Originally Posted by
DIRECT MERIT
Here in the UK, Amex Plat comes with good travel insurance benefits. Recently the fee has more than paid itself when I had to see a doctor in New York about an ear infection, and my daughter had to go to a City Med for a simple, but not cheap, procedure.
The travel insurance appeals. We've paid for that in the past on vacation trips.
Originally Posted by
jerseytom
I fly out of / through Centurion Lounge airports frequently. That's the primary value for me, the other odds-and-ends are gravy on top.
As others have noticed - it's my primary focus. I'm just concerned that, as others have noticed, it's an oversubscribed benefit.
Originally Posted by
BearX220
Same advice applies as that which i gave my son when he was mulling the Chase Platinum Reserve card: Forget the points accumulation; points are of fungible / uncertain value and should be seen as a windfall bonus if they turn out to be useful and replace some cash spend of yours, but don't pay real money for them.
I have to say, that's the primary benefit of the Amazon card for me. It does well on Amazon and at Whole Foods and then the points are "real". (I shop quite a bit on Amazon.). With the Amex card I'd be looking to max out the benefits to make the lounge access really make sense.
Originally Posted by
trm2
I find the Centurion Lounges useless. They are so overcrowded it isn’t funny. If you can get in it can be difficult to find a place to sit, the food is picked over and generally lacking. The last five or six times I even tried to go in, the line was well out the door and I abandoned the idea completely and went to the United Club instead.
If I was flying United *and* I didn't have the Amex lounge to try and was going to be there long enough I'd pay the $60. It's that nice if you're there an hour or two early to be relaxed.
Originally Posted by
hotturnip
Listen, Jaki, you're getting mostly good advice here. The thing is . . . you really only seem interested in lounge access, and the deal with these credit cards is that they only really have value if you can take advantage of most of the package of benefits they offer.
And I'm a cheap enough of a guy that I would like seek out the easy wins at least. And with this card they seem pretty easy?
Originally Posted by
hotturnip
I think most of us here would say that your current batch of credit cards is very low-value relative to what's available out there.
I would say that I really like "passive" benefits. For example, I shop a lot at Amazon and WF. The Prime card clearly works well there, and then when I go shopping on Amazon I just spend the points. Yes, some of the cards aren't great but also not sure I need to drop them. None of them have fees, and on the occasion that I post a huge balance it doesn't hurt to much in terms of utilization. Experian shows an 850 FICO 8 for me, so I'm doing it mostly right...
Originally Posted by
hotturnip
You can see from the comments that there are a lot of good benefits with the Platinum, but you have to be willing to spend the time and energy to take advantage of them.
Some of them seem pretty easy though. Like I go to the SiriusXM site, put the Amex in as the billing card, and them boom I'm done, right? Link Uber to the Amex and done. It doesn't seem more complicated than that, or am I missing something?
It's not clear to me that you are. If you were flying Delta, I'd say you probably would get a lot of value from the lounge use with the Platinum. But you're not--you're flying UA and Southwest. The first thing that came to my mind was the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which would give you full Priority Pass access, including restaurants (really good for using at SFO), AND would include both UA and Southwest as transfer partners for the points you earn. But I'm not sure you're even interested in earning the points, are you?
Originally Posted by
hotturnip
If you ARE interested in getting more serious about earning with your cards, I'd go ahead and get rid of the ones you don't use. The Apple Card is OK as a daily driver, since you get some cash back. Same with the Amazon card, particularly if you use Amazon a whole lot. You might consider getting rid of the rest, and adding a travel card, either the Amex Plat or the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Never use a card that isn't giving you something back. It's amazing to me how many people don't know this (you clearly do, given the cards you have).
I use the cards that give something back. The others I keep for the credit lines, which are significant. I like having a large amount of available credit. I may not game points but I *do* try to max my credit score. A large part of my hesitation, in fact, is the score hit I'm going to take. (Silly, I know.)
Originally Posted by
llary
I think there are two separate groups who can get value out of an Amex Platinum:
I'd say I'm likely a mix of both. If I get the card then I'll set up things at the beginning. Not too hard, one time thing, etc. And then the #2 is kind of true. I wouldn't really miss the $700 and maybe the hotel status plus the concierge stuff might be fun?