American Express Platinum and Gold Cards Explained
Everyone spends - whether it be on grocery, gas, car insurance, phone bills, internet, Netflix - the list goes on; and a lot of us get a small benefits through credit cards in the form of cashback cards, some of us do not get any benefits at all simply because we didn’t know about spend benefits. If you’re a traveler like us or wish to travel more, getting the most out of travel credit cards will allow you to save money like never before and even enhance your traveling experience!
Some of the best cards for travel are the American Express Platinum and the American Express Gold cards. While the Gold card is not exactly a “travel” card, it earns Membership Rewards points which are pooled per personal account, and is a much better card for to accrue points on your everyday spending. With the combination of both cards, you’ll get the best travel experience and the points earning power to maximize your travels.
First Thing’s First
Before you can begin reap these rewards, you’ll need to check to see if you qualify for these cards. The general consensus is that you need a minimum credit score of 720 (the higher, the better for obvious reasons). Your credit score can easily be checked through Experian’s website - sign up for a free account and you can see your credit score from there (there are also various companies out there that will provide you with your credit score for free). From there, head over to CardMatch.com and check to see what current offers you have available for you.
The Offers
If you qualify for a sign up offer higher than the standard blanket offer to everyone else, you’ll see it on the results from your CardMatch link. Here are the offers available for the American Express Platinum and Gold cards:
American Express Platinum
100,000 MR points after $5,000 spend in the first 3 months (this is a rare offer, available to those who have never had a personal American Express account)
75,000 MR points after $5,000 spend in the first 3 months
60,000 MR points after $5,000 spend in the first 3 months (this is the base offer for everyone)
American Express Gold
50,000 MR points after $2,000 spend in the first 3 months (this is a rare offer, not seen very frequently)
35,000 MR points after $2,000 spend in the first 3 months (this is the base offer for everyone)
Keep in mind that if you have the 100,000 MR points bonus for the Platinum card, only go with that one first, because once you get a different American Express card, you will no longer be eligible for the 100,000 MR point offer, and 40,000 MR points are not exactly easy to come by with just regular spend.
If you do not have any bonus offers available to you outside of the standard base offer, my suggestion is to find someone who is currently a card holder and get a referral link from them. The Platinum referral does not provide any extra benefits to you, but it gives the person who referred you 15,000 MR points. The Gold card, however, gives the person who referred you 10,000 MR points, but also give you a 40,000 MR points signup bonus rather than the traditional 35,000 - plus, there are deals from time to time that will allow for you to get a Rose Gold card if that’s your thing (I would’ve have loved to have gotten a Rose Gold card!).
Now that you’re ready to pick a card, let’s take a look at the benefits and details of the American Express Platinum card.
American Express Platinum
Image courtesy of AmericanExpress.com
The American Express Platinum card has a hefty $550 a year annual fee, but also comes with a set of benefits that will allow you to mitigate the annual costs. Let’s take a look at the benefits below:
$200 Uber Credits ($15 a month for 12 months, plus a $20 additional bonus in December) for Uber rides but also works for Uber Eats. If you do not use Uber much, you can always get a free lunch per month.
$200 Airline Fee Credit - designate one airline of your choosing and any incidental fees such as checked bags or in-flight purchases are covered up to $200 per year. I always have extra large bags to bring things back from Japan so the fees are mitigated each trip.
Fee credit for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck - Global Entry fees are $100 which will allow for faster entry through the gates and Amex will cover you every 4 years. TSA PreCheck is included with Global Entry for as long as you have Global Entry (which is 4 years between renewals).
$100 Saks Fifth Avenue credits per year, $50 from Jan-Jun, $50 from Jul-Dec; we simply make a trip to our local Saks Fifth Avenue store and purchase a $50 gift card and it is instantly credited! I used mine to buy a new wallet that I really needed.
Other non-direct monetary benefits include access to the Centurion Lounge (the best lounges), access to the Global Lounge Collection, purchase protection, Shoprunner, extended warranty, Return Protection, automatic Hilton Gold Status as well as Marriott Bonvoy Gold Elite status, baggage insurance, car rental insurance, and travel accident insurance - just to name a few.
