After months of waiting and weeks of leaks, The Platinum Card from American Express has finally relaunched with tons of new features and credits…and a whopping $895 annual fee. This week on the Thrifty Traveler Podcast, we break down this overhaul of one of the most popular (and priciest) travel credit cards out there to decide if all the new perks can actually add up to nearly $900 in value - and what current cardholders should do ASAP.
00:00 - The new Amex Platinum Card has a new look … but does it matter?
02:10 - The nuts and bolts of the new (and improved?) Platinum Card from American Express – and our reaction in 5 words or less
04:00 - Something Hot: The Platinum Card credits you love aren’t going anywhere
06:45 - Something Cold: An eye-watering $895 annual fee
11:15 - Want more travel rewards and credit card news sent straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Extra Mile newsletter today!
11:45 - We go credit-by-credit to see if we can make an $895 annual fee work on the Amex Platinum card work, from $600toward hotels to $300 for Lululemon credit to one serious dud
33:00 - How to get organized and recoup that $895 annual fee
36:30 - Time is of the essence: The moves Platinum cardholders need to make ASAP
44:00 - “Is the Amex Platinum a good credit card for most travelers?”
46:55 - Listener Question: Emily wants some credit card advice before taking a gap year
51:30 - Nick puts Gunnar & Kyle On the Spot: If you could only transfer points to one program for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Produced by Jackson Newman & Gunnar Olson
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson here with two affluent, quaffed, handsome modern men who cannot wait to see their own reflections in their mirrored Amex Platinum cards. To my left, it's Thrifty Traveler co-founder, Nick Cerati. And across the table as always, it is executive editor, Kyle Potter. Guys, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me on guys.
never been described as quaffed before. Gunnar, do you know how to spell that word?
I believe it would be C-O-I-F-F-E-D. Okay, my question is, this mirrored credit card that we're getting, the Amex Platinum card is what we're talking about today, do physical cards excite you at all? Is this something that you guys care about? Nick, start with you.
Nailed it.
Speaker 2 (00:38.798)
I'd be lying if I told you it didn't. I was known a few years ago to upgrade to the Delta Reserve card when they did that limited edition card with the made out of the 747, the old retired 747. So as much as I would like to say that it doesn't, I would be lying to you if I didn't say that.
Hey, yes and no. I'm not excited about this one because I feel like it's giving Miami drug dealer vibes. And so I will not be getting the mirrored finish of the new Amix Platinum card. Yeah. Jury's out for the rest of them.
I do like a nice heavy, plonky credit card just because the other ones get stripped away. I have this old money clip that's been my wallet forever and my cards all end up getting destroyed. So I like the big sturdy ones, good heavy wallet. But what we're talking about is for a limited time, you can replace your Amex Platinum card with a special mirrored version. And they're rolling it out with the new Platinum card updates for new card signups and for existing card holders. And you can bet your favorite podcaster is going to go get one.
And I might even too.
Who's the favorite podcaster then?
Speaker 3 (01:43.182)
I don't know, probably Dax Shepard. Okay, today on the show, we're talking all about the Platinum card from American Express. Like I said, the new welcome offer, of course, but also the perks new and old. It's going to make this one of the most popular and heftiest not just in physical weight, premium credit cards on the market. We're gonna do something hot and cold as always outlining what we love and don't love about this card overhaul. And we'll get in depth about the card, why this happened and most importantly, how we're going to recoup this high annual fee.
Media.
Speaker 3 (02:11.886)
Okay, first a couple of nuts and bolts of the card. This offer isn't necessarily new, but the card changes are, but the offer is as high as 175,000 Amex membership rewards points when you spend $8,000 in the first six months of having the card. I think most importantly for a lot of people, the annual fee is jumping to $895 a year. They kept every credit intact and added $100 in other credits for things like Uber One,
more money for hotels, more money for Rezzy and things like a Lululemon credit and more. We're gonna go credit by credit in a minute, but first I wanted to find something out from both of you. Five words or less, how do you feel about the new and maybe improved Amex Platinum card?
I would say pleasantly surprised, yet not surprised.
Start over.
that works, Kyle.
Speaker 1 (03:09.248)
No thanks, Aura Ring. There are a lot of things that I genuinely like about this. think on the whole, it's better news than it is bad news, but we'll get into it in the show. There's one credit in particular that's just like, you just couldn't help yourself, Amix. You had to do something like this. And it's the credit to buy an Aura Ring, which I just don't understand.
That is an interesting one. We will talk about that a little bit more. My five words are, can I make this work? And I think over the course of this episode, you guys are gonna help me. Is it going to be, I can make this work or I can't make this work? All right, can we do that together? Okay, sounds good. We're gonna figure this out. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast.
Speaker 3 (03:57.102)
All right, welcome back. Let's jump into something hot and something cold where we look into the good and the bad news out there for travelers. And we're gonna start as always with something hot. Okay, so I've been an Amex Platinum card holder for a few years now. I really like the perks I got with this card. The $200 annual hotel credit, paying for my New York Times and Peacock, $15 in Uber cash and much, much more. Tell me what's going to happen to my beloved credits.
Yeah, I mean, think from my perspective, if you love the card at $695 a year, I don't see a situation where you're not going to love it at $895 when you look at all the new benefits it adds. So I think, as you mentioned, importantly, none of the credits are going away that you have access to now. And in fact, a couple of them are actually getting a little bit better and easier to use. But we'll save that for a future segment.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, I think the biggest thing is that they really made no structural changes to the card as it exists. They just added to it, which, you know, I think there are things that we would have liked to see them change for like the underlying foundation of the card. For example, being able to earn more than one point per dollar on something other than just flights and hotels booked directly through Amex travel. That would have been nice. But you know, the fact that they didn't
got any of the existing benefits, which some of them have been around for the better part of a decade now. That to me is a pleasant surprise.
