I'm trying to decide whether or not to get the united club infinite card, assuming (as is likely) that I'd be approved for it. Would appreciate advice:

- I have a lot (for me) of domestic flights in the coming year. As I live in a United hub, most of those flights will be via United. It's mostly business travel. Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to be spending enough to get status because of those huge PQP requirements. (Most of my domestic travel is cheap employer-reimbursed work flights.) The only exception to this is that I might have a couple of international personal trips---if it ends up being financially reasonable to use united for those trips I might get over the line, but it's pretty likely that I'll transfer amex points to some international carrier for them, see below.)

- I value lounge access, but only if the lounge is actually nice---and IME united lounges are hit or miss, in terms of things like overcrowding, actually having decent food, etc.

- I already have the amex platinum and the CSR. For me, the chase card is mostly valuable for points earning (combined with freedom unlimited), plus a couple of the perks (lyft/doordash). I find the chase points pretty easy to use when I get around to it; tbh because most of my flying is domestic I find the amex points hard to use for maximum value, so I've been hoarding them until I have an international trip to get a good transfer rate, and I mostly keep the amex for the credits and lounge access. United is my designated airline for incidental charges on the platinum. Currently, I charge airfare to the platinum and hotels to the chase to maximize points.

- My home airport (ORD) has no amex or priority pass lounges anywhere in the domestic terminal. It does have a united lounge, though frankly it's a little depressing, only marginally better than being out in gen pop because at least outlets and wi-fi are good. A couple times last year I ended up paying for a united lounge day pass, though that went straight to the amex incidental charge (I guess if this is no longer what I use it for, there's always travelbank)

Reasons to add the United card

- the miles bonus is nice. Even at low valuations, that covers two years of the annual fee, and ideally I'd end up using this to pay for basically all my personal domestic flights for a while

- cheapest way to have access to a lounge at ORD. I probably won't use it ten times, so it isn't paying for itself, but I might use it 4 or 5 times over the year if it's already paid for. But because the ORD lounge is so pitiful I'm not really sure how much I value this.

- maybe, maybe, if I miraculously find myself close to status at the end of the year, I can dump a bunch of my ordinary spending onto it to squeeze out some PQPs. (I don't value status enough to just dump all my spend on the card otherwise.)

- the random incidental benefits like priority boarding are nice, I guess. I'd rather get them through status, but it's so damn hard to get status on united even flying a lot when it's just relatively cheap domestic fares. (Rant/digression: I've been looking at how much my upcoming flights are earning, and it's just horrible---I've got like 4 united trips coming up in the next couple of months, but they're not even accruing 200 points each. So I currently get all the pain of frequently flying that airline without any of the benefits of having a reasonable shot at status because it's so spend based. This sucks. I really wish I lived in a delta hub, but, alas. And I'm not shifting to american, which also has a hub in ORD, for many many reasons, mostly hating them.)

Reasons not to add the United card

- Is it really responsible to add a *third* high-fee premium credit card to my wallet? Even if the other two pretty much pay for themselves via credits and points, and even though I can afford it, it still seems a little bit egregious to spend almost 2k/year in credit card annual fees.

- a lot of redundancy and spend competition between the cards. Like, to hit the bonus (or to hit PQPs at the end of the year) I'd have to shift general spend from my other chase cards, even though I value UR points much more than united miles; on an ongoing basis I'd presumably have to think about shifting my united spend from amex to the united card, but then I'd lose out on all the nice amex travel protections and the points tradeoff isn't obvious. And a bunch of the overlapping benefits are just silly (there's only so many times I can renew global entry, lol). Also, I'd end up having an even harder time using the amex incidental credits, and would probably end up just dumping everything into travelbank... but sooner or later amex and/or united are probably going to pull the plug on that trick...

- I could get some proportion of the same benefits (minus the lounge access) for cheaper by getting the explorer or quest card instead.

I've been going back and forth about this for a while now! What would you do?