Correct. I believe the previous poster meant "keeping" in the sense of restricting spending to $50,001 per year, not in the sense of maintaining a 50,000 point balance.
Thanks for explaining that Mia. That's exactly what I meant. Spend $50k on the card to maintain +3 Level each year. Then make sure to use up your Merrill+ points before AMEX Plat points or SPG points since the latter two programs have no expiration.
Here, the advantage of Merrill+ is getting the exact flights you want, on the airline you want, without capacity controls or Sat nite stays. The 2,500 points for $25 of ticket value (for first class for example) is fair IMHO. It's also nice to earn miles on the flights as well.
Unfortunately, the new AMEX Plat companion program DOES have capacity controls. I just ran into this yesterday.