Frequent Miler on the Air - Which is the best Amex Platinum card? | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep244 | 3-1-24

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

American Express has four different Platinum cards, all with a $695 annual fee. In this episode Greg and Nick not only help differentiate these Platinum cards from one another, they also pick out which one is best (or which is best for which kind of need.) (01:30) - Data point on calling for reconsideration for targeted 200K Amex business platinum card. Do people without business cards yet have better luck? (Mailbag) (03:14) - What crazy thing did Asiana do this week? Well...seems like their phone line goes to a very wrong recording. (Crazy Thing) (05:42) - Etihad is updating their loyalty program in June (Award Talk) - Find out what other programs' change and cancellation policies are. (09:33) - American Express has 4 different Platinum cards (which have $695 annual fees) (Main Event) - Learn more about the American Express Business Platinum card. - Learn more about what we call the "vanilla" American Express Platinum card. - Learn more about the American Express Charles Schwab Platinum card. - Learn more about the American Express Morgan Stanley Platinum Card. (13:30) - What do all the Platinum cards have in common (13:50) - Find out what might count for the Airline Incidental Fee credit (16:29) - What are some Business Platinum card features, unique to the business card? (18:35) - What are some features that are unique to the consumer Platinum cards? (23:18) - Is there anything that's unique to the normal "vanilla" Platinum card? (25:30) - Is there anything that's unique to the Charles Schwab Platinum card? (27:09) - Is there anything that's unique to the Morgan Stanley Platinum card? (31:45) - Which of these American Express Platinum cards is the best? (35:41) - Greg's final pick (36:19) - Nick's final pick (40:03) - What can I do with leftover Qantas points? (Question of the Week) Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don't forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit - "Ocean Deep" by Annie Yoder

let's get into the giant mailbag what crazy thing did city this week it's time for mattress running the numbers ready for the main event the main event frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event which is the best amex platinum card american express has four different $695 platinum credit cards. All of them have great perks, but there are key differences between them. So if you're interested in any of them, so you could get into airport lounges, get elite status in various programs and a lot of other perks, then you're going to want to know which one is best. And so we will dive into that in our today's main event. It won't be a one size fits all answer, but we'll see how that works out. So remember, if you want to jump around and check out different sections of the show,

you'll always have timestamps in the show notes. So if you expand the show notes, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening in your favorite podcast platform, go to the description for the show. You'll find timestamps so you can skip ahead to something where you can return to it later on if you want to listen to it again and go right to the segment you want. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like.

Please subscribe, enable notifications so that you will find out when we drop our next 20-minute coffee break episode or an Ask Us Anything into your feed. Don't forget to do all those things. We appreciate that. But right now, let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. Yeah. Today's Giant Mail comes from Sarah. She says, I'm a big fan of your show and blog. You do a great job of presenting the points in Miles' game in an easy-to-understand way for beginners,

but also going deeper for the more advanced. I wanted to write in with a data point and thank you about the targeted 200,000 point Amex business platinum card. I was bummed to see that both my husband and I were not targeted for this offer, but read a note from Nick on your post about calling into the small business office to ask for this offer. My husband called in this morning to ask and immediately was offered the 200K offer and instantly approved. He does not have a business card with Amex, which is why I had him call and not myself, since Nick noted those calling in might have more luck if they don't already have a business Platinum card. Good. I mean, that's a huge offer to get, right? I mean, that's a pretty terrific one. And I'll be honest with you, I don't remember writing the note about calling in, but maybe I did. I know that you can sometimes

get that and it can be worth calling Amex to do an application over the phone. So that's certainly a good tip and a good reminder because I don't usually do that. I mean, have you called in an application in a while? It's been a long time now um but you know for this one i think it is worth it if you've if you can meet the big spend i think it's something like is it 15k or 20k spend for this one 15k on this one yeah okay so yeah so not that that's small but but if you're gonna if you're gonna go for uh you know the business platinum card uh it's gonna have a big spend requirement anyway for the welcome bonus so to get 200k that's phenomenal so great job sarah well done well done congratulations

okay next up is what crazy thing what crazy thing did asiana do this week yeah this one's just kind of funny um so kevin wrote in with this one uh he says that he booked an Asiana flight from Tokyo to Seoul using Avianca LifeMiles. And when he looked up his reservation on Avianca's website using the PNR code he got from Asiana's website, which he got from the avianca uh booking um he uh he got a uh dialogue box saying um basically that you can't uh do anything with reservations not made through asiana's website um and so call this number and the number they gave is not exactly right so he says if you call the number and i can verify this is true you are greeted by a recording of a sexy male voice who wants your credit card info to get down and dirty with you if you'd like a laugh i suggest you give it a try um so he found that the the correct number to call in is elsewhere on