Yeah, definitely. For YouTube watchers, we're going to throw those credits on the screen, but some of them include just access to what they call the Amex Lounge Collection, which is all the Centurion lounges and escape lounges and Delta Sky clubs when flying Delta, Priority Pass and then others. It's a huge, massive lounge network worldwide. $200 in Uber cash, which is $15 a month and $20 in December. $200 airline fee credit for what they call incidental purchases like seats.
Speaker 3 (05:48.364)
bags, upgrades in some cases, if you get a really cheap fare sometimes it qualifies as an airline fee credit too. $100 at Saks Fifth Avenue, $50 semi-annually. A $300 Equinox credit that I can't quite use because I live in the middle of the country. A Walmart Plus membership credit, something I definitely do use, I love Walmart Plus, and a clear membership credit.
Can we just pause and appreciate that that is like now less than half of the credits and benefits on this card. And it took you like 90 seconds to read quickly through some of them. Yeah.
It's pretty amazing. then other ones like the hotel credit and the digital entertainment credit got upgrades as well. So, um, lots of good credits that I still love. And then obviously they're adding onto it. So, um, we're gonna have to do some annual fee math coming up here, but I think that that pivots us to something called guys. And that is this new high annual fee. Uh, the old card came in at 6.95 a year, which already made me and lots of travelers queasy. The new iteration tops the charts.
$895 a year. For most travelers, this is probably close to a percentage point of their income. What do we think about this new $895 annual fee?
It could have been worse. It feels like AmEx probably wanted it to be worse. And then they saw what Chase did earlier this summer with the new Sapphire reserve at $795 a year. And they figured they could push it a little bit further, but not too far. know, going north of a thousand dollars probably would have been a breaking point in the same way that paying more than $95 for an annual fee is a breaking point for a lot of everyday travelers. I think most importantly,
Speaker 1 (07:32.75)
for the three of us around this table, everybody out there listening to this that already has an Amex Platinum card open, you're not going to pay this new higher $200 more annual fee until at least January 2nd of next year. So they're giving this kind of grace period where as long as you renew, you've already renewed your card this year or you renew it at any point through the end of the year on January 1st, you're going to lock in one more year at $695 a year.
At the very, very least, as tough to swallow as this new high $895 annual fee can be, you get at least a couple of months break before that kicks in for you.
Yeah, definitely. we surprised we got here, Nick? You've been dialed in to this stuff forever. Are you surprised to see 895?
I'm not. In fact, Kyle wrote a story, I believe it was back in 2022 now, just some commentary from Amex's earnings call at the time. at the time, CEO Steve Sqeary had said something along the lines of the Amex Platinum Annual Fee is going to go as high as the market allows it to go. And he made reference to, I think in Mexico, the Amex Platinum Annual Fee is already at $1,000, maybe more now, but that's what it was at. So like Kyle said,
AmEx probably wanted this to go a little higher, but just looking at the market of where the other banks are at with their premium cards, I think this is a reasonable jump from the 695 feet that it was at.
Speaker 3 (09:02.1)
It is funny that Amex is shifting the goalposts with comments like that to the point where the annual fee is less than $1,000 and we're like, wow. Great.
It's the of the times, right? I do have to point out though that we are less than a decade removed from this annual fee being about exactly half the cost. was a decade ago that the Amex Platinum card clocked in at $450 a year. And at the time, that felt insane. And so now to be here a decade later and talking about a $900 annual fee seeming reasonable, I think just goes to show you either A, we're completely out of touch.
Might just be that, could end this sentence there, or B, just how much the entire travel market has moved towards premium travel, where they are courting people for whom this annual fee is actually just a rounding error. It's something that they will gladly spend. They won't even think about it. I think that's probably more of the case. I'm not going to rule out the fact that we may be out of touch too.
Yeah, I would say too that the elephant in the room for me is that the MX Platinum, know, when Kyle mentioned the $450 annual fee where it was at back in a decade ago, it was very much like a premium travel card. And I think today what we're seeing is, you know, in order to make the manual, the annual fee math work on this card now, it has little to do with travel. A lot of these benefits are really just, you know, lifestyle, wellness, things like that, that we'll get into shortly. But I think
You know, Amex is very much transitioning this card not only to be for travelers because the points that the card earns are obviously very valuable, but for other people that may or may not be interested in travel can still get some value out of this card. I think Amex maybe sees this as broadening the appeal of this card to more affluent people that might not want to travel card.
Speaker 3 (10:55.214)
Yeah, for sure. All right, we're going to go credit by credit and just talk a little bit about how we're going to recoup this $895 annual fee. We're going to get Nick fitted for some Lululemon yoga pants and Kyle fitted for his aura ring, right?
Tune in on YouTube, you're watch-
Watch that yoga pant fitting.
All right, we'll be right back.
We're going deep on the Amex Platinum card this week on the pod. But if you want all the big news in the world of credit cards and award travel in your inbox, we've got just the thing. It's called, wait for it, the Extra Mile. Every Monday, our credit card wizard Jackson whips up a great newsletter breaking down the biggest headlines from the past week. And best of all, it's completely free. Subscribe now at thriftytraveler.com slash Extra Mile. All right, back to the show.
Speaker 3 (11:41.23)
All right, welcome back. We're gonna do the extra mile now and go a little deeper on our major topic today, which is the Amex Platinum card. So the new card and its business card sibling are out and available to travelers as of this morning. And most importantly, if you're an existing card holder, you can put all of these credits to use starting today. Right after this, I have to go book some hotels. I wanna go through every one of these benefits and see if we can make an $895.
annual fee work. I'm going to ask you guys for each one to buy or sell this credit if it's something you like or if it's something you don't. And we'll start with this new enhanced $600 hotel credit up to $300 back in statement credits semi-annually with fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection bookings when you book them through Amex Travel using your platinum card by yourself.
