Originally Posted by arshi007

Your post really made me smile for the day . And I do agree that sometimes we go out of our way to justify the AF. In general, the Platinum card was supposed to be a card for travel and lounge access. Its classic gamification. Having said that, personally, I usually only allow 50 to 80% value to "coupon book" credits and if the math still works out, then I keep the card, otherwise it goes on the chopping block. A prime example is the Sapphire Reserve and the Strata Elite. Both of those are "useless" in my valuation and all the blogger articles about these cards "paying for itself" seems to be blogger ........ IMHO. I understand that a small fraction of the community can make it work and that would be a good success story. That's one of the reasons i got rid of my Sapphire Reserve and Citi Prestige a few years ago. I've kept my AmEx Plat for now (actually 2 of them, me plus SO) because doing that in 2-player mode seems to be better value with the FHR, Uber, Airline and Streaming credit along with Clear credits (the only credit to which i assign almost full value is the airline credit as I have been able to use it for UA TB and United is my goto airline for work and personal travel). I consider FHR as 50% of total credit (200 credit + 100 stay credit) at $150, Uber is around 75% (given that I can buy Uber GC's with 20% discount and the Uber markup tax) so around $150, Clear credit at around $135 (we pay $270 for Clear between me and SO), Streaming credit at around $150 (that would be the realistic value if one purchased the discounted annual plans for Hulu and Disney), Saks credit at around $50 and Walmart+ at $50 (gives Paramount+ for free plus a good alternative to Amazon prime for certain household items). So the total for me is (150+150+135+150+50+50=685). Well so i essentially pay $10 for Centurion lounge access . With the impending updates, I'll have to reevaluate based on how well we can use the FHR within our regular travel habits - and even then, i'll probaby assign it no more than 50 to 60% of credit value.