), buying WiFi inflight, inflight meals and drinks and – God forbid – reimbursing a change fee.

Because I have Southwest Companion Pass (and about 210,000 Rapid Rewards points) this year, I designated Southwest as my airline of choice for the credit – that means when I book in points, the “$11.20” in round trip taxes & fees gets reimbursed by AmEx. This means my flights are totally, 100% free now, which is a pretty dope echelon of travel hacking to have achieved (please hold your applause).

I haven’t tested this myself, but I think it would reimburse other Southwest ancillary purchases, like EarlyBird automatic check-in and Upgraded Boarding at the gate (I use my Southwest Premier card for Upgraded Boardings; you get four free per year).

The point is, this one used to be a little easier to use, but it’s not value-less – just a little less straightforward. I’d probably value this one at around $100 in actual value because (unless you’re actually charged a big fee or need to check bags a lot) you probably won’t use the full $200 reimbursement, which is why (in my book) it’s not too devastating of a value to lose (as I don’t believe new cardmembers will get it).

Up to $100 annual Saks Fifth Avenue credit

Because I wholeheartedly dislike fashion and shopping now (it just felt like a rat race I couldn’t win so I gave up), this one isn’t as exciting to me – but it comes in handy if you want to get a new pair of shoes, a fancy skincare product, etc.

It’s issued in the form of $50 in the first six months and $50 in the second six months, and you’ll be reimbursed up to $50 in each half of the year for purchases at Saks.

If you’re the type of person who would spend money at Saks anyway, this one will definitely be valuable.

Up to $100 Global Entry reimbursement

I finally got Global Entry (applied in 2019 but didn’t actually get my appointment until 2020 thanks to the government shutdown in early 2019, #TBT), the cost of which is $100 – and AmEx reimbursed it. They’ll also reimburse TSA PreCheck, but since Global Entry is inclusive of TSA Pre, I went for the big guns (is it weird to call an airport security feature “big guns”? Probably).

Marriott Bonvoy Gold Status

This one is harder to quantify but has come in very handy for us. Since we also have Bonvoy Boundless cards, we stay at Marriott properties a lot – but the Bonvoy cards only come with Silver status, and the good benefits don’t start until you hit Gold.

With the Gold status, we pretty much get a room upgrade every single time we stay at a Marriott (in the Cosmo, for example, it was a room that was $100 more per night; in the Ritz St. Thomas, it was a room that was nearly $300 more per night), so if you’re onboard with quantifying the value difference in the room upgrade, there’s another easy few hundred dollars right there.

In practice, it just means you can book the “cheapest” Marriott room with your Bonvoy points, then show up and get upgraded to a Suite because of the Gold status your Platinum card gives you.

This is another differentiator for me from Sapphire Reserve and a big reason why I think Platinum is superior; there’s no automatic hotel status with Reserve.

Keep in mind that was a long list of things wholly apart from the welcome bonus

…but man, did I use the shit out of that welcome bonus! For the purposes of this post, I’m not going to mention the value of the points much, since I want you to see the ongoing value vs. a big one-time points bonanza.

2020, when Platinum pivoted hard on their benefits

The hilarious thing about 2020 is that I think I actually ended up getting more value from my Platinum card, not less.

(That might be an exaggeration, but it certainly didn’t go to waste.)

Because those categories were temporary, I’m not going to rehash them here (this post does a little deep dive into how they responded and which categories ended up getting credits, like streaming, cell phones, etc.), but my major takeaway was that AmEx wasn’t playing around with their #COVIDPerks.

They also upped their game with the less-popular-but-still-super-valuable “Amex Offers & Benefits” list, an area in your account where you can “add” certain seasonal and temporary rebates to your card. In 2020, one benefit was “$100 off at Dell,” so I used it to buy a $140 monitor for my home office.

I wish I had kept up my tracking exercise for the last two years, but consider it a good thing that I didn’t – I was so convinced that it was worthwhile that I abandoned the spreadsheet because it no longer felt useful. That’s saying something.

2021

One thing I’ve already noticed in 2021 is the addition of a “up to $200 back” credit in the AmEx Travel Portal. I used mine already (LOL) to book a premium SUV rental car for our Colorado trip – and now AmEx will reimburse that purchase.

I paid the fee like a good little girl in 2019, but in 2020 (pre-pandemic), I wanted to try negotiating my way out of it (as a thought experiment, you know?).

It worked. Here’s how. While this probably won’t work for your first year of card membership, I think it’s worth a try in year two.

New cardmember perk

Right now they’re offering 10x points on U.S. supermarkets and U.S. gas stations for new cardmembers for the first 6 months of card membership, up to $15,000 of combined spend (and I’m salty about it) — after that, it’ll be 1x points per dollar thereafter. My loss is your gain, friend.

If you’re interested and you found this article helpful

One quick note on my referral link below: I’m working with an affiliate program called MileValue. You can learn more about the card below, and follow the prompts to get your own AmEx Platinum. I know the process is a little wonky, and you should feel no pressure to use it, but it’s a nice way for me to receive a small kickback for your application. Love you. Mean it.