Buying, to me, think this is maybe the biggest net positive of the entire new Platinum card. Before, you got a $200 credit once a year for fine hotels and resorts and the hotel collection, which that second portfolio of hotels requires a two-night stay. You can still book a fine hotel and resort property for just one night. That combination of things, you can still book one night and you get $300 twice a year.
I think when you consider the annual fee is going up by $200 a year, but you're getting $400 more towards hotels, that's enough to make up the difference. Even if you only use a hotel credit once, you're still getting more towards the pricey stay of a hotel. Is it the easiest thing in the world to find a hotel stay through FHR that is $300 a night or less? It's certainly not, but at least these credits go a bit further now and you get two of them.
next
Speaker 2 (13:27.502)
Yeah, I agree. I'm buying. I think one thing that's worth mentioning here, too. I know we're not talking specifically about the MX Business Platinum, but the $600 hotel credit is also getting added to the MX Business Platinum, something that the card did not previously have. And I agree with Kyle, even if you only are using this credit once a year and you're getting $300 back from me, that's a net win. And I would also say that, you know, just looking at the Capital One Hotel collection and the Chase Edit, which is their kind of
luxury hotel collection as well. MX Fine Hotels and Resorts just has so much more reach. They have more properties. So while it's not the easiest thing to use, it is a little bit easier. Like Kyle said, it only requires a one night stay, which Jason's requires too. So I'm buying. I think this is a great credit and actually have an existing FHR reservation that after this podcast, I'm going to cancel and rebook it to take advantage of the new credit, which I'm excited about.
Awesome. Definitely a buy for me too. Three buys like in sync. Bye bye bye. I just thought of that. I'm super quick, but I also, as soon as I started saying it, I locked eyes with you, Kyle, so I you'd hate that. All right. Next credit, $400 Rezzy dining credit. Up to $100 in statement credits each quarter after card members use their Platinum card to make eligible purchases with Rezzy. Over 10,000 US Rezzy restaurants.
How long you been thinking about that? You are quick. am.
Speaker 3 (14:50.786)
By the way, Nick, I know you use this credit. Do you like this upgrade?
You know, I'm buying the credit. think, you know, importantly, saw Amix, Amix acquired Resy back in 2019. So I think that's kind of an important background to this. If you're not familiar with Resy, it's a platform, a reservation platform for restaurants that they can use to manage their operation. Amix has bought the platform and has been slowly integrating into their card benefits as well. We first saw Amix do this with the refresh on the Delta,
the suite of Delta Co-branded cards early last year. And those credits were and still are quite annoying. They're I think 15 to $20 and they're monthly. And if you don't use them each month, they expire. This makes it much more difficult to stay on top of, et cetera. They did also add the same credit to the gold card last year. I think it's a $50 credit twice a year. So $400, $100 a quarter, I think is really good credit. It gives you,
three months to use that $100. And I think importantly, I've done this many times, but you can buy gift cards that should trigger the credit. if you can't get to a restaurant in three months, you should generally be able to get some value out of it. And I would just, last thing I say before I turn over to Kyle here is for me, this works well because we live in a city here that has a lot of resi partner restaurants. If you live in a smaller metropolitan area without them, it's going to be more difficult to use and you're going to have to kind of integrate it your travels.
But for me it's buy because I don't have to work too terribly hard to get the $400.
Speaker 1 (16:29.934)
It's a buy, but I'm not happy about it. Let me put it this way. What sense does it make that the travel card, Amex's flagship travel card, gets more in dining credits than their dining card? Get $100 a year on the Amex gold card and now $400 a year on the platinum card.
And you can use more of those credits on your platinum card, but when you actually pay with it, you're not earning as many points as you would on the MX gold card. So they're creating this situation where the, I mean, their motivations in all of this is so obvious. They're just trying to condition you to use your platinum card more to spend it and spend on it and spend on it because you're using it at Lululemon and you're using it at the Rezzi restaurant. But you know, you're going to get into the habit of using it at every restaurant that you go to. And that's exactly what they want. And they're.
absolutely going to get away with it.
Yeah, I'm selling this one. I don't eat out that much. When we do, we put it on our Chase Sapphire preferred card or my wife's Amex gold card during the extra points. When they first came out with this Rezzy credit, I enrolled in it and then it just became too much for me and decided this was the credit I was going to let slip away. So sell on the Rezzy credit. All right, let's move on to the digital entertainment credit, which is totaling $300. For a while now, you could use it for Disney Plus.
ESPN Plus, Hulu or the bundle that bundles all three, the Disney Plus bundle. You can also use it on the New York Times, Peacock, the Wall Street Journal. And now they've added Paramount Plus, YouTube Premium and YouTube TV. So the digital entertainment credit has increased to $25 back per month, totaling 300 for the calendar year by ourselves.
Speaker 2 (18:13.614)
This is an easy buy for me. I am already a YouTube TV customer and subscriber. I pay $82.99 a month for that. So this credit is now going to give me $25 back a month for $300 a year. Again, is, I'm already, for me, it just comes straight off of the annual fee. It helps make the math work. And while I think one other thing that's worth mentioning here, Paramount Plus and Kukard are new additions to the bundle.
You can also get these through Walmart Plus, which is also a benefit of the Amex Platinum. So I think your money better spent elsewhere on this credit than those two partners specifically.
I mean, it's a buy for me if only because, well, two things. One, this is really the only credit that you can really automate. just auto, you use your Platinum card to pay for your YouTube TV or your ESPN or your Hulu or whatever, and then you're done. So I have maxed out the previous credit of $20 a month every single month. It's the thing that you can truly set and forget. You know, that said.
Yeah, I mean, the addition of Paramount plus something that you really shouldn't be paying for is another reminder of the ways that Amex tries to get the better of you. And it's up to you to not allow them to do that.
