In this episode of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast, host Justin Vacula discusses American Express strategies for 2025 with guest Stephan Krasowski, recorded live at the 2024 Chicago Seminars in Elk Grove Village.
They delve into optimal ways to utilize Amex points, miles, benefits, and rewards, including tips on upgrading and downgrading cards, maximizing Amex offers, and ensuring spend thresholds for substantial rewards.
Additional discussions include strategies for new users, retention offers, leveraging community knowledge, and specific Amex card recommendations. They also touch upon broader topics like balancing risk in the points and miles hobby, and sharing anecdotes from their travel and financial journeys.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast
00:49 Upcoming Events and Announcements
02:41 Live Podcast at Chicago Seminars
03:11 American Express Strategies and Insights
05:07 Navigating Credit Card Risks and Rewards
15:45 Maximizing Hotel and Travel Benefits
25:58 Managing Credit Card Slots and Offers
27:56 Optimizing American Express Benefits
28:56 Advanced Amex Strategies and Delta Cards
29:44 Navigating No Lifetime Language Offers
29:57 Maximizing Delta Reserve Business Upgrades
30:30 Creative Spending and Gift Card Strategies
36:38 Exploring Obscure Credit Card Issuers
47:19 Retention Offers and Downgrading Strategies
49:16 Final Q&A and Closing Remarks
Show notes:
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[00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles, credit card rewards, bring the smiles, many adventures, tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold. Fight the war on happiness, pick up the gold, Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold
You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vacula here to help you travel the world and next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and rewards, make money, save money, and take advantage of great deals. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode, American express strategies for 2025 with Stephan Krasowski.
This episode was recorded before a live audience [00:01:00] at the 2024 Chicago Seminars event in Elk Grove Village. Thanks to Stefan for inviting me to record a live podcast episode, and for being a guest on the show before today’s episode. Early bird ticket sales for Zork Fest 2025 a Miles points and gambling event are now live at zorkfest.travelzork.com.
I spoke at the successful ZorkFest 2024 event and hope to see you at ZorkFest 2025 in Las Vegas, taking place December 5th through December 7th, 2025. I’m also looking forward to other events in 2025 and have a successful 2024 speaking at events with Award Travel 101, Frequent Traveler University, and both Chicago Seminars events.
If you’re an event organizer and would like to have me speak at your 2025 event. Please contact me visit meetup. com slash Philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly greater Philadelphia [00:02:00] travel credit miles and points meetups. I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are December 15th, 2024, and January 26th, 2025.
Find a link in the show notes for more content between podcast episodes, follow Hurdy Gurdy travel podcast on Facebook and X formerly known as Twitter. For bonus videos and community content, subscribe to Herdy Gerdy Travel Podcast on YouTube. Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram for content and trip photos.
Search Herdy Gerdy Travel on subscribestar. com to financially support my efforts, starting at the 5 a month tip jar level. On with today’s episode. And we are live! Wooo! Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast The first ever live podcast episode at Chicago Seminars I’m Stephan Krasowski, organizer of the event, and welcome Justin Vacula.
Alright, thank you for coming today. Returning guest [00:03:00] Stefan Krasowski at the Chicago Seminars Heritage Edition 2024. We are here to talk about, as the Milenomics podcast calls it, America’s Funnest Bank. American Express. America loves American Express. I love it as well. I will endorse it and hope that they sponsor a future Chicago Seminars.
So first question, have you ever had or have you had the plum card? I did actually. I had it for a year. I had just about everything else. And I think that wasaround 2020? Oh, the six month COVID bonus. Yeah. And it did its job.
Spend 30, 000 and get a whopping 600 and a 1. 5 percent cashback with the early pay discounts. Yes. During COVID, we had six months to spend 30K and now it doesn’t look like that’s a doable card as American Express has put out lots of no lifetime language offers, employee card offers, authorized [00:04:00] user or AU offers.
So it’s been a lot of fun with American Express. people keep saying that these offers will end or that, even the biggest mainstream 2020 was writing about Amex. Employee card offers, and they’ve since memory hauled the post, Anybody in the industry would have read it and it’s still many years later different forms are going on So are you also known as Stefan Krasowski the 27th?
I did have those Roman numeral? Okay, I didn’t do as many as some and you keep having this debate about what’s what you know go big versus what, when are you taking on risk? it’s all uncertain, but it’s clear that people especially starting out in this hobby think there’s risk everywhere, whereas it’s very specific what banks like and encourage what their incentives are, what they want to incentivize their customers to.
And with Amex, it’s been clear for [00:05:00] especially the past four years that they really want small businesses using their cards and getting their cards. In the hands of employees. Speaking of risk, I recently recorded a Halloween special responding to Dave Ramsey. he thought it was too risky to use your personal credit cards to front employee expenses.
How do you know if you’re gonna get reimbursed? What if there’s a padlock on the door the next day and you’re out $11,000? Some people find a lot of risk where there isn’t, but in our hobby. maybe signing up for 99 at the same card, adding a Roman numeral, maybe is too risky. But, as I ask on the podcast, where is the line?
We usually don’t know where the line is about what’s acceptable or not. your perspective is much more nuanced than many of ours that are specifically focused on the points of travel. Because you also are an expert on the gaming side of it, where There’s much more regulatory scrutiny.
There’s much more controls around that than, so I think you’re an excellent gauge if you’re [00:06:00] willing to try something, I might be willing to try it too. We’ll see you at another time when you get close to a million in blackjack play, but probably not today. I get all those status matches and never show up and have zero, zero, this and that.
