jags86

The AMEX Plat is an easy keeper for 2 years, generally. Snag a huge 150k+ Welcome Bonus and then in year 2 grab 50-60k retention. Don’t forget to add an AU when they have a 20k for $2k spend promo, and of course 20-30k for a POT bonus.

Past that, it’s difficult to justify unless you avail yourself of the lounge access frequently, and/or, would be paying face value for most of the credits. Hard for me to imagine I’d be using Uber Eats if I didn’t have AMEX credit. Digital credits are doled out monthly when cheaper annual plans suffice. Travel Bank is as good as cash but I’ve hoarded nearly $1600 in Travel Bank cash because I still do not have really any personal paid travel yet. Stuff will eventually start to expire. I wouldn’t normally shop at Saks and spend $50 for a t-shirt, but that’s what I use my $100 for. I do like Clear, but you can get it for free, or at a discounted rate + 10000+ miles during a promotion. Walmart+ is just dandy, but it’s the same cost as Amazon Prime and I don’t get streaming.

DIRECT MERIT

Here in the UK, Amex Plat comes with good travel insurance benefits. Recently the fee has more than paid itself when I had to see a doctor in New York about an ear infection, and my daughter had to go to a City Med for a simple, but not cheap, procedure.

Earning membership per £ spent, with a good range of partners, is a nice - if not crucial - side benefit.

jerseytom

I fly out of / through Centurion Lounge airports frequently. That's the primary value for me, the other odds-and-ends are gravy on top.

BearX220

Same advice applies as that which i gave my son when he was mulling the Chase Platinum Reserve card: Forget the points accumulation; points are of fungible / uncertain value and should be seen as a windfall bonus if they turn out to be useful and replace some cash spend of yours, but don't pay real money for them. Assess the Amex (or any similar) card rationally, on the total cash value of travel and other benefits you would actually buy and use in any case. If you would go out and spend $700+ / year on lounges, Uber, Clear, insurance, Hulu, etc. in any case, you're in profit with Amex Plat. Otherwise, you are wasting money on it.

(In other words, if you don't care about Hulu and wouldn't buy it as a rule, that doesn't count.)

I would add that lounge access is becoming almost as unpredictable / fungible as reward points value -- the arrangements change constantly, Centurion lounges are often oversubscribed and put you on a waiting list, etc. So i would not spend $695 expecting unlimited on-demand global lounge access and then be angry because the queues are longer than my airport dwell time.

You might consider Priority Pass. A ten-visits--per-year ticket can be had with a number of $95-per-year cards. But PP coverage is spotty, and very often you are the lowest-priority standby contender for entry, or simply barred during peak departure hours.

david55

I recently cancelled my Schwab Plat Amex. ( I have been an Amex client with one card or another since 1982). But my reasons were simple. I don't travel anymore. I don't take Uber. I already have a subscription to Disney. Don't shop at Walmart. And I found myself really irritated twice a year trying to find anything I wanted for under $50 at Saks.

mia

Any card which offers a Priority Pass membership will allow you to enter participating airport lounges without regard to the airline that you are flying. You can buy a Priority Pass membership directly, but in the USA it is more common to buy a credit card which includes a bundled Priority Pass membership. Read about Priority Pass here: https://www.prioritypass.com/ Use the box in the upper left to lookup lounges at specific airports.

SJC and SFO both have two Priority Pass lounges.

At some airports, Priority Pass provides meal credits at Restaurants in addition to, or instead of, Lounge access. Note that the American Express version of Priority Pass excludes Restaurants, but does provide Lounge access.

Credit cards which offer Priority Pass include (there are others):

American Express Bonvoy (Marriott) Brilliant
American Express Hilton Aspire
American Express Platinum
Capital One Venture X*
Chase Sapphire Reserve**

*Capital One is also accepted at Plaza Premium lounges. Capital One has announced that they are opening a lounge network of their own. One location is open (DFW).

**Chase has announced that they are opening a lounge network of their own, but none have opened.

hotturnip

What a completely unhelpful and useless post.

trm2

I find the Centurion Lounges useless. They are so overcrowded it isn’t funny. If you can get in it can be difficult to find a place to sit, the food is picked over and generally lacking. The last five or six times I even tried to go in, the line was well out the door and I abandoned the idea completely and went to the United Club instead.

hotturnip

Listen, Jaki, you're getting mostly good advice here. The thing is . . . you really only seem interested in lounge access, and the deal with these credit cards is that they only really have value if you can take advantage of most of the package of benefits they offer. I think most of us here would say that your current batch of credit cards is very low-value relative to what's available out there. You can see from the comments that there are a lot of good benefits with the Platinum, but you have to be willing to spend the time and energy to take advantage of them. It's not clear to me that you are. If you were flying Delta, I'd say you probably would get a lot of value from the lounge use with the Platinum. But you're not--you're flying UA and Southwest. The first thing that came to my mind was the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which would give you full Priority Pass access, including restaurants (really good for using at SFO), AND would include both UA and Southwest as transfer partners for the points you earn. But I'm not sure you're even interested in earning the points, are you?