Yep, I love this definitely buying. use my entertainment credit every month to cover my subscription in the New York Times to make me smarter and my subscription to add free peacock for reality TV to make me dumber. I love this credit. I also am a YouTube TV subscriber, so hopefully that will take a couple bucks out of that too with the increased dollars per month on that one. OK.
Speaker 2 (19:55.278)
I think just last time before we wrap this one up, when I said I was pleasantly surprised but not surprised, this is part of the reason I was pleasantly surprised is they added some, think, you know, really valuable partners in YouTube TV that I have to imagine that a lot of their card members are already subscribing to. And they're giving you $5 more a month than they were previously. So previously that digital entertainment credit was $240 a year. Now it's $300. So to me, that's pretty big win.
And this credit, I mean, it's been around for a long time. It really is in many ways a holdover from the dark days of the pandemic when travel ground to a halt and banks like American Express needed to give their card holders a way to actually use their cards. And that it kind of came from that. So the fact that this benefit didn't get chopped altogether is maybe the most surprising thing when we talked about.
how the MX Platinum card might change through the summer. This was probably the prime thing that we felt might be on the chopping block. And not only is it sticking around, it is getting better.
Awesome. Um, let's move on to this $300 Lulu lemon credit. So this is up to $75 back each quarter in statement credits for eligible purchases at Lulu stores or online. Uh, this is a great credit. I think I'm buying this one as a washed up high school athlete in my thirties clinging to relevance of my athletic past. Lulu lemon is everything to me. I'm head to toe in Lulu today. I did it just for the show.
I love this credit. will definitely be using it even if 75 bucks might only get you one t-shirt. But I'll be getting that t-shirt. I promise you that. What do you guys think?
Speaker 2 (21:28.43)
Yeah, I agree. I'm also buying this credit. But before we get into that, think we do need to. As a team, we were talking about some of these new benefits last week as we were getting the information and Peter Thornton, our award deal analyst here at Thrippity Traveler was talking about music. Yeah, apparently there's a $300 credit for a Lululemon. Apparently it's a clothing store and we all got a pretty good laugh. I think it's mostly impressive that he's avoided.
somebody on
Speaker 2 (21:58.006)
been seeing Lululemon for the last decade or more. It's pretty impressive.
It takes effort.
If you all listened to last week's episode, this might not come as a shock to you, the Peter Thornton interview episode. But you know, he's an eclectic guy and Lululemon has escaped his purview somehow over the last however many years. I think Lulu started in like the 90s. I thought Peter would have at have seen it. He lives in San Diego. mean, he's walking around like Lululemon headquarters down there. I don't know. Incredible that he never heard of Lululemon before.
No, but I'm getting back out. I'm also buying this. I don't shop at Lululemon all the time, but probably enough to justify $75 a quarter. I do like their clothes. It's kind of an odd benefit, but I'm going to buy it because I shop at their store.
I came around on this one. was ready to be super cynical about Amex being Amex, about signing these branded deals that don't cost them anything, that conditions people to whip out their Amex Platinum card and not just spend $75 a quarter, but spend $300 and they get $75 knocked off, because that's the goal here, right? That said, this benefit, like many others that we're going through, leaked out weeks in advance.
Speaker 1 (23:14.572)
And I was surprised at some of the conversation in the AMEX subreddit, for example, of it being universally praised, of like, this is great. I'm going to use this. And it goes to show you that as annoying as some of these things can be, especially where some of them are monthly and some of them are quarterly, and then there's biannual and then there's annual, and that is still too much. But if it's...
Worthwhile if it feels valuable to people that's the difference so it's like in many ways the opposite of the Seven dollar a month Dunkin Donuts credit on the Amex gold card that they added last summer in this case it feels Substantial and it's somewhere that people truly do want to shop at
Yeah.
And I think too, you when you look at the prices of things at Lululemon, there's not a lot of things you can buy for $75. I think most people using this credit are going to use it to chip away at something more expensive. And that's probably precisely what Lululemon is hoping for and why they're partnering with American Express to add this benefit.
Yeah, definitely good business there. Okay, on to the next one. One I'm definitely buying very excited about this $120 Uber one membership credit. So it's $120 in statement credits each calendar year after purchase of an auto renewing Uber one membership in the United States. This covers the entire membership, right? For the year.
Speaker 2 (24:35.351)
Yep.
There's the entire membership each month and like the monthly streaming credits, this is another new addition that allows you to really set it and forget it. Just put it on file, charge it to your card every month and it's going to kick in and cover the whole balance, which is why I'm not thrilled about Uber One. It's not something that I probably would pay for out of pocket, but it's going to be there. So I'm going to do it.
Yeah, so a professional podcaster might have looked up exactly what Uber One gets you before recording the show, but instead I'll just ask my friends, what does Uber One get you? Do you guys know?
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things you're going to get is I think it's like 6 % off of rides and then they do waive some of the delivery fees or most of the delivery fees for any of your orders on Uber Eats. So I think importantly, this benefit does stack with the existing credits of the up to $15 a month. Then you get $35 in December for a total of $200. So if you're using that a lot on Uber Eats and you don't have Uber One, this is probably a net win for you.
That's just going to make things cheaper. I'm going to sell this one. It's nice to have. Like Tile said, is never, this isn't a benefit I would pay for out of pocket. So great, I'll take it. But it's not going to be part of my annual fee calculation to see if this math works.
Speaker 3 (25:54.062)
Good. All right. Onto the next one. I can't wait to hear Kyle Potter rip off on this one. $200 Aura credit. So that's up to $200 back each calendar year and statement credits when you buy an Aura ring. Kyle, please go.