It is fascinating to see that those worlds converge a bit and this isn’t the conference to go into that in depth. Zorkfest next week absolutely will. There’s this gap between people who say if I buy a gift card with a Chase Freedom Quarterly 5X, will I get shut down?
And others who say, are hundreds of authorized user cards a bit of risk? each bank is different. You also don’t get the rewards and what are you saving yourself for in some cases? I probably have been too hesitant about amex over the years, especially when I was pushing for a lot of delta Status stuff I would think about what if I got shut down and couldn’t have my delta cards and What they were actually worth to me versus what I psychologically felt they were [00:07:00] worth to me, probably a great discrepancy.
And I, some things like these offers, I probably, although I did have a lot of employees on some Delta cards, I also didn’t feel like doing it every few months and turning new. And that reward for Delta, I’m a, I’m nearly 3 million miler, so I’ll be pretty, pretty set under the new program, but I probably could have done with a lot more.
Amex to Shrub conversions over the past few years. speaking of risk, I commonly hear with Amex, some people think you can’t buy gift cards at all, as that’s something in their terms and conditions. But usually what I like doing with Amex, especially with newer cards is all split tender, which is a real term.
Someone thought I made it up, but I didn’t. if I were to buy, a 500 prepaid gift card at a grocery store, I’ll ask the cashier to put 251. 03 on this card and then put the rest on another, as it seems like more organic or quote unquote, legitimate or real spend. So that’s one way I de risk with American Express when making purchases.
I [00:08:00] understand that the amount of data that’s reported to the credit card issuer depends on the retailer, in Seattle, we’ve got Safeway. Safeway Albertsons and Kroger Group specifically QFC and Fred Meyer, the amount of data on the transaction that Safeway sends is apparently much more detailed.
So that Amex, if you’re, if you have that as a concern, Amex is apparently seeing those specifically as gift card, whereas QFC, Fred Meyer, part of Kroger, are only seeing the transaction amount. without specific detail of the product purchased.
I saw it was called visa supplier locator some time ago that lists what kind of data is sent. So I usually stay away from new Amex carts at Safeway chains staples CVS and Walgreens where it doesn’t seem as legitimate and maybe you get shut down for that. But other grocery stores that don’t seem to report the data in my area, like Weiss.
Giant Redners and some other places. Shopwright’s another one that can be pretty [00:09:00] safe for some lower level. Those are some names not everybody would necessarily know. What part of the country is your area? Pennsylvania. I went to school in Philadelphia, but that was way before I knew about any of this stuff.
I remember seeing on the main walk on campus every so often, Discover offering a frisbee if you would sign up. or a Costco bucket, some of the sign up bonuses. my head was so far in other places at the time I didn’t even think about it.
All right. So if we’re starting with Amex, people may be newer to the hobby. It’s usually not a great idea to get Amex personal cards to start because you’re trying to keep personal credit clean to get more chase cards. So typically I recommend start with Amex business cards. Have you gone that direction when you were starting with this?
That’s quite smart. although the only counterpoint I would argue is that especially people starting out in this hobby, we constantly get asked. What’s the one card I should get. And immediately we want to. Give a discourse on the 50 cards they should [00:10:00] get, which results in them getting no cards
I’ve long felt for people starting out, their everyday spend is probably Not going to be so giant that the points they earn day to day are not going to be that much different. I feel a lot of the hotel cards are fantastic. We’re here at a Holiday Inn IHG brand, these credit cards under a hundred dollars get you a free night that you can even enjoy on a staycation and you need to do a small amount of learning.
Your certificate is worth this amount of points, but it’s much less complex than The typical airline and somebody’s starting out to just say you pay this fee each year use your card pay your bill or you know Just make sure it doesn’t go dormant and you’ll get this night each year.
And so something like the Amex hotel cards It’s maybe a little harder case than some of the chase ones if they’re a new road warrior type and they could afford the annual fee on a Bonvoy Brilliant And they get platinum status right out the door without having to [00:11:00] do anything. I think that could be an exception for a starter card But for the most part, certainly starting out business or when the business has a corresponding offer similar to the personal in terms of the benefits of the card. My friend Peter Bogosian said, I really want to get into airport lounges. And I said that might be a little more complicated with American express, because you have a lot of benefits to use to offset that annual fee.
So at first he was intimidated. And I think a lot of people were because, Oh, you have this credit with Dell. You have this other wireless credit. How do I use these points? I usually recommend people start with simpler cards, maybe the blue business cash, the blue business plus with American express are usually simpler, but for him, he really wanted the airport lounge.
So that was a more unusual situation to get. more complicated higher annual fee card to start with, but he was very happy with Centurion lounges. He’s a frequent traveler and he could even get into the Delta sky clubs if he’s flying Delta as well. So yeah, it’s a different situation. What are you looking to [00:12:00] accomplish?
Are you going to be doing international travel? Are you going to be traveling domestic? So the one size fits all strategy, probably not so good, but definitely starting with the business cards if you can have a business, whether it’s selling on eBay, Podcasting and it doesn’t need to be super complex. I used a website called ink file Incf Ile to start an LLC now, it’s called busy like a BB I Z Maybe Jerry Seinfeld from the b movies involved somehow.