Asiana's website. They had accidentally put a two where there should have been a seven on this one. So I'm not going to list the number here because I don't want to give this sexy guy more business. And you know what? I jumped in to correct you, but I think you were right. So I apologize for that. I think it is Avianca's site now that I look back at it again that he got the phone number from. But either way, yeah, I mean, absolutely. No, no, he got the phone number from Avianca's site. I know that's the case. All right.

He said Avianca. And I was like, no way. I think he was Avianca. All right. So I get confused there, too. Either way, the phone number was old and no longer the correct number, apparently. Which, funny enough, I ran into something like that at some point. Also, not that long ago. I can't even remember what it was.

But, yeah, it seems kind of crazy to me that they wouldn't make sure to keep those phone numbers active. Well, actually, it's not an old phone. What it is, it's very, very close to the correct phone number. It's just one digit is off. Yeah. One digit wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's certainly a mistake there. So so if you're looking for the right number, then just, you know, reverse a couple of digits in there and eventually you'll get it right. All right. Exactly.

So that's this week's crazy thing. Let's talk about award talk. So for this week's award talk, t hotwood has made some big changes yeah so so first of all they've announced big changes coming up that aren't in effect yet that are supposed to take place in june where they're going to be lowering the points price for a lot of awards they're going to be changing their award charts basically so they what they say is that the point price will be reduced for around 70 percent of routes. That includes business class. It's not just economy. So that's great, especially because booking Etihad through partner miles like American Airlines has become more difficult. If you want a premium cabin, if you want business or first class, they seem to have implemented a 30-day rule

where it has to be within 30 days of the flight or else American Airlines is not going to show any availability at all. And so now, you know, if the prices come down, Etihad's prices currently aren't very good. But now if the prices come down, we could transfer from some transferable points programs to Etihad and book at that lower rate. So that sounds good, except for one big, big problem. Yeah, make sure that you're sure about whatever booking it is you make, because you're not going to want to cancel it once it's made no you're not um so they're they've changed their uh award cancellation rules and now it's

what it's something like you get back 75 percent of your uh points uh if it's been uh if if the flight is more than a week away something like that that. Well, so yeah, so if you it's actually more than 21 days in advance, the penalty is 25% of the miles you redeem. So you get 75% back more than 21 days. If you cancel between seven and 21 days, then you're only going to get half the miles back. The penalty is 50%. And if you cancel within seven days of departure, then it's 75% of the miles you used. And within 24 hours, it's non-refundable. So, yeah, I mean, the fee is 75% of the miles. You're only going to get 25% back if you cancel within seven days of departure. That's nuts.

Right. But, I mean, even if you cancel two months in advance, you're losing 25% of the miles you spent. And that's just totally non-refundable. You can't cancel it. I mean, cancel it, not show up, I guess, but you're not going to get anything back. And so that's why I don't usually book awards through Iberia for travel on their partners. So that'd be on British Airways and Aer Lingus anyway. of exceptions right like british airways flights are are cancelable and i forget what else caroling is the ones that i think are like the you know iag group so and probably whaling i assume but uh yeah so at any rate it does have a couple of exceptions but most partner awards are totally non-refundable and that's i think how i would look at it to add moving forward because even 25 if you're paying like 200 000 miles they, they charge for a first-class order. It's more than that. And I think it's losing 25%. I mean, you're crazy. Like, I wouldn't be booking anything with them.

No, no. And as you said at the start, like, if you're 100% committed to a particular flight, I could see, like, if it's two days away. Right, right. Exactly. That's what it would have to be. It'd have to be, like, two days away. Yeah, for me, too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, there. Exactly. That's what it would have to be. It'd have to be like two days away. Yeah, for me too. Yeah. Okay. All right. So there you go.

