Originally Posted by
jason885
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Amex might also have unpublished caps on the 50% rebate category (or place them in the future) that you might hit.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
Yes, there are significant risks involved.
If I go for Centurion, it would be $2M on my Business Plat card (1.5X earn) and could do $2M on a second and possibly third Business Plat cards if necessary, stopping at $2M per card due to the 1.5X earning cap.
After getting Centurion, I would be tempted to go back to mostly putting 4X spend on Business Gold cards.
Maybe keep just $500K/year on the business Centurion
and
$160K/year on Business Gold cards ($150K at 4x earn) x 9 cards (have 6 so far)
The rest of the spending could go back to the BofA 2.65% and Chase 2.5% cards.
Regarding an unpublished cap on the 50% rebate (Business Centurion Airfare) I did ask Amex and the Centurion department rep I spoke with had never heard of one but that wasn't an official answer and could of course change.
I haven't seen reports of Amex shutdowns because too much spend was in bonuses categories but maybe I just missed them?
Does Amex shut people down only because our spend patterns are unprofitable for them?
Should I be afraid of a shutdown for doing the following if I go to that:
$160K/year on Business Gold cards ($150K at 4x earn) x 9 cards
All of this only holds up if that bill killing credit card bank commissions does not pass.
I still am wondering, what are the odds of being able to get a business Centurion a year or two after shifting $2M/year to my Business Plat card or $4M/year to two Business Plat cards?
Is an informed estimate of the odds even possible?