I was thinking the blue business plus for the example say of my parents that at one point we’ve got them platinum for some of the travel benefits but then It was, let’s just get the blue business plus. Cause whatever we do with the platinum in the future, that’s an awesome card. Every dentist I’ve seen in the past decade, I’ve just get the blue business plus, I can’t take it that you’re using a one X card for all these orders I see coming in every day.
I’m not convinced a single dentist to get that card, but it yeah it’s a great, Tremendous value is such an easy, [00:13:00] straightforward card, other than the foreign transaction fee. And it’s a transaction. You can’t go wrong. You can’t, it’s a zero APR also usually on that card.
And then the membership rewards, signup bonus, and the two X points, for those more advanced, a two X card. Isn’t as interesting anymore when you can pay bills and get extra percentages, how many of our lives would be happier if we just had a 2 percent card and didn’t think any more about it.
I’m trying to get better than two, but for some people just starting out, maybe the blue business plus not so bad. And then some people tell me, I don’t want to travel much, I’m just looking for cash back. So the blue business cash could be good for that. And that I’ve had it, it’s automatic the way the cash posts.
So that’s a great feature because many cash back cards, Barry. I had a credit card from First Tech Federal Credit Union. For several years, I thought it didn’t earn rewards. And then finally found that there actually were rewards from a big treasure chest here. But it was so buried in the account [00:14:00] that it wasn’t on the statements but there were some rewards they had.
Hold a page, a tab. They’d had like quarterly offers that I hadn’t, maybe I participated and forgotten about. Now you know. So then I redeemed them. But the Lou Business Cash is, very user friendly and the broader thing about Amex customer service, and you can parse the different benefits, travel benefits, purchase benefits, but, if you have to have a chargeback for something, Chase and Citi have just become horrific to deal with on any kind of chargeback more than a small amount.
They’ve outsourced their agents primarily to the Philippines. they have no authority. You just go in circles of they say you uploaded too many documents. I was like that’s what you asked for, we didn’t read them. And then, auto deny, these kinds of things, Amex, when there’s an issue, you have a very good shot at getting either chat support or phone support of somebody, fairly knowledgeable, competent, and the ability to resolve things.[00:15:00]
Going in circles at customer service is funny. They did that on South Park. It was an episode called grounded Vindaloop where customer service had to call customer service. So it put them in a loop. Sometimes I feel like that on the phone with some of these agents. Oh, we need to transfer you somewhere else.
I had an issue with one of the American express personal platinum fine hotels and resorts credit. It didn’t credit, but after chatting with representatives and being transferred. They launched an investigation and eventually I got my 200.
So that was good. interestingly, it didn’t trigger the counter, for the FHR credit. So I could potentially double dip but the rates for Vegas have seemed really high recently. So I’m probably going to pass on that one, but I got my 200. So that was good. Yeah. And those it’s there’s a term permission structure often used in talking about politics lately, but that FHR has, been enough of a permission structure for us to enjoy some hotels that we wouldn’t quite rationalize any other way.
Shangri [00:16:00] La, Singapore has become one of our favorite hotels in the world. It’s this incredible resort, 10 minutes from Orchard. you feel like you’re a world away but you’re 10 minutes from everything. they have three distinctive room types. The tower, which is basic.
the garden wing, which we love. we’ve made recordings of the audio just to listen to the background, noises of the pool and the ceiling fans. the valley wing is on the FHR. The valley wing is usually priced much more than booking direct, but it’s a totally the entire hotel is a club lounge in a sense with piano players and full meals all day.
It’s designed to be your meals. It’s true meals. the tower wing garden wing at that hotel or on off times, like in the two 40 to three 20 range and a 200 credit. Yeah, that’s not bad. Speaking of Singapore. The Conrad Centennial is often two 32 a night, that’s another FHR one.
So it’s, some of these that it’s like Conrad Centennial. Yeah. It’s a city [00:17:00] hotel. I’m not really going there to have the meals because Singapore has wonderful food. I wouldn’t pay the 80, 000 points a night because I’m comparing it to someplace where I would, but on FHR then, it sounds great.
Yeah. Waldorf Astoria sometimes had rates around 250 or 300. And there you’re getting something like 100, 125 food credit. And if you have the Hilton diamond status from the Aspire card or other ways, then that was an additional 40 per guest per day. So that was 80 a day plus the FHR credits. And then if you have the Aspire card, you’re getting resort credits.
I think when I went, I had about 600 in food to spend across three days. So at one point I even went to the sky bar and had overpriced hummus. I got some good photo ops. I was 20 for this little plate of hummus. You got the good photos of the Vegas strip.
Thank you. We haven’t traveled in Latin America much Since we moved to the west coast, but I just noticed the Conrad Panama City, Panama, there may not be a Conrad Panama City, Florida [00:18:00] Hogan has a bar called Hogan’s Hangout underwater I don’t know if anybody in the audience has been to that hotel It looks very nice and
It’s like perfectly two hundred eleven dollars or something. she wants to go to Argentina. Can we just have a stop over for, nine days? Cause we have so many cards to use up. It’s getting close to the end of the year.
So use your end of year credits. it might be interesting if you get the card. there are possible double dip or triple dip opportunities to use these credits with only paying one annual fee. Or maybe you go later than 30 days of where you have to resolve the annual fee. Say, okay, we use the credit January one and then we’ll downgrade it after the credit post.
So you get some interesting Amex opportunities there because a lot of these credits are based on calendar year. I do every January do a bunch of Delta awards. Airline incidentals works for Delta award fees. I do a bunch of FHR bookings for somewhere I might stay. I go through the list and lock it in because it [00:19:00] may change.