No, this is, I just want to repeat, generally, I am pleasantly surprised like Nick was at how this new card rolled out and what they added and what they didn't subtract and the still painful, but in many ways, reasonable annual fee. But this one is just Amex, Amexing at record levels. An aura ring costs at least $349 a year. So you get
Just over 50 % off, which if you're going to buy an aura ring, great, but that's also not something you buy all the time. It's not certainly not something you should be buying once a year. If you do, I don't want to know you. So what are we doing here? what we're doing is aura ring is probably actually paying American Express to do this. American Express certainly isn't footing the bill for your weird ring. And what they're...
Trusting which is just math is gonna math and people are gonna spend way more than the $200 In order to buy one of these dumb rings
Yeah, and I think importantly, very importantly is the aura ring is a piece of hardware and that is what your credit is going to cover. If you want to do anything with that ring other than just wear it on your finger, if you want to use the health benefits and all of the tracking data that it provides, you also need to buy a $5.99 per month subscription to use their platform. And the Amex credit does not cover the subscription. So if you are already an aura ring customer, this is going to do nothing for you other than
Speaker 2 (27:45.356)
allow you to upgrade your ring once a year, which as Kyle said, I don't know a lot of people that are probably doing that anyway.
Nick's going to be in the office like five years from now with just two hands full of aura rings. me out.
this, this, this credit is a head scratcher. Katie Rollins, member of our team said, I think the MX platinum is targeting Pilates girlies with the Lululemon and the aura ring, combo. think this is a, this is a strange one and maybe I just don't understand. I'm sure there are people out there who love their aura rings, but I don't know why you buy a new aura ring every year either.
just we may not be their target market, if zero out of three of us are even remotely inclined to buy an aura ring, even when they're giving us $200 off, I think that probably says something.
Yeah, this is what I made that earlier comment about the, you know, the platinum card is very much becoming not a travel card, uh, which is kind of its roots. And back when the card charged $400 a year, it was very much a travel card. Everything that the card offered was travel focused. This is one of those benefits where you look at it and Amex is clearly, you know, pivoting and, and making this much more than just a travel card. It's, it's, uh, something else entirely that has some travel benefits. Um,
Speaker 2 (29:01.922)
And I think this is probably the benefit that screams to that the most.
Yeah, definitely. Okay. Last one here, we'll do this quickly. You get some premium hotel status. get Leaders Club Sterling status from the leading hotels of the world, which gets you benefits like upgrades when available, daily breakfast for two, and some other on-property perks. Are we excited about this one?
I'm probably selling this one. The Platinum card already comes with Hilton and Marriott Bonvoy gold status. Hilton's gold status has a little bit of value, especially outside of the country. You'll get free breakfast. Marriott Bonvoy gold status for all intents and purposes is pretty worthless. It's not going to do much for you. I do understand that there is value in this leading hotels of the world. I'm not super familiar with it, but I think the limiting factor here is just the footprint. They don't have a
a huge amount of properties. But this is great marketing for them. This is probably going to get a lot of people that hold the MX Platinum card or are looking at holding the MX Platinum card is going to start looking into this. And the fact that it's going to offer status is probably going to get some people to stay there. for me, it doesn't do a lot for me.
It's a smart move, but it doesn't move the needle. Yep.
Speaker 3 (30:14.466)
Great. So, one note I wanted to make, that's kind of the end of the big credits we want to talk about for this week. But one note I wanted to make was we're focusing mostly on the consumer card in this episode. And as Nick mentioned, there was an update to the business platinum card too. If you want to see all of the updates there and the nuts and bolts of that card, I'd recommend you go to our website where we break it all down in depth. I would say the headline of that card is, as Nick mentioned, getting the hotel credits added to it. So,
Definitely worthwhile if you wanna check that out, but we're not gonna go dig deep on that one today because the personal card I think is what we're most focused on. I have a question for you guys. Say you wanna pick up this card or you do have this card, what should you be swiping it for?
Yeah, Kyle already mentioned this at the top of the show, but the card earns 5x points per dollar spent on airfare booked directly or through Amex travel. And then you'll also earn 5x points on prepaid hotels booked through Amex travel, not hotels directly. Everything else on the card earns 1x. So, you know, as Kyle said, Amex is trying to condition you to use this card everywhere because when you swipe a card at a merchant that's
you know, earning one X, they're going to come out ahead on that because of, you know, what AMEX earns on swipe fees and things like that. but for, know, really this is not a good card for three or everyday spending. I, I use my AMEX Platinum card to book plates and that's really it. It sits in my wallet and then I use it for all the, the spending that I have to do to get those credits, but that's really where you should focus on it.
Yeah. I mean, I have not carried the platinum card in my physical wallet for years. It just sits in a drawer at home and increasingly more frequently, I'm going to have to take it out more often in order to maximize some of these new credits. But, know, other than booking flights and the occasional hotel, especially when there's, you know, it's now $300 twice a year credit on the line that I can use. That's kind of it.
Speaker 1 (32:19.116)
And I think that's the way it really should be for a lot of people at the volume of people that I know personally who should know better. If you're listening, you know who you are. Who use this card day in and day out for their everyday expenses and at restaurants and wherever else. That's, this is, this is where you wise up and you get a little bit more strategic about which card you use because 99 times out of a hundred, should not be the platinum.
Yeah, flights and to those credits, that's pretty much the only way that I use that card. It stays in my drawer otherwise. Okay, Amex keeps throwing more and more perks at us and they keep raising the annual fee. I think they're counting on the fact that people aren't going to keep track of these card perks. That's how they're planning to make money here. How do you guys fight back against this? How do you get organized in order to beat Amex at this little game they're playing with us?
