Help with planning for the future
 

My husband and I are currently PMs. This year, we purchased a new house and have some incredibly high expenses and are currently at $150,000 spend on our AMEX platinum. Given all of the changes announced yesterday, I’m not sure and yet able to digest issues for long-term planning so my question is more short term. Assuming we spend some thing like $20,000 for necessary charges on the card for the remainder of the year, does it make sense for us to do things like pre-pay taxes at the 4% AMEX additional charge (so it would cost us some thing like $3000) in order to qualify for Diamond for 2024? We currently have an AMEX business platinum card, and each have Delta platinum business and personal cards. Our goal was to be able to finally have global upgrade certificates. Assuming we have the flexibility of retired folks, do we stand a chance in heck of being able to actually use these for flights to Asia during 2024/25? (We cashed in some thing like 1,400,000 miles for our current tickets to Sydney and Auckland, returning from Bangkok during the winter of 2024.

Certainly won’t be keeping all five AMEX cards… That’s for sure! But it seemed like being able to hit the $250,000 waiver for the first time made sense. Not sure it does anymore. Thanks

Prepaying IRS taxes is around 1.85-1.87% not 4%. Plus you get RDMs for the same amount and it’s tax deductible. On my DL Amex corporate Reserve I get 1.5SM/$ after spending $150k which is sweet. Might be good to go for DM for the final year you can do so. You get the 4 global upgrades plus other benefits over PM. And if you do it soon you get DM for 15+ months.

If this is the reality of credit card spend in America in the year 2023, I can fully understand why Delta and AMEX are raising the dollar limits. I think reality has to set in for the majority of us, there is a club and most of us are not going to be part of it!

At this point you are probably best to go for DM, just from a GUC perspective. The recent changes won't change anything for 2024, so DM will be crowded still. I think in the future you will be out of luck, you are already short on spending and paying fees to try to get to the status you want. Paying fees for the card, then fees to make your purchase isn't sustainable. 150,000 in spend on a card would get you or really close to getting a first class round trip ticket to Japan on ANA or JAL, and even closer in biz (Amex MR points or Chase UR). I think you will have GUC success depending on where you are trying to get to, and if you book early.

[QUOTE=flynhigh;35580494]At this point you are probably best to go for DM, just from a GUC perspective. The recent changes won't change anything for 2024, so DM will be crowded still. I think in the future you will be out of luck, you are already short on spending and paying fees to try to get to the status you want. Paying fees for the card, then fees to make your purchase isn't sustainable. 150,000 in spend on a card would get you or really close to getting a first class round trip ticket to Japan on ANA or JAL, and even closer in biz (Amex MR points or Chase UR). I think you will have GUC success depending on where you are trying to get to, and if you book early.[/QUOTE

GUC success will be nil for 2024 unless OP purchases a PS ticket outright. Delta crunched the numbers for DM as going from $20k MQD for 2024 to $35k MQD for 2025 is a significant jump, as the 2023 $15k MQD change to 2024 $20k MQD is peanuts. $20k MQD was still an inadequate threshold for DM.

If OP doesn’t regularly travel what’s the point for DM?

Amazing how frequent flyer BIS morphed in credit card spending on a cobranded card. Wonder why US credit debt is now over $1 trillion.

Not all of us putting $350k+ per year on a DL Amex carry a balance. I use it for my business and pay it off in full online every weekend.

The 1.87% is NOT deductible for individuals.

Further along in the year, and further along in Delta changes.It looks like we will have about $180k in charges (man, these new big houses are expensive!) So 2% of $70,000 will probably make it worthwhile to be Diamond. I will also probably hIT 2MM status in 2024. Although most of the announcers revisions to the changes still leave them pretty unpalatable, at least there is some recognition of those of us who have been flying Delta for decades.