It may downgrade things like the Hilton Aspire Resort credits. There’s a hotel in Japan, we love, and I just, I write them and say, we’ve got to stay booked this date. Please take my payments prepayment. Even if I change the date, they’re very good about holding the advance payment
maybe some shenanigans with upgrading and downgrading. Have you tried any of that? Maybe You should use the personal platinum credits on January 1st, wait for it to post, and then downgrade to a personal gold. Have you had success with that, or any clawbacks? I’ve used to be much more aggressive, and got distracted or lazy the past few years, but it always worked when I was aggressive around it.
if people aren’t familiar if you go past the 30 days when you could cancel a card and get the full annual fee back. After the 30 days, you can downgrade, that prorates the fee, and then you can cancel and get that fee back. when I was more aggressive on earning Delta status, I was constantly upgrading, downgrading.
That was specifically to have more capacity for the old MQM [00:20:00] boost, so there’s certainly a lot. Oh yeah. Of opportunity with Amex. And as far as strategies, it does seem that upgrade downgrade. That’s the kind of stuff when I first got involved doing this stuff These experts that were doing it way before I was out of high school Amex, if you’re using their products, And taking advantage of the benefits to the degree they’re more or less intended, I think you’re generally in good shape.
And the funny thing with the upgrading and downgrading is that sometimes I downgrade from personal platinum to personal gold, and then I get an offer on a personal gold upgrade back to platinum, so then I have another FHR credit, but you wouldn’t be able to use it twice in the same year because it remembers the history of the card has been my experience.
So if January 1st, I use the FHR credit, downgrade to personal gold, and then maybe April, come back to Platinum for bonus membership rewards, you wouldn’t be able to dip another 200 on that same card. That’s true. So some weird stuff going on. I’m just thinking of the insanity of our hobby today. So this big conference and my key volunteer [00:21:00] printing name badges.
Mid morning, he’s Oh, by the way, I got to go to the Chinese embassy consulate to drop off everybody’s visa applications. What about the badges? He said everybody’s doing this million mile challenge. I thought about it and I said, he is a volunteer. It’d be nice if the work got done.
You all would appreciate if the work got done. But then I said, I did bring all my platinums and I don’t want to go downtown. If I’m letting you go downtown, here’s my cards And then there were their cards and suddenly he was dropping piles of sax cards Oh the sax, so he bought a bunch of 50 gift cards the dunkin donuts is down the street too your badges should have been printed today But they almost all got done on time.
So thank you for that the excuse is entirely understandable in this room As far as why we were down to the wire on printing them. I also heard that there’s a record number of IHG status holders in the building. This is not intercontinental Monte Carlo.
This kind of location, it’s a [00:22:00] business location by an airport and business IHG diamond parking spots. Lightly enforced. Some of these frequent flyer events, going back to a Freddy’s industry awards, I think it was 2014 Hilton hosted it. Their corporate hotel is the Hilton Tyson’s corner in the DC area, and it’s a giant Hilton designed for conferences next to Hilton headquarters.
So they were involved and they had said there had never been that many. Hilton diamonds and golds of any kind ever. my standard line is why don’t we just put some hidden camera at one of these events and everybody like this hotel has two suites.
But everybody who checks in has their sweet pickup line and you’re all gonna get rejected, but it would be a great candid camera Thing to see everybody’s pickup line See you see it all worked. So yeah back to AmEx and the Hilton business recently got devalued A lot of people were [00:23:00] holding on to the Hilton business spend 15, 000 I believe it wasn’t get a free night, but now they raise the annual fee and they took away the cert Now it’s just I canceled mine.
Because I didn’t the ongoing, and I could see that if you’re a product manager, you would say, is the free night cert really a benefit for the typical small business owner customer they’re thinking of? A sole proprietor, like many of us are, it makes tremendous sense, but if you’re an office of seven, eight people, is that?
What makes sense? Is there a lot of breakage? My mother in law is not happy, She’s been getting my certs recently, Stephan. my birthday’s coming up again, Certs for the birthday. Maybe some Dunkin Donuts gift cards as well. She’s hilarious and determined and learned a few words of English But the word she knows best right now is globalist.
she just thinks it magically happens, but I sent her to the UK in August and she’s checking in at a Hilton. Globalist! Moxie York, or [00:24:00] whatever, globalist. She got breakfast as a Marriott Gold for free by saying globalist. So am I the one who’s crazy?
She’s pulling it off. if she had Access to U. S. cards, going back to the Bonvoy Brilliant, I would get that for her because based in Asia, the hotel breakfast lounges are, other than Japan, typically as far as lounges, are spectacular, and there is tremendous value for that.