Yeah, I wrote a story on this for the website a couple months ago now, maybe. and just, was really, I mean, the headline of the story is how I'm using AI to track every travel credit card benefit I have. historically I was doing this in a spreadsheet and as the kind of couponization of travel rewards, credit cards has just continued and continued, it was getting very much out of control. I was having a hard time remembering what benefits I had used, what I hadn't used. so I enlisted the help of chat GPT and just started.
building out some different chats for my different cards. And it's built out some pretty impressive tracking for this stuff. So it works really well, but I think the most important thing is it's only as good as the data that you feed it. So you do have to remember to tell it when you use things, but you can set up notifications so that when, before the end of the quarter, if you haven't used a certain benefit, it's gonna send you a prompt to make sure to use it. things like that that I've found pretty helpful. And I think with the amount of credits on the Platinum card, you...
you need to have something set up in order to just make sure you're maximizing all of this.
Speaker 3 (34:15.694)
Kyle, what about you?
I mean, look, at Thrifty Traveler, we are ultimately just really selfish people. And we do things that we want and then other people tend to want them and so we help them out too. And so what we did as the details about this card started coming out and it was clear just how much more there would be to keep track of, we built an automated spreadsheet. So it does a couple of things. It allows you to kind of tick off each credit as you use it.
but also as a deadline is coming up within 30 days or two weeks of one of those credits being about to expire, if it's marked as unused, it will change color. So you can just open this spreadsheet every couple of days, every couple of weeks, however often you need to, to kind of keep tabs on which credits you use. And then as you mark them off, it automatically tallies everything so that if you've used...
one of your hotel credits and your clear credit, that's $509 right there, right off the bat. And so it's going to show you $509 in value so far. You can also adjust that because, know, personally, I don't think the clear credit is worth $209. It's probably closer to zero to me personally. It's probably like 20 or 30. So you can change that value and kind of customize it. And then once you've gotten to the point where you have used now $896 or more in
in these credits, it's going to turn green and let you know you can stop working for the year if you don't want to keep track of every little detail for the rest of the year because you've already come out ahead.
Speaker 3 (35:47.5)
Yeah. Both of these tools are really, really slick. I highly recommend them. Go check them out on our website. We'll make sure to put a link in the show notes. okay. Some of these credits have annoying timeframes in them. Some are annual, some are quarterly, some are semi-annual. what should card holders do right now? If they're listening to this this morning, are there any perks or credits coming up?
that they need to know, like are there deadlines looming here where people need to make use of some of these things?
I mean, I think before that, the first thing you need to do is you need to go to americanexpress.com, log into your Platinum account, go to the benefits and activate every single one of them, because this is the ultimate Amex thing. They're going to tell you that you get $100 each quarter in Resy restaurants, but because that's a new benefit that you haven't yet used, you actually have to go in and enroll in that benefit, which is just clicking a button. Amex, you could just do this for us, please. But they haven't, so you need to do that.
And then once you've done that, the two that you can use right away over the next 12 days, because the quarter ends September 30th, use that $75 Lululemon credit. can buy a gift card at the store. can buy something online. You can go to a store, whatever is easiest. And then that first $100 Rezzy credit, using, you're going to have to activate it again. But once you've done that, any Rezzy participating restaurant, you just go there. You don't have to.
Book it or book a reservation in a special way or anything, just as long as you use that card and you've paid that $100 credit that's going to kick in. And again, you've got under two weeks to do that.
Speaker 2 (37:26.798)
Yeah, I think another thing that if you have the card already or even if you're planning to get it with the news of this refresh, the hotel credit is a huge one. Even if you've already used your $200 credit, which was the legacy credit on this card, you still have a brand new $300 credit that you have until the end of the year to figure out how you're going to use it. start planning because once you get to daily reverse at $300, if unused is lost,
you'll get a new $300. But if you can figure that out, I think that's an important one to make sure you tick off pretty quickly here.
Yeah, definitely. And to Kyle's point, you know, the enrollment required you'll see on every single one of those, make sure you go log into Amex and do this. Go home, pour yourself a glass of wine or two, take your computer out and go enroll into all of these credits. Make a party of it, you know, bring it, have your friends over and you guys can enroll your Amex Platinum credits together.
This should really only take like one minute. how fast do you drink wine gunner?
Short party can't have a glass of how? It's not important. all right. I want to talk quickly about What is amex doing here? I guess obviously we had a big episode the three of us did about the state of premium Travel credit cards now that we have all the detail at that point It was just we know amex is going to change something and they kind of hastily whipped this up. I think but tell me what what is amex doing here and where do they now stand in the kind of
Speaker 3 (38:53.759)
field of premium credit cards.
I mean, I think even though we didn't know exactly what the new Amex Platinum card was going to look like the last time we talked about this in the summer, I think all of the points that we made in that pod stand, which is everything is about premium travel right now. Banks, airlines, hotel companies up and down the list want a bigger share of your wallet, especially if you're wealthy. And they know that the bar is higher. Now is
Is the bar so high that people will gladly pay almost $900 a year in annual fees? I mean, I guess we'll find out. But the bigger point is one, to condition you to use this card day in and day out, because that's probably the weakest part of the Amix Platinum card. Like we said, none of us use this card on a daily basis.
And by adding in all of these additional credits, it's going to make it more likely that people are just going to continue carrying this in their wallet. And two, as these cards get more more expensive, they become an anchor where how on earth could you justify paying $895 a year for the Amex Platinum card and $795 for the Chase Sapphire Reserve and $650 for the Delta Reserve card? And you go down the list, people are, even if you're okay with.
almost $900 in annual fees, we're getting to a point where people are going to have to pick just one. And that is the point to pull you into that ecosystem to only be an American Express customer. And this is how they're waging that war.