If you ARE interested in getting more serious about earning with your cards, I'd go ahead and get rid of the ones you don't use. The Apple Card is OK as a daily driver, since you get some cash back. Same with the Amazon card, particularly if you use Amazon a whole lot. You might consider getting rid of the rest, and adding a travel card, either the Amex Plat or the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Never use a card that isn't giving you something back. It's amazing to me how many people don't know this (you clearly do, given the cards you have).

So that's my 2 cents.

dhuey

True, but what a huge addition Amex Plat offers with the Centurion, Delta (when flying on), Escape and Plaza Premium lounges. Of course it all depends on the airports one uses, but you're pretty well covered with the Amex Plat. Much less so with Priority Pass alone.

bankops

Like with any such offering, it comes down to personal needs. I personally claim anywhere from €400-€4.000 a year on the insurance. Just from the delayed flight (meals), upgrades and delayed baggage (and I only check a bag if the trip is >5 days). PP lounge access I use (including wife's card) at least 20 times a year. Car and hotel offering I never use but I have had occasions where a hotel collection booking provided a much lower rate than otherwise possible. Especially in cities like AMS, FRA or CDG during a big trade fair.

Centurion

Foolish to me are Platinum card holders taking a champagne lounge instagram pictures and then adding up all the benefits.

dhuey

If someone enjoys champagne in lounges they accessed via the Plat card, why is that foolish for them? They enjoy that, maybe post on social media some happy lounge shots, and they also add up the many other Plat benefits. That's all foolish why, exactly?

llary

I think there are two separate groups who can get value out of an Amex Platinum:

1) value hunters who have the time to load all the benefits into a spreadsheet, cross check against what specific savings they can achieve based on products/services they already use and make a cool-headed decision based on pure math
2) high spenders who will barely feel the annual fee and find the intangible benefits extremely valuable (NPSL/high spending power, concierge service (meh), hotel status (EXTREMELY value for me personally), unlimited points/miles at a high earning rate)

The OP doesn't seem to be in either of these categories so I would say Amex plat is probably not for you.

Don't forget that many of the benefits offer by Amex and other cards can be had through paid subscriptions. Priority Pass would be anything from around $100-300 with light usage. Paid virtual assistant/concierge services are available that will do a much better job on most requests than the platinum concierge. Beyond that it's up to you to figure out what rebates are offered with the platinum card for products/services that you already use. Things that you would like to use if you had the card don't count - would you pay cold hard $$ to use that product or service?

JakiChan

The travel insurance appeals. We've paid for that in the past on vacation trips.

As others have noticed - it's my primary focus. I'm just concerned that, as others have noticed, it's an oversubscribed benefit.

I have to say, that's the primary benefit of the Amazon card for me. It does well on Amazon and at Whole Foods and then the points are "real". (I shop quite a bit on Amazon.). With the Amex card I'd be looking to max out the benefits to make the lounge access really make sense.

If I was flying United *and* I didn't have the Amex lounge to try and was going to be there long enough I'd pay the $60. It's that nice if you're there an hour or two early to be relaxed.

And I'm a cheap enough of a guy that I would like seek out the easy wins at least. And with this card they seem pretty easy?

I would say that I really like "passive" benefits. For example, I shop a lot at Amazon and WF. The Prime card clearly works well there, and then when I go shopping on Amazon I just spend the points. Yes, some of the cards aren't great but also not sure I need to drop them. None of them have fees, and on the occasion that I post a huge balance it doesn't hurt to much in terms of utilization. Experian shows an 850 FICO 8 for me, so I'm doing it mostly right...

Some of them seem pretty easy though. Like I go to the SiriusXM site, put the Amex in as the billing card, and them boom I'm done, right? Link Uber to the Amex and done. It doesn't seem more complicated than that, or am I missing something?
It's not clear to me that you are. If you were flying Delta, I'd say you probably would get a lot of value from the lounge use with the Platinum. But you're not--you're flying UA and Southwest. The first thing that came to my mind was the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which would give you full Priority Pass access, including restaurants (really good for using at SFO), AND would include both UA and Southwest as transfer partners for the points you earn. But I'm not sure you're even interested in earning the points, are you?

I use the cards that give something back. The others I keep for the credit lines, which are significant. I like having a large amount of available credit. I may not game points but I *do* try to max my credit score. A large part of my hesitation, in fact, is the score hit I'm going to take. (Silly, I know.)

I'd say I'm likely a mix of both. If I get the card then I'll set up things at the beginning. Not too hard, one time thing, etc. And then the #2 is kind of true. I wouldn't really miss the $700 and maybe the hotel status plus the concierge stuff might be fun?