I would love to have her as platinum instead of gold because she’s an authorized user on my Morgan Stanley platinum card. We don’t book her at a Marriott, instead, she’s Hilton Gold, which is useful. Transfer points to her. Earned on our Hilton cards.
then Guest of Honor bookings as well. I had the Hilton business some time ago, and I cancelled it. In the thought of, maybe No Card is a Keeper card with American Express on the five credit card slots. if a card is break even for me going into the future, after the first year, I’m typically thinking I can cancel the [00:25:00] card, get a new card and get a new signup bonus and new benefits.
paying a 95 annual fee on a Hilton business as it was, I believe to get a cert versus getting a brand new card and getting something like 80, 000 Hilton points or more. The second proposition seems better to just get new cards. But one limitation to that was that I got the pop up and saying, based on your history with American express, you may not be eligible for this signup bonus.
one way around that was getting no lifetime language offers I had offers for new Delta cards Months ago and even closer in the summer. There were Hilton offers. So I had canceled some older cards I got the Hilton no annual fee card Which had something like I think 80 or 90 K Hilton honors points plus a free night certificate
I got the Hilton surpass with no lifetime language So that was really nice. Rather than keeping a blue business plus clogging up a slot, not doing much for me or Hilton business, also not doing much for me. So what I’m trying to do with [00:26:00] Amex going into 2025 is have one of the credit cards for just about a year and then cancel it after that year to make room for a new slot when a new no lifetime language offer.
Now, are your slots pretty firmly? Cause I got up to six a couple of years ago and others have been at five. So that for those not as familiar AmEx at a certain point says you have too many of our credit cards separate from the charge or pay over time cards it’s a mystery why some people end up getting six and different theories.
But yeah, it’s part of the algorithm and things can change over time. It’s not a hundred percent hard and fast, but. But it is a tough thing of, and I’ve met at different industry events, people like, why, why do you limit it? We love your product. when I was doing Delta status, I’d always have two slots taken up, I was always every year trying to earn my status.
And so that was two. And there was a bunch of Amex products that I haven’t had the everyday cards I’ve never had. And they’re attractive. They were more attractive at one point, but there just wasn’t space for [00:27:00] them. right now I have the new annual fee Hilton that I’ve had for a few months.
I have two Delta reserve business at the moment because I took the summer offers for the Delta business Platinums with the no lifetime language. And then a few months later, they gave me upgrade offers, the Delta reserve. So that’s four. And then I have an aspire card that I’ve had to keep the status and some of the benefits, maybe one of the best keeper cards with American express.
But once October hit. On the Aspire card, I hit my 30, 000 spend goal to get a free night certificate. I used the 50 airline incidental credit with United Travel Bank. So once that posted, I used all the benefits for the year, got my 30k spend. Then I downgraded it to a surpass rather than just outright canceling, because that should give me another free night certificate since the history of the account recognizes that it has 15k spend on it.
So maybe come January, I use the surpass benefit [00:28:00] again for the 50 Hilton gift card and then maybe upgrade that to aspire later in the year or just cancel when a new, no lifetime language offer comes out.
So a lot of decisions with American express to try to optimize. And I believe, is it correct that if you were in the reverse, you had to surpass, hit the 15, 000 upgraded to Aspire, that 15, 000 carries over? I think the play would be to spend 30k grocery on the surpass, so that way it’s 6x, and then do the upgrade.
Oh, I see. The Aspire’s 3x on all spend, where I can get 6x grocery and do creative spend at grocery stores, or flutes to the finish line. With the grocery category. You keep giving hints about that. How much on a podcast format are you going to talk about that
Yeah, the Flues Power Portal. Happy to use that with American Express cards that are earning really well. I’m going to learn how to use flues and then they change things. but we’ll have more flues.
in the weekend, we’ve sketched out a bit of your advanced AMEX [00:29:00] strategy, a lot of upgrades, downgrades, a lot of focus on business cards. The Deltas you have just for the miles or you’re interested in the status. I did get status and I’ll have the platinum status going into next year as well, because they gave MQMs for spending at one point, there was MQMs for the signup bonus at one point.
So I’ve rolled over from the previous year. out of Philadelphia, I’m not really Delta based, but since the AmEx offers were so good, I found myself in the Delta cards when I’ve already had, many of the other AmEx cards before I got hit with the pop up. The first time I hit the pop up, I applied for the Lowe’s business card, and I got the pop up on that.
Really? You don’t want to give me the hundred dollars, AmEx? But here, take five more business it’s a strange situation with them. So now it’s the no lifetime language offers, it’s the employee card offers. The authorized user offers. So it seems like there’s always more to do with American Express. Yeah, it is.
It’s quite something. the upgrade priority on the Delta Reserve business I have [00:30:00] bumps me up to be number one for zero seats and number two for one. I’ve got so many close calls that I could be slightly farther away if I didn’t have that card.
It’s gotten harder, but I got grandfathered in under the new annual fee structure. they added the Delta stays credit, which is their hotel booking And the monthly resi credits. I found a Thai restaurant in Philadelphia in the Fishtown area called Kaliya. they actually sell gift cards.
Yeah. So you can buy gift cards and stagger those credits into the future. I just had a big meetup in Seattle and it was multiple years of Shake Shack Amex gold on my walk to the movie theater, picking these things up and every single time it was not worth it because nobody knew where the cards were, how to sell them.
actually it was a fun picnic to have that, and do that. it’s hard for me to resist trying to optimize some of these benefits. Resi is about the only one I’ve successfully resisted.
There’s very few choices in my normal walking orbit [00:31:00] In Manhattan and then Jersey city. My one rule was when I was in those areas, I would not take any public transport or non walking scooter bike for any points at mass purpose. And that was how I kept some discipline.
in Jersey city, I could walk to a bunch of places or a little. A little longer with the scooter, but if I felt like if I was spending my life on subways it had taken over too much. So yeah, got a lot of good walks in Kaliya is pretty easy for me because it’s near Philly live casino where I play poker So I’ll just schedule usually on a Wednesday.