Speaker 2 (40:30.638)
Yeah, I have a story that's coming out on the website within the next day or two, but the whole premise of it is that the Platinum card is becoming some sort of a membership club and less of a credit card. I think we've talked about this already a few times on the pod, but when the card first was introduced to the market, I don't know what the original annual fee was, but I first opened the card when it was $450. It was very cut and dry that this was a travel card. Now to me, it's a membership
that offers all kinds of random benefits that happens to include some travel benefits and it also happens to allow you to swipe it and pay for things as well. It seems to be much less of a card and more of an exclusive club and I think that's exactly what Amex is going for here. And I think as I mentioned earlier, you know, with Amex buying Rezzy and then just last summer actually they bought another big Amex or a Rezzy competitor of Toc, another big restaurant reservation platform. It's clear that they have
plans to kind of vertically integrate these benefits. Whether or not we're going to see that with other benefits, think remains to be seen, but they're just really, really trying to drive people deeper and deeper into their ecosystem. And to Kyle's point, with annual fees where they're at, I mean, they're really making you choose one bank to be your premium card issuer. And as somebody that holds the set by reserve right now, I think the list of these Amex credits and benefits is substantially better and easier to use.
Chase is very much trying to mimic the MX Platinum model with all these new credits and benefits. And I think they just have a long way to go, if I'm being honest.
Yeah, I think it's one thing I just noticed is it's pretty interesting that You mentioned it used to just be a hardcore travel card and now it's you know All these lifestyle benefits and you know at a time especially right now where travel demand is way down You know AmEx seems to be kind of insulating itself a little bit like everyone's gonna slap on their Lulu pants and put their aura ring on and go to Equinox every month But they might not be going to Greece every month, you know So it's it is interesting that they're kind of leaning back
Speaker 3 (42:36.248)
towards what people are doing at home instead of getting on the road, even though the hotel credit obviously is massively expanded, but that was just something I wanted to make note of.
Yeah, well, and you know, I find it on the one hand surprising that they didn't go, that they probably could have gone even higher with the annual fee, but they needed to keep it in the realm of reasonable, let's call it, and be close to their competitor. But at the same time, I do think that American Express is making a bet that, you know, by all accounts, the Chase Sapphire Reserve relaunched this summer.
hasn't gone as well as Chase wanted it to. And I think there's a few reasons for that. But one of them is that this Amex-like coupon structure of all of these different credits with overlapping timelines is very new to Chase cardholders. They really haven't gone nearly as far as Amex had until now. And with a lot of American Express cardholders, especially the Millennials and now even Gen Z travelers who are getting these cards, they haven't known a world without that.
So it's much easier for that younger set of travelers to accept having to do more with their card because they haven't known a world where that wasn't just part of an Amex annual fee.
Okay, I have one last big question for you guys and it's a yes or no question and I'll give you a one sentence to qualify it. Okay. Is the Amex Platinum a good credit card for most travelers? Yes or no? And a sentence.
Speaker 2 (44:06.274)
For most travelers, no.
Yeah, I agree. I do think people always need to do the math with credit cards, whether it's a $95 annual fee or $895. And there is a lot of math to do on this one. And there are probably are people out there who would automatically rule it out, who would be well served by this card, but it is not a status symbol. It is not something that makes you a better traveler, let alone a better person just for having it. It is not going to solve all of your problems.
So if you really study the benefits and you know that you can use, you know, this $600 a year in hotel credits, because there's your favorite hotel in Denver that you stay at twice a year, and it's part of fine hotels and resorts, that's $600 right off the bat. And then you've got $295 to go, but you do have to do the math to make sure, sure you can come out ahead because the only capital T true thing here is that.
If you can come out ahead on $895, then it is worth it for you. And if you can't, it's not.
Yeah, I think I would say yes, it is a good card for most travelers if you are organized and you plan to travel. And it's especially a yes in year one because of that sign up bonus. Just kind of changes the calculus a little bit of how you can make back that annual fee. Year two is when you really got to be organized and get into it.
Speaker 2 (45:32.814)
think one thing I think is really interesting about this refresh too is when was the last time you guys saw a credit card launch or like revamp its benefit structure and then have the points or the welcome offer not really be a feature of that. And I think that's what we're seeing here is it's like secondary compared to all the other stuff that we're talking about.
I think that's by design and I they made a conscious decision to really load up this card to the point where they say what, $3,500 in benefits. Again, huge asterisk there. You have to actually use every single one of them in order to do that, including that stupid ring. But they made a conscious decision to go even further on the benefits, on the membership club angle in lieu of elevating the welcome bonus.
I would love to see some data from Amix, which of course we'll never see, but how many cardholders are actually getting the full $3,500 out of the benefit package? I would have to imagine it as like almost nobody because that is just, it looks impossible.
Yeah, for the true sicko.
Yeah, Amex employees, if you have that data. Podcast at thriftytraffler.com.
Speaker 2 (46:42.99)
It's a great marketing tactic, no question.
We're going get those numbers up though with Kyle's new spreadsheets. So everyone get dialed in, get that money back. All right. Let's help out Emily, a listener who wrote in with a question. She says, I'm Emily. I've been loving the podcast. started listening not long after it launched and now my husband Danny is hooked too. She's not allowed to listen to it without him anymore. Good on you. Okay. She said, we recently made a big decision. We're taking a gap year in 2026 to travel around the world. Editorial note.
That's so sick. Have so much fun. I'm very excited. They booked their first flight from O'Hare to Bangkok with a layover in Zurich, flying Swiss. That's pretty awesome as well. Her question is, as we start planning, we know this year is our last chance to open any new credit cards since we won't have income next year. They currently have Chase Sapphire Preferred each, a Chase Freedom Unlimited and a Chase Freedom Flex, a Capital One Venture Card, an IHG Premier Card, and then Danny, her husband, has a Capital One.
Venture X on which she's an authorized user. Their question, do you have any credit card recommendations that would round out our setup? And if you had to suggest a few destinations for a year like this, what would be at the top of your list? And I'll amend her question briefly just based on our topic today. Is the Amex Platinum a good fit for this couple?
think it would only be a good fit if they were A, looking to earn a welcome bonus to fuel this year of travel and B, if they are able to spend on that card online because, you know, especially over in Europe, it's really hit or miss whether Amix gets accepted. And, you know, in other corners of the globe, it's even harder.
