Originally Posted by
wanaflyforless
Thanks for the analysis! I had been considering the opportunity costs.
In my particular case, the net $$$$$ are in my favor if shifting the spend will result in a Centurion invite.
I anticipate redeeming all the MR I would earn each year for airfare (about 10 million points for $200K of airfare, donating most of the points/tickets to a non-profit).
If shifting the spend doesn't result in a Centurion invite, the spending shift would cost me significantly in forfeited rewards return.
My pleasure! Your situation is interesting and probably opens up a few questions about caps, limits, and risks. For example, I believe the 1.5x earning on the Bus Plat is capped to the first $2 million spent each calendar year so a lot of your shifted expenditures might suddenly find themselves at the 1X level, vastly increasing opportunity costs.
Amex might also have unpublished caps on the 50% rebate category (or place them in the future) that you might hit. Perhaps someone on this forum can answer that.
You'd also be giving up a heck of a lot of cashback, which presumably can donate anything not just flights.
Even if your scenario passes these thresholds, I'd consider that there's a bill going through congress that could erase the entire CC business model for issuers like Amex, and Jamie Dimon at JPM recently made some news by telling his entire executive team, in effect, that they must kill the credit card industry themselves "before someone else does." I'd be highly cautious making long-term plans around any of these programs.
https://www.ft.com/content/f6d8d454-...d-825d0a68730b