I’ll go to Kaliya. It’s not so busy on those days I’ll go there, get some food, and then get a gift card for a future stay. But, I wouldn’t hate just getting the full value gift card, or some places might sell merchandise. Hey, you want some t shirts?
Maybe they can be gifts, or you can just gift other people the gift cards, which is unusual for us because we’re usually using our own gift cards. It’s like when I go into a grocery store [00:32:00] to buy a $500 prepaid card. Oh, who’s the lucky person getting this? Oh yeah, it’s me. I use them.
Please say it even louder. Oh my God. I’ve never seen so many giant points before. your total is 10,000, $11. I can hear you . I can see it on the screen. You know everybody can, you’re sure you want to get a money order for 1000 total. Oh, you’re heading out to the parking lot right now. .
but some of those interactions, I live in Seattle, it’s such a chill place. late night menu at a restaurant starts at seven. So it just going around to stores and having some of these interactions can be quite fun. chatting with people, especially the occasional ones that are curious, why are you buying this and that?
My apartment takes debit cards for rent. It was free for years. They didn’t figure out that they weren’t charging a fee and now they instituted it, but it’s still modest, but still probably worth it. people will ask and then I’ll explain I’m sure no one’s doing it, but they’re [00:33:00] sometimes curious and you get the life story at one guy I’ve gotten to know at my local Safeway.
He grew up in. Soviet Union era, and he learned to be an art restorer. And so he works like the butcher counter at Safeway, part-time and restores precious artworks as a side business. you get to know these different characters and it’s actually as, certainly as someone that before I got into points, like any happy hour, any networking thing, I just hate it and just, just to strike up the conversation or whatever, but.
Having to learn the social engineering aspects of this hobby and just strike up a conversation. So I grew up in Minnesota. My father’s originally from Brooklyn, New York. So now people will say Oh, now you’re taking after your father, just start talking to everybody. But it’s totally a learned skill for me.
Alright, so going back to Amex, we talked about the credit cards. So it’s usually five slots that we have. And what about the pay over time, [00:34:00] or the charge cards? You mentioned the Morgan Stanley Platinum, I mentioned the Personal Platinum. They’ve changed the rules, it seems, now there’s a family language that if you get a Platinum sign up bonus, you’re no longer eligible for a gold or silver card.
The Morgan Stanley might be that, or maybe not, depending on the offer. I almost feel if the card is not intrinsically worth keeping, Then, a huge signup bonus is a huge signup bonus, but I feel like if the lifestyle or the enjoyment of certain things of a platinum card makes sense go for it, the golden green, I feel like there’s gotta be a lot where the everyday use of the card on the bonus categories makes sense.
Otherwise it’s just a tremendous slog in a lot of ways. There’s happy moment with the platinum. Like I said, I’ve got the Morgan Stanley. Is hard to get to on a, I think currently I got in with that access investing, which is not a path now. And that was an easier one.
If you want a portfolio over the past decade, that does not grow, you can do that. Hopefully no Morgan [00:35:00] Stanley, But the particular feature of that is the first authorized user is a free platinum authorized user, which the other products currently available charge a fee for
That’s a package of the first three. And as I said in this case, having that benefit for my mother-in-law doesn’t have access to us credit cards, getting the status and those things GI gives a good chance to I, I keep keeping it even if maybe I necessarily shouldn’t, but it just makes sense.
And the Schwab card, I know there’s been a lot of changes this month about. Cashouts for high volume. But I have investments in my main checking because of international travel with Schwab So I feel like some of these subscriptions and some of these benefits are easy enough to use.
I appreciate them but I don’t really bother with the golds and greens anymore. The gold seems like an America loves math moment for me as there’s an annual fee, but I’m doing a lot of the grocery manufacturing. In creative spending. And then I’m also flusing to the finish line with the dining category.
So even if I’m paying a fee of something like [00:36:00] 3 percent it changes, but I’m getting four X back in membership rewards. Then it seems to make sense to do that buying points at a discount or if you’re cashing out the points. So for heavier users or heavier spenders than the gold seem to make more sense.
But maybe if it’s just organic spend, It’s people outside the hobby, maybe keeping it after a year doesn’t make sense. usually when I do my aporamas, I’ll apply for several cards in one day, I’ll usually just add a gold card to the end of an aporama, just to have more 4x capacity.
That’s a term we don’t hear so much anymore. So what does your apparama look like these days? Ooh, so I’m looking at more obscure banks now, like getting cards with Synchrony. Maybe some other Bank of America cards that I haven’t yet had. I really like the First National Bank of Omaha. I have the MGM Mastercard with them.
So there’s some opportunity for new cards with them. not knowing the casino world, there is value to that card, [00:37:00] presumably, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it. Yeah I think it’s my favorite card, with Altitude Reserve being number two, because you can spend your way to MGM gold status, as a lot of the matches have died.
Oh. So having the gold status for waived resort fees, access to the M4 Lounge at Borgata. And a lot of other benefits. I’m looking for more obscure issuers in the Apparama. I’ll throw in a gold at the end so you’re not getting a bunch of Amex at the same moment.
usually not because I have the credit card slots filled, or maybe I’d have to wait for a no lifetime language offer, but I’m usually happy adding a gold card at the end of the Apparama because Amex is pretty lenient with approvals from my experience. you started by saying focus on business.
