Platinum Looks Good On You (and Us)

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Lately, we’ve been talking about different travel-related credit cards we use and the reasons we use them. In these posts, we’ve explained how some cards have an Annual Fee (AF) while others don’t. And, as you might guess, in general, the cards with AFs come with more benefits than those that don’t. It’s also fair to assume that cards with higher AFs have more benefits than cards with lower AFs. Perhaps, Platinum-level benefits. Let’s see…

Card Classifications

Broadly speaking, cards that don’t charge you an AF and, as a result, have few, if any perks, are grouped together and called ‘lower-tier cards.’ Cards with AFs ranging from, let’s say $95 – $300 per year are commonly grouped together and are referred to as ‘mid-tier cards.’ Finally, cards with AFs of more than $300 per year are often called ‘top-tier cards’ both because of their steep AF and the multitude of benefits they offer.

To give a few examples, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card we’ve talked about so much is arguably among the most popular mid-tier cards available today. If you’re looking to get started with a travel-focused card, we’d strongly encourage you to check this one out. Our Hilton Honors American Express Surpass card is also a mid-tier card, but very brand specific and we don’t recommend it unless you’re attached to Hilton (we scored top-tier status, during the pandemic- yay work – so we’re attached). By contrast, our United Club Infinite Card and our Platinum Card from American Express are both top-tier cards. In a prior post we’ve given just one example of how the benefits that come with our United card nearly offset the entire AF in just one trip home, but we haven’t really delved into our most premium travel card: the Platinum Card from American Express, so let’s fix that.

Platinum Ain’t Free, Folks

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: in case you were wondering, the AF for our Platinum card is $695. If you’re anything like us, the first time we saw this amount we were taken aback. Goodness me! How can a card possibly be worth that much money each year?! Take a breath and count to 10 (unless that’ll cause you to pass out, then scale it back). It’ll be okay.

First yes, $695 is a lot of money. However, as with all things, we don’t just give AMEX our money and wish them well (that’s a special benefit reserved for insurance companies, but even then there are choice words involved). Instead, we expect something in return. And probably like you, for that kind of money, we expect a lot in return. Fortunately, AMEX is happy to oblige us. If you check out the AMEX portal, they list no fewer than 51 benefits that come with the Platinum card. And that’s just as of today; there are always new/different things coming available.

Some of these are standard benefits that come with almost all mid-tier and top-tier travel cards, things like trip delay, cancellation, and interruption insurance policies (if you don’t know, these are different; that’s a discussion for a different post), baggage insurance, and so on. Some of the benefits are, admittedly, a little extra (like the Premium Private Jet Program. Honestly…), but others are potentially more useful (like the buying services and extended warranty benefits). Still, there are a few key benefits that we value the most, so let’s talk about those briefly and then explain how they help offset the AF for this card.

Key Benefits

The main benefits we get from our Platinum card can be put into a few general categories; we’ll talk about each.

Entertainment

Each year we receive up to $240 in digital entertainment credits when we use our AMEX card to pay for those bills. This includes Audible, Sirius XM, Hulu, Disney+, ESPN+, Peacock, and the New York Times. We don’t use all of these, but we do use Audible (Tasha), Sirius XM (Jason), Hulu, and Disney+. Importantly, these are services we use as a part of our normal spending, and so by shifting some of those bills to our AMEX card, they’re essentially free.

Travel Planning

As this AMEX card is a premium travel card, it shouldn’t be surprising that most of the benefits we get from it are travel-focused. Let’s talk about the big ones.

Each year we can receive a $200 hotel credit when we book the hotel through the AMEX travel portal. This is reserved for a few of their hotel collections, but within those collections are many, many options at a variety of price points (some are familiar, others, not so much). Similarly, each year we get a $200 airline fee credit. This one is a little trickier because you can’t use it for purchasing the flight itself but instead needs to be used for incidental expenses like seat upgrades, baggage fees, or onboard purchases.

We also immediately earn status with both Hilton (Gold status) and Marriott Bonvoy (Gold Elite status) by having these cards. Those status upgrades can bring room upgrades (when available), among other perks. Along those lines, we are also eligible for privileges with different rental car companies around the world. Those benefits include premium status (which can snag us free upgrades, when available), rental car protection, and rental car loss and damage insurance, meaning that as long as we pay for the rental on our AMEX, we can decline the provider’s insurance policies which can easily run you an additional $100 per day of use.