One of the key benefits that I enjoyed the most is the Fine Hotels & Resorts Program - you can find the details on my Lowe’s Ventana Resort review, where I explain what kinds of benefits we received just by booking through the FHR program.
As for the points on spend, the Platinum card offers a 5x multiplier on flight booked directly with the airlines or with American Express Travel, and a 5x multiplier on hotels booked through amextravel.com. All other spend will give you 1x points for each dollar you spend.
The spend - depending on your monthly output in spending, it can be easy or difficult to spend $5,000 in the first 3 months, so I would suggest to wait to have a rather large spend coming up such as projects in the house, an upcoming trip, or pulling the trigger on that big screen you’ve been looking at for the last year.
American Express Gold
Image courtesy of AmericanExpress.com
While the American Express Platinum card has the benefits of all your travel needs from the travel credits to the Global Entry and lounge access, the points earned from everyday spending is - for a lack of a better word, pretty bad. Besides the spend on flights and hotels being a hefty 5x, the everyday spending only gets you 1 point per dollar spent.
This is where the Gold card shines - getting you 4x MR points on restaurants (and I gain massive points because I’m always eating out) and 4x MR points on grocery store spending up to $25,000 a year. I don’t know about your spending, but I spend a ton on restaurants and grocery stores every month. Just last month I spent a combined total just shy of $700.00, which would have only given me 700 MR points through the Platinum card, but received 2,800 MR points because they were 4x through the Gold card. Multiply that spending through the course of the year and that is a whopping 33,00 MR points a year only on grocery and restaurant spending! That’s not counting anything else that I purchase or pay for, such as car insurance payments, cell phone bills, Netflix, internet, and a ton of other spend. That month I received 3,800 MR points when my regular spend was included in the calculation, which in a year is 45,600 MR points. We’ll get into why a near 50,000 MR point per year is so important in a different article.
The American Express Gold card has a much lower annual fee of $250, but this can also be mitigated somewhat easily or even dropped down to $130 per year, with the benefits below:
$120 Dining Credit, which is split up to $10 a month when you go to Grubhub, Seamless, The Cheesecake Factory, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Boxed, and Shake Shack locations. To me, this just means that I get a free lunch each month at Shake Shack, reducing the annual fee to $130 a year.
$100 Airline Fee Credit, which is the same as the Platinum card - pick an airline, and fees are covered up to $100 per year, just charge it to your Gold card.
$100 Hotel Credit, to spend on dining, spa, and resort activities when you book at least 2 consecutive nights with American Express Travel. Personally I think the benefits are better on the FHR program through the Platinum card, but that’s why you have both cards, right?
Other benefits include upgrading your flight with MR points, access to the Travel Collection (for Gold card holders only), purchase protection, return protection, extended warranty, Shoprunner, car rental insurance, baggage insurance, travel accident insurance, and many more.
So the optimal spending would be to maximize your multipliers, and ensure that you’re getting the most points for the given spending. The Gold card also offers a 3x multiplier on travel purchases, but why do that when you have a 5x on the Platinum card. While both cards have their specialties, the real benefits shine when the cards are used together.
Benefits They Don’t Tell You About
As an American Express Card holder, you have access to several discounts that would not be available otherwise. You won’t see these types of deals as “benefits” listed on their website because they are always changing. They range from additional MR points for spend, to having a statement credit for spending, to a chunk of MR points for spend. I’ve enjoyed benefits such as enrolling my card in autopay for my Verizon bill gave me a 10% statement credit to my account, getting 3x MR points at Hugo Boss for my sweatshirts, getting a bonus MR point for each dollar spent at Macy’s.com, getting $10 back for spending $40 at Staples, and getting $30 back for spending $150 at Ray-ban.com. The list goes on, cycling through 90+ deals each month, and there are deals specific to cards as well. Your experience may vary, but there are plenty of deals out there that will give you bonuses on spending!
Final Thoughts
Now that you have a general understanding of the cards and the importance of having both the Gold and Platinum cards, what benefits does the Membership Rewards points give you? Be sure to stay tuned on what we are planning to use our MR points for (hint: it’s for free round-trip tickets to Japan).