Now you’re recommending a person. Oh yes. later on, I said, I’m desperate to get other cards. maybe people newer to the hobby, want to get their chase cards early. their Barclays and us bank cards early, maybe capital one venture X. during that process, they can get the Amex business cards with other issuers that don’t hit personal credit, later we could use those [00:38:00] 10 charge card slots.
Maybe with a lot of gold cards or maybe with the no lifetime language business Platinum’s Maybe it was about two years ago where we were getting emails postal mails Expand your relationship and your business this and that so at one point I had five business Platinum’s simultaneously but now I think I have four I got upgrade offers on business golds from business gold and LL offers So I’m not really sure what triggers the NLL offers Is it random?
Is it spending? Is it Amex just wants to put in more volume before the end of the quarter? I don’t know, but I’m usually happy to sign up for the NLL offers and just get more signup bonuses and more cards. Why not? Anytime I’ve met industry people across all of these, it’s always just another job to them.
And they seem to know much less about their products than we do. Because we’re obsessed that in the middle of the night we wake up thinking about the bonus post. And they think about something else. It’s like the meme of the guy laying next to the woman. What is he thinking? Oh, how can I get more Amex cards?[00:39:00]
It has been heard said in my house at times. You love your monitor more than me. I use the Dell credits for that extra monitor. She took a few weeks and then she said, your monitor is growing and growing. I had slipped in a much bigger monitor at one point.
She didn’t like the look it did to the room, But you mentioned the word offers and I’ve not kept up to date. I know we’ve got a session this weekend on a tool called card pointers, but actual Amex offers still seem like a bit of a hassle.
how do you approach them? How often do you check them? Yeah, I really like this. I really like doctor of credit. com and GC galore. com with Steven pepper. And they’re usually following the really good AmEx offers. There was recently one for Lowe’s getting a decent amount of cash back on purchase.
of course Lowe’s sells a lot of gift cards. So I can buy the fan dual gift cards in Pennsylvania at Lowe’s I can [00:40:00] buy the golf master cards. experiences. If anyone’s familiar with those, they’re just prepaid 500 cards that Lowe’s usually sells depending on the location So using the Amex offers for the Lowe’s gift cards is pretty good.
And the business platinum also gives 1. 5 X on gift cards at Lowe’s. So I’ve been using that. So stacking that with an Amex offer, can be pretty good because while working toward a signup bonus, I might as well get 1. 5 X rather than just one X on. Just general spending. So you’re you’re letting the blogs do the work.
And I take the similar approach if and those are great resources of, yeah. And community too, is I have a local group in Philadelphia, greater Philadelphia travel credit miles and points. it’s nice to have a network of people. Hey, I saw this offer. this store is running this promotion, especially like earlier I mentioned Weiss and Redner’s.
a lot of the bloggers aren’t following those things, but the people closer to those stores are following them more. is this group publicly available? Yes, it is. How do people find it? Meetup. com slash Philly miles and points. [00:41:00] Ah, fantastic. It’s on the screen for people in the room. And for listeners, I mentioned it in the intro and outro.
How many attendees do you think are at the event? Not necessarily in this room, but just overall. Oh, it’ll be about 210 this year. not everybody can get in at the exact moment, but it’s. fun to see every shuttle bus come with a new group of people popping off at points Disney, so to speak.
this is an unusual event in that there’s always been conference sessions on the Friday night, very few conferences or meetups have more than a pure social activity. And I’ve always found that the Friday night energy is the most thrilling of Chicago seminars.
It’s people really excited, that night vibe really excited to get going. All right, great. And I did promise Q and A. We’re at about 47 minutes on the audacity timer and it’s 7 39. So do we have time for the Q and A? Yep, we absolutely do. All right. when should we stop the Q and A? When you feel [00:42:00] like it, we’ve got about 10 minutes.
Okay, Cool. Get to your next session. I like Royals head turns. I like you and if it can be a quick question and then I’ll repeat your question into the microphone. Could you please say a little bit more about upgrading and downgrading surpass and aspire specifically card member year timing versus annual year timing.
Did you say that the spend for 15, 000 counts on Surpass counts towards the Aspire and vice versa? The 30, 000 on Aspire would automatically trigger a free night certificate on Surpass? A little more on that, please. so the question was, talk a little bit more about American Express downgrading, upgrading with Surpass and Aspire card member year, calendar year.
And do certain amounts carry over. In the first year of having an Aspire, you need to spend 30, 000 in a calendar year to get a free night certificate on the Aspire. And that would [00:43:00] happen after the first year, too. you need to spend 30, 000 in a calendar year on the Aspire card to get a free night certificate.
So if you hit the 30K in a calendar year and it’s later than a year of you having the card, I wouldn’t downgrade a card in the first year of having a card because they might claw back a bonus if the Aspire is older than a year and you spent 30K in a calendar year, you could then downgrade and Aspire to a Surpass.
the Surpass in that same calendar year should recognize that you spent 30K on the card. So it should trigger another certificate. The other way is if you spend 15 K on a surpass, you get a free night certificate in a calendar year. So if you decide to go to 30 K in a calendar year on the surpass, you could then upgrade to an aspire.
And then the aspire should recognize the 30 K spend. And I’d rather spend 30 K on a surpass because I’m a surpass. You get the six X grocery. So I do the grocery spending to get to 30 K on the [00:44:00] surpass rather than doing 15 K. Of only three x spending on the aspire. The aspire categories aren’t as interesting to me personally, although dining is also a category on aspire, and as far as I know, once you get the diamond status, it stays for a while.