Bummer there. Okay. So then I think that brings us to this week's main event. Yeah. Main event time. Today's main event is which is the best Amex Platinum card. Amex has four different Platinum cards. And I'm not talking about the Delta Platinum card. MX has four different platinum cards. And I'm not talking about the Delta Platinum card. That's a whole other ball of wax. But they have four cards that currently, as we're recording this, cost $695 is their annual fees. One of them is the business platinum card. The other three are all variations of consumer platinum cards. The main one, and the one you're most likely to see a really big welcome bonus for, is we refer to as the vanilla platinum card, because it's just called the platinum card. And so for the rest of your show, we'll call it the vanilla platinum card just to distinguish it.

But just know that if you go to Amex and ask, can I have the vanilla platinum card, they might not know what you're talking about. Might give you chocolate instead. Or they'll give you that one that looked like it had vanilla ice or multicolored ice cream spilled all over it. They had that weird design for a while that was like, you know, all these little lines that looked like sprinkles. That was so ugly. The other two are co-branded Platinum Cards. One is the Platinum Card for Charles Schwab, and the other one is the Platinum Card for Morgan Stanley. And in both cases, you have to have investment accounts with those companies in order to sign up for their versions of the platinum card. And so, yeah. So in all cases, it can make sense to get these cards because

they tend to have big welcome bonuses. And so, you know, it can make sense to get it for a year. So the real question is, which ones do you want to keep past that first year? And because, yeah, as I said, the welcome bonuses are so big, it's worth that annual fee just to get the welcome bonus. But of course, these days with the family language, you know, you can't, you used to be able to get each one of these and get the welcome bonus. But of course, these days with the family language, you used to be able to get each one of these

and get the welcome bonus on each one. But now they feature family language, so you do kind of have to pick and choose, or at least you're going to have to wait a long time in between. Yeah, right. And what the family language means is if you've had or have any one of the consumer platinum cards, the language says you may not be.

So it's not 100%, but you may not be eligible for a welcome bonus for any of the other consumer platinum cards. The business platinum card is separate. So you could definitely get the business platinum card welcome bonus and a consumer bonus. I think the trick is, since the vanilla platinum offer is usually better, I think the trick is to always get that one first. And if you prefer to have the Schwab one or the Morgan Stanley one, you can later sign up for it and just you don't get a welcome bonus. But if you're talking about paying the next year annual fee anyway, so you pay the annual fee. I mean, there's no real financial difference to you that way other than you have another

credit card on your report is the only thing. So if you're worried about getting like chase cards in the future, that's one more that hurts against the 524 count, uh not a not a huge deal right okay so that's the little brief overview anyway so you certainly could get at least one consumer one business if you wanted and you could always switch around from one consumer to another by opening another consumer card you can't product change from the vanilla platinum to a Schwab platinum, for instance. You would have to open a new account for that. So that's worth keeping in mind.

So they all share in common a really high annual fee. So it's $695 a year right now at the time of recording anyway for any of those. I say at the time of recording because my goodness, Amex has continued to increase that over the last, I don't know, four or five years here. We've seen a couple of increases to get it to $695, but that's where they are. And all of the Platinum cards have a $200 airline fee credit or an airline incidental

fee credit that's meant to be used for things like bags and seat selection or lounge access. And there are a lot of other things that work in practice. Also, we maintain a resource for what works to actually trigger those credits, because there's a lot of other stuff that you might not think would work that does. So we have that. And then of course, you get airport lounge access. So you'll get Centurion lounge access, if you live somewhere or traveling somewhere with a Centurion lounge, Delta Sky Club access when you're flying Delta, airspace lounges, which I almost always forget about, but every now and then I'll come across one and be glad that I did remember. The escape lounges, which I almost always forget about, but every now and then I'll come across one and be glad that I did remember. The escape lounges, which is a similar situation. There are

quite a few escape lounges, though, in smaller airports where I probably wouldn't have thought that there would be a lounge, and I'm pleasantly surprised when I find an escape lounge. And then Plaza Premium, which again, there aren't a ton of those in the United States, but if you travel internationally, Plaza Premium lounges are usually quite nice. And then of course you get Priority Pass, but no restaurant access with Priority Pass, just access to Priority Pass lounges. Yep. There's even more common features among these cards. You get Clear credit. So if you want to sign up for Clear, you get up to $189 per year reimbursed. So basically you get clear for free for one person. They all offer emergency