In addition, we can also receive a $189 annual CLEAR Credit (only available at certain airports, though the list is growing) and a credit for the fees associated with Global Entry ($100) or TSA PreCheck ($78).

Lounge Access

While the above benefits are all great – and we use them frequently – what we really like about the card is the airport lounge access that comes with it. As of the writing of this post, we can use lounges in Priority Pass Select, the AMEX Global Lounge Collection, and the AMEX Centurion Lounge Collection. You can’t pay for any of these directly (there are other levels you can purchase for Priority Pass, just not Select), they’re reserved for AMEX members (does that sound extra? #sorrynotsorry). More specifically, because guests are complimentary, we can both get in as a result of having this card. However, the policy is changing for the Centurion Lounges in February 2023 so that, unless you meet certain spending criteria, guests will be charged $50 per visit. Or, another option we’re looking at is getting Tasha her own authorized user Platinum card after February for an additional $175 a year for her own lounge access. This only makes sense if we plan to continue with a heavy travel schedule through specific airports and will want lounge access for multiple layovers on each trip. We’re still debating.

We love the oasis that is the Centurion Lounge. Good food, free drinks (unless you want premium spirits), free Wi-Fi, clean bathrooms, comfortable seating, and it’s quiet…at least usually. Assuming we have a long enough layover, this is the first place we head after getting off the plane. Okay, maybe not the first place, there might be meetings with men about horses…

Shopping

There are others, but the main shopping benefits we use are the $200 Uber cash (this does work for Uber Eats, though we’re only able to use this benefit while traveling as no one delivers to our house ☹), and the $100 from Saks Fifth Avenue (yes, there are things for under $100 you can get here, trust us, we’ve found them). Many of the shopping benefits change from month to month so we make sure to check them before we order something online.

Tallying It All Up

That’s a lot of benefits, and it isn’t even all of them. But these are the ones that drew us to the card more than the others and so are the ones we tend to focus on the most. As a recap:

• Entertainment: $240
• Travel Planning: $689 (hotel, airline, CLEAR, and Global Entry)
• Lounge Access: $50 per visit (for Tasha, starting in February 2023)
• Shopping: $300

I’m not great at math, but my calculator says this adds up to nearly $1300 in benefits each year from just the benefits we’re currently interested in. Remember the AF for this card is $695, which means these benefits alone offset the AF nearly twice each year. Not so bad if you can fork over the $695 each year, amiright? How do you like them apples?!

Caveats

As with all things, a few reminders:

• You’ll note that most of the benefits we’ve highlighted above are travel-focused. As we noted at the start of this post, that’s what we’re most passionate about and so we pick cards that have travel-focused benefits. That means this card works for us, but if you aren’t interested in travel this card might not be the right choice for you.
• We’ve said this multiple times before, but it’s important enough to repeat again: we make this card fit into our regular spending habits. In other words, we already had subscriptions to Audible, Sirius XM, Hulu, and Disney+ before we got the card; the benefit of getting a statement credit to cover some of that expense was one of the reasons we got the card. Said differently, we didn’t get the card, discover the benefit, and then look for a way to use it, adding to our monthly expenses. Similarly, we use the airline and hotel credits when we’re planning a trip somewhere, as this makes the trip less costly for us. With an AF as high as this one, it’s easy to get lulled into the trap of spending in every benefit category to get the biggest return on your investment, and that’s all fine until you get the bill. No benefit is worth ruining your credit score and/or checking account. There are many benefits that come with this card that we don’t use (remember the Private Jet program?) because they don’t fit into our regular spending habits.
• When we spend with our AMEX card, in addition to the above benefits we’re also racking up Membership Points. However, these can’t be combined with the Ultimate Rewards points we earn with our Chase cards. So, if you’re already doing great things with your Chase cards and want to keep all of your points with the same bank, AMEX might not make sense for your next card.

What are your favorite cards and what benefits do you like about it/them? Let us know!

Happy travels!