So if you’re upgrading and downgrading within a you should continue to have the diamond status, even though you don’t hold the Aspire card. Okay. Does that, your user year doesn’t matter, your member year, the free nights are based on the calendar. Okay, so the question was talk about upgrading and downgrading business platinum business gold.
What resets? What about the Dell credits? What about the airline incidental credits? if you have The business gold or the business platinum for one year after that if you don’t take a retention offer then you’re probably in the clear to downgrade The Dell credit is based on the calendar year.
If you do it in the first six months, you get the 200 in the first six months on the business platinum. Then you get another 200 in the next six months. So if you use the Dell credit on [00:45:00] July 1st, I believe would be the second period. Use the Dell credit July 1st, the Dell credit processes and maybe a week or so, depending on Dell shipping.
if Dell cancels the order, if likes you as a reseller or decides not to sell you that it’s like this business that doesn’t want to sell you things. But when I get Dell products, I ship them. Products people buy, they discontinue. They’re on the website, it’s you want to have the ultimate retail.
Nothing you want to buy and no transaction will go through. We had a roast Dell, a little bit off topic. But yeah, you hit the spend, the 200 spend in July, and then you could downgrade to the business gold. then you’ll have more capacity for Forex fuel. You’ll get the 20 a month credit at Staples or other places you might use it as flexible business credit.
And then maybe the Amex gods will grant you another upgrade offer to go from the business gold to the business platinum. But I wouldn’t hate just canceling the pay overtime cards to free up a slot and not pay an annual fee because I think a lot of the value drops off after the first year with the business platinum and the business gold.
from my experience, I can cancel [00:46:00] business platinums because another NLL offer will probably come. I’m not sure the business gold is worth keeping after the first year either if they don’t give you a retention. NLL offers come for the business golds too. if you choose to pay the annual fee and then downgrade to get more benefits and then cancel, it depends on the timing of when that annual fee hits.
Is Amex as sensitive to spending large amounts on gift cards when you’re doing it on something like the Surpass as opposed to a gold card? From what I’ve seen with data points, they seem to be more sensitive about membership reward earning cards rather than the co branded Hilton points.
But when a card is seasoned enough I haven’t received grocery clawbacks on either the personal gold or the surpass. I think there was only one time where I saw big clawbacks. It was a certain summer of Hilton offer where they bonus the grocery spend with bonus Hilton points. And they also did it on a personal platinum.
I think at one point with 10 X grocery and people got clawed back on that. But if it’s a more seasoned card, you should probably be okay. And also [00:47:00] taking into consideration the idea that it’s probably a marathon rather than a race. So if you’re going for the 15 K spend goal on the surpass, you can spread it out throughout the year.
If you have the whole year or on the personal gold for the 25 K grocery, consider spreading that out throughout the year as well, rather than trying to hit it super early. The question was talk a little bit about retention offers. How do you go about it? And typically when my annual fee posts within the 30 days, I’ll call in and say, I’m considering canceling the card because of the annual fee.
And I have other cards with American express that give similar benefits Would you consider giving me a retention bonus for keeping the card? And that’s usually the script that I use. especially if you want to mention you added all these benefits and upgrade the annual fees.
I think that’s a good tactic to try to get through with the customer service reps. And I almost always call in, while driving, so I’m not on this long phone call at home I think it’s best to do that as a multitasking thing, or maybe you’re cooking or preparing [00:48:00] lunch
Try to multitask with the retention offers. And do you try chat and find phone better or you prefer phone? I prefer the phone. I’ve heard things happen in live chat where they just cancel on people in live chat because the reps misunderstand what people are saying and I can multitask more with the phone.
personally I’m not a fan of live chat, but I don’t hate live chat for people that don’t want to chat on the phone or people in situations where their player two doesn’t want to call in or doesn’t know what to say. Yeah. Cause even when MX has account manager, which can, you can designate someone to do quite a lot,
if you call in or log in as the account manager profile, they don’t show or have retention offers available. So you can close the account, but I don’t believe that retention offers pop up to the account manager. it has to be the primary that was an excellent point you made about, the phrase say I want to close the card I never say that.
if you say, even if you hint, they may just close it. so it’s always the, I’m considering. Yeah, considering. considering, or I’m considering to [00:49:00] make a change to my account. So then they don’t have it on record that you said close the card.
Cause they may just do that and that may not be what you want. And you may not be able to undo it. So considering, I’m considering making changes to my account. Yes, yeah. Do we have any more time for questions?
We have one more question. Okay. The question was, can you push FHR credits forward if you use an FHR credit at the end of the year for a stay the next year? More or less of the amount and those credits typically won’t come back. avoid clawbacks, how does that work? You could expend more on that.
My experience and understanding is you can book them far out. You can do date changes online. Now there may be a collection difference, more or less of the amount and those credits typically won’t come back. even if you very much later have to. So after changes and price changes and that, and it may not be clawed back or if you’ve downgraded the card, for instance, they’re not going to claw back.
There’s a lot of flexibility now with the online tools to make those changes. I think we are fantastic because people are peering in. [00:50:00] Justin’s doubling up. he’s doing a bonus session on leveraging credit lines in the next room. Thank you. You’ve been a fantastic audience.
Thanks for listening and stay tuned for future episodes. Visit hurdygurdytravel. com to contact me, find me on social media, read, episode transcripts, schedule a free consultation and use referral links to support my efforts, find the show on many podcasts, platforms, and YouTube, where you can find bonus videos.
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