medical evacuation and transportation assistance, which is a pretty amazing perk that I don't think about 99.999% of the time, but just having one of these cards, you don't have to book your travel with the card, but that come with it, Hilton and Marriott gold status, and some rental car statuses and benefits. So altogether, yes, these are $695 cards, but just the features they have in common can make them really valuable, especially if you value lounge access because they have so many lounge access options. And so that's sort of the starting point. But then as you dig into each variation, you see that they have different features in addition. So, okay, so let's say you want the airport lounge access, you want those other things we talked about. Let's talk about what the business platinum has in addition. So if you want to add authorized users to a business platinum,

they'd be called employees, then you're going to pay $350 per year if you want them to have lounge access. You can get them a companion card or something like that that is free, but if you want them to have a card that actually has perks like lounge access, then you got to pay $350 per year. So that's actually a downside of the business platinum because the consumer ones charge $195 instead. And okay, so that's a downside of the business platinum. Some upsides, $400 of Dell credit annually. You get $200 for the first six months and $200 the next six months. So if you like buying stuff from Dell, if you have a lot of electronics purchases or whatever, software purchases to make them,

that can be really valuable. $120 in wireless credits, which are spread out $10 a month. And the main perk that makes me want to have a business platinum card is the 35% points rebate on flights purchased with points. So if you purchase a point through Amex Travel and pay with points, and if you're paying for either a flight on your selected preferred airline or business or first-class flight on any airline, then you'll get 35% of your points back. And that works out to

getting a little over 1.5 cents per point value, which is decent. And so that can be a really good way to pay for flights when there aren't great award awards available, or you find a great deal on a cash rate. And, and that way you can pay with points, get a bunch back and still earn airline miles for your flight. So it's a big win. So that's a really nice feature. All right. So now let's get into the consumer cards. Now that we've talked about the business platform, the consumer cards now all have a bunch of features that are in common with each other, right? So the vanilla, the Schwab, and the Morgan Stanley all have a bunch of features that are in common with themselves, with each other, but not with the business platinum. Do you want to talk, walk us through those, Nick?

So the consumer platinum cards come with a $200 Uber credit that is doled out as $15 a month during most of the months during December. It's $35. And that Uber credit gets automatically loaded to your Uber account. You can use it for Uber Eats, so you're not limited to using it for Uber rides. You can use it for Uber Eats as well. They also all have a $200 annual hotel credit for prepaid bookings through Fine Hotels and Resorts or the Hotel Collection, which are two of Amex's sort of luxury booking engines. So that's nice because you discount if you're going to book one of those things, fine hotels and resorts, there's no minimum stay, you could be booking a one night stay and use your $200 prepaid booking credit that the hotel collection does require a two

night minimum stay. So worth knowing that distinction, but otherwise, 200 bucks towards prepaid hotel bookings and prepaid doesn't mean non-refundable, by the way. You can book things that are cancelable and changeable, just you'll prepay them. And there's a $240 digital entertainment credit that's doled out $20 a month, a bunch of different qualifying services that might appeal to you or might not, as the case may be. $100 in sales credit every year, and that's doled out as $50 from January through June and $50 July through December. So you get two opportunities to spend 50 bucks each in sacks each year and a free Walmart Plus subscription, which these days comes with Paramount Plus,

the base level subscription, I think. And you can get 5x anywhere when you pay for flights directly 5x anywhere, 5x when you pay for flights directly with the airline. So you'll get 5X on your flights when you pay directly with the airline. So that's not a bad bonus category if you're going to use your Platinum card to book flights. I'm a little hesitant personally to book flights with my Platinum card because the emergency travel protections, or I should say the trip delay and cancellation protections, require round trip purchase of the travel and it gets a little more complicated, a little more difficult to use potentially than some of the other cards on the market. I did mention emergency. So I want to clarify there, you do

not need to book any of your trip with your platinum card in order to get the emergency medical evacuation that Greg mentioned earlier that you just need to be a card holder for that. There's no limit on it. I have a friend whose father used it within the last couple of years here. And it was pretty smooth. I mean, they had to push back a little bit and say, yeah, we really think he needs to be medically evacuated. And then that was it. They paid for it and arranged it and made it all happen. So, so that you don't need to book your trip. But when you're talking about booking airline tickets, again, 5x when you book directly through the airline and the travel protections are a little different than some of the other cards in the market that are popular.

