Is AMEX’s Premier Rewards Card Worth It?
For someone spending $800 — $1,500 per month
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I signed up for the AMEX Premier Rewards card a year ago replacing my Visa Platinum Rewards card through the Alliant Credit Union as my primary card, mainly for the free 50,000 points after spending X amount of dollars. As it’s now one year later, I want to look back and see if making the switch was worth it and whether I should keep AMEX.
AMEX Nice-to-Have Benefits
- 50,000 points (1st year)
- Decent points system overall
- Addition 1 year of warranty on purchases (ie: electronics)
- $100 Airline voucher (not for flights, but in-flight or ancillary fees)
- Great customer service
Net 1 Year Value (Points $ Value — Cost of Card)
For context, I put an average range of ~$800 — $1,500 on my card per month. There are nice-to-have benefits AMEX offers, however I want to know from a straight up points perspective between my Visa and AMEX which resulted in more money in terms of points in my pocket. In the last year, I’ve totaled 35,378 points through AMEX, not including the 1st year bonus points. Using Eric Brown’s points calculator (bit.ly/guide-rewards) that’s a value range of $504.14 — $672.18. With Visa, I racked up 25,749 points last year which I used for a $257.49 deposit directly to my checkings account. Factoring in AMEX’s yearly fee of $195 it comes out to the following results.
AMEX Value: $309.14 — $477.18
Visa Rewards: $257.49
AMEX Eeks Out The Win
Alliant Credit Union’s Visa card is great. They upgraded member services with basic features it was previously missing such as viewing and claiming points without having to call them up. However, the AMEX card, considering fees, even ignoring the ancillary benefits, plus considering the most conservative points value is worth more in points than the Visa Platinum card.
In case you missed any of my referral links I sprinkled above, here you go.
I’m Adam Hurwitz — recommend and check out the rest of my writing if you enjoyed the above | Thanks!