Speaker 1 (48:25.71)
It just depends where they're going. think the points is the bigger piece of this though, because, you know, being away from home where you can go to a Lululemon and you can use these Resi credits because they're not eligible for restaurants outside of the United States. Then that starts to limit how much you can really do this, which means that the value at least in year one is just earning those points. that is look, earning as high as 175,000 points after spending $8,000 in six months.
That is a lot of points. So that is worth it if you can actually earn it.
Yeah, I've got a couple thoughts in the first one being I don't think I heard the Amex gold card is something that they currently have. Amex has some kind of cuckoo bananas rules on their their credit cards. And so if you were to open the platinum card first, you actually make yourself ineligible to open and get a bonus on the gold card. However, if you get the gold card first, you can later get
the Platinum card and earn a bonus on it. the order of operations with Amex is really important. And I think if you're going to be dining out or spending money on groceries, which I think most everybody does, the Amex Gold card is pretty hard to beat. It does come with some of these credits that you do need to figure out a plan for. But if you are interested in the Platinum card, would say start with the Gold just because you're going to end up earning more points that way in the first place. And then the other thing that comes to mind is the new Atmos Rewards Summit.
Visa card. It's this new, we'll call it premium card from now the combined loyalty program of Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines. And the reason this is something I would look at is for a $395 annual fee, you get a number of benefits. But I think one thing that's really unique and really interesting about this card is that it earns three X points per dollar spent on any foreign transactions. So if you guys are planning to spend a lot of time outside of the US,
Speaker 2 (50:21.998)
probably not going to find a card that's going to reward you more than this one. So it's worth a look.
Any other card or destination tips? They also asked if we had any places they should go.
I mean, if you're going to be away from home for a year and you're trying to stretch your dollars as far as they can go anywhere in Southeast Asia, I would spend as many months as possible out of that 12-month window around Vietnam, around Thailand, Cambodia. That's where you're really going to get the most bang for your buck and live like a king on pennies on the dollar.
Yeah. just, I think just broad advice there, just some secondary tertiary cities, go, go find the heart and soul of some of these places. you can avoid kind of the swelling tourist crowds and after a year on the road, you're probably going to be sick of tourists anyway. So go find, those special cities that, leave a mark on you that aren't necessarily the ones with major international airports. Is that good for Danny and Emily? I think we did them some justice there. Okay. Good.
If you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast at thrift traveler.com. And your question might be featured in next week's show. All right, to close the show, we're doing on the spot as always. And we've got our celebrity guests here with an on the spot. Nick's going to put us on the spot. What do you got?
Speaker 2 (51:39.542)
I have a good question for you guys that I think it's good anyway. But I've got a caveat, which I'll explain in a second. But so the question is, if you could only transfer points to one program for the rest of your life, meaning any transferable points you have can only go to one program. The caveat here is that the rules are what they are today. We're not forecasting or speculating any future evaluations or changes, but I want to know what is the one program.
We'll be the judge.
Speaker 2 (52:08.354)
that you would tie yourself to for the rest of your life.
You're Big Emirates Skywards guy, right?
no Emirates, sadly would not make the cut for me anymore. I do have an answer. I'm ready flying blue. I think I do just because, you know, I plan to be in Minneapolis for a while and being a Delta hub captive, you just have to have your way. have to work around Delta, but you also have to be able to fly Delta to go nonstop anywhere. Sky miles rates are just too nasty and I get a lot of use out of the flying blue program anyway. And, you can even get some good value flying up front around the world too.
You're a Delta Daddy.
Matel to daddy,
Speaker 1 (52:46.584)
I am not a Delta daddy, but I would also pick Air France, KLM, Flying Blue for exactly what Gunnar said. There are programs that I like more because being able to transfer points to British Airways and then turn them into Avios with FinAir or Qatar Airways or Iberia is, that would be my number one pick overall. But if I have to chain myself to one, I need to be able to fly Delta here out of Minneapolis. And the same would be true for anyone living in Detroit or Atlanta or Salt Lake City.
So it's just, it's too hard to give up on that. So it would have to be flying.
I have another reason too. I have a tab saved for my searches with flying blue that for some reason does not make me log in ever. And it always remembers me. So I don't have to 2FA log in to Air France.
Stop the podcast. You have to send me that link.
I don't know what happened, but I've never had to log in again after my first time. So that's a big reason for me too.
Speaker 1 (53:39.448)
You're going to get reprimanded for not sharing that earlier, just so we're
Nick, what's yours?
I thought I was putting you guys on the spot. I mean, the argument that you guys made for flying blue and the fact that we live in a Delta hub is solid and I would have a hard time going away with that. you know, I think for me, I would say Hyatt. You know, knowing what we know now, it's just so hard to beat their hotel rates and with their new award availability calendar, it's gotten much, much easier to find actual available nights.
But I like to flip it
Speaker 2 (54:15.118)
I've stayed at some incredible Hyatt properties over the years. You know, I wish there were more transfer partners to Hyatt, but there's obviously a reason why there's not. But yeah, I think, you know, especially in terms of hotel points, they're far and away the most valuable and there's lots of ways to book flights with points. I think the good options on the hotel side of things are much, much fewer and far between. So I think I'm going to say Hyatt.
I like it. Very cool. All right, let's get out of here. got some hotels to book. Thank you all so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. If you would please go rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice. It helps us a ton. Like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. The show has been really fun over there. Today's show is full of graphics and information. Hopefully you've already seen them. Send this episode to someone you know who is curious about this card or...
just needs a vacation. And if you have some feedback for us, send me a note at podcast at thriftbetraveller.com. We would love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team.
This episode was produced by our senior editor Jackson Newman and your favorite host who is currently checking himself out in the Mirrorfinish Platinum card, Gunnar Olsson. was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tisso. See you guys next time.
See ya. Thanks for having me on.