Originally Posted by scubadu

No, I'm not referring to the CL/Delta changes (honestly, don't even use CLs anymore, horrible experience). For a few years now, Amex has offered very generous sign-up bonuses (SUBs), with so called "No Lifetime Language" (NLL) on both Amex Business Gold & Platinum cards, allowing folks to get multiple (and large) SUBs on cards you may have already (or even currently hold). They also offered us several "upgrade offers" (also with NLL). For us, that is where we focus our efforts. Both my wife and I took advantage of several very lucrative offers last year which really juiced our points balances. In fact, we used points/miles for the majority of our travel last year and yet still ended the year with more points/miles than we started with.

However, alas, it does seem that Amex is beginning to take the punch bowl away and many (most) are no longer receiving NLL offers for new cards. Furthermore, Amex has begun adding so called "family language" to many of their cards making it difficult to obtain a bonus on another Amex card that is in the same "family" as a card you have previously (or currently) have. So all in all, it seems Amex might not be so generous going forward (and they have been ridiculously generous over the past couple of years). That is what I was referring to by changes from Amex.

Originally Posted by scubadu

Yikes... friends don't let friends get 1X per dollar! Honestly, we are really never, ever satisfied with 1 point per dollar on... well... anything. We do have to occasionally settle for that, but we try not to let that happen. We have a couple cards that are the equivalent of 2X points and/or 2% cash back, that is the bare minimum we'd settle for. Then, for things that might be 1X like monthly utility bills, etc, we will buy Visa/MasterCard gifts cards at Officedepot/Staples using an Ink Business card which gives 5X points for those purchases. Then we simply use those to pay bills, shop at Costco, etc. all at 5X per dollar. We also use that same method for buying Amazon gifts cards for those purchases. We use Chase Freedom Flex cards, which offer "quarterly bonuses" in rotating categories and we max those bonuses out. For example, this quarter's bonus category is groceries and my wife and I both have a Freedom Flex each, so we'll actually both buy gift cards at our local grocery store to max out the offer then we'll just use those cards over the next 6 months or so,in effect ensuring we always get 5X on groceries (and also gas, because our grocery store sells gas and same gift card works). Anyhow, I could go on and on, but you get the gist, for us getting 1X per dollar on purchases is no bueno.

Originally Posted by scubadu

And that is why the AA cards aren't attractive to us for daily/normal spend. We'd much rather focus our spending "firepower" on obtaining multiple, +100K SUBs per year than putting that spend on an AA card earning at 1LP/RDM per dollar in order to chase AA status. But, we are more than happy to churn the AA credit cards for the SUB/RDM every 48 months.