So it's worth checking into those. Yeah, so that 5X when booking directly with airline is kind of nice because a lot of cards these days have you get 5X when booking through the bank's portal. And the problem with that is that if anything goes wrong, the airline is going to point to the portal and say, you have to get them to fix it. And then the portal doesn't always have the same ability to fix things that the airline would. So I hate booking flights through portals. And now American Airlines is making it even worse by making it so you wouldn't earn

airline miles if you booked an American Airlines flight through portals, unless you're also a business AA member. So anyway, I think that's a nice perk that I often forget about that exists but is there. Overall, these consumer rebates, personally, I like these better than the business platinum ones because with business platinum, you have Dell, which I struggle to use the $400 every year. Then you have the cell phone one, which is a piddly $10 a month, which is easy to use, though. But getting a combination of $200 in Uber credit, which I always use completely, $200 in hotel credit, which I use every time, and the digital entertainment credit, I use very close to the full $20 a month on at least my first Platinum card because I get the Disney Duo bundle, which is Disney plus Hulu. So this is the version that is not with ESPN. It's hard to find this bundle, but if you could find it, that's like $19.95 a month, something like that.

So it almost fully uses up the $20 per month. So all right. Okay. So now those are all features that are in common across all the consumer Platinum cards. Now let's talk about some features that each consumer platinum card have that are unique to themselves. So the vanilla platinum card, the main unique thing it has is that when you refer friends, you earn membership rewards points, which are super valuable. Because the other consumer platinum cards, if you refer friends, you just

get like a $50 statement credit, which is nice, but it's not like getting 15,000 or even 30,000 membership rewards points. Those referral bonuses change. I should also mention that every now and then Amex has some kind of other special thing. It may or may not be related to referral bonuses, but they could have deals where you're earning extra points for restaurants or something like that. And whenever they do that, that would only be for the vanilla Platinum card, not for these special ones. And right now they have one where when you refer friends to any Amex card from your Platinum card, this also true a few other Amex cards, you get an extra 10 points per dollar at restaurants.

So that's a special thing they have going on now, which you won't get with those other versions. Right, right. And the referral bonus, I think, on our Schwab Platinum is $100. I think you said $50. It's $100 on our Schwab card. But nonetheless, it's not nearly as valuable as the oftentimes 20,000 or sometimes 25 or sometimes 30,000 points you might be able to earn by referring people from your Platinum card. It varies from person to person exactly what those bonuses are.

But the point that Greg makes that the Schwab and Morgan Stanley cards have much lower referral bonuses is a solid one. And they only earn cash, whereas the vanilla consumer platinum earns membership rewards points. Now, of course, there are lots of other Amex cards that also offer membership rewards points when you refer people. In the business platinum card, you can earn membership rewards when you refer people. We're not saying this is a unique feature to the platinum card. We're saying out of the consumer platinum cards, that's unique to the vanilla platinum. Yeah. Yep. And okay, so moving on, the Schwab platinum, what does it have? It has the ability to invest with rewards, which means you can cash out points for 1.1 cent each. This is really, well this is unique.

Amex has a few other ways where you could cash out points for as much as one penny each. This is the only one where you can get more than one cent value if all you want is basically cash back. So the Schwab unlocks that. And the interesting thing there, you don't have to earn all your points

on the Schwab Platinum card in order to cash out your points for 1.1. You could be earning them on your Business Platinum, on your Blue Business Plus, on all your different Amex cards and still cash out at 1.1 if you own the Schwab Platinum card at all. One other feature it has that's unique is a sort of relationship credit. If you have a lot of money invested with Schwab, so if you have $250,000 invested with Schwab, you'll get $100 back every year automatically. If you have a million dollars or more invested, you get $200 back automatically. So a little discount off the annual fee is the way I think about that.

And I mean, that's a nice one. If you've got a million, then $200, that's a very significant chunk off the annual fee. Not that $100 is bad either, but out of a $695 card, if you look at all the other perks, if you're able to get that off also, that would, I think, be fairly compelling if I were in that boat. So I think that's actually a good deal. But, of course, Schwab is not the only game in town in terms of a brokerage offering an Amex Platinum card. So there's also the Morgan Stanley Platinum card, and that's a little bit different, right? Yeah.

So this one also offers invest with rewards, but at only one cent per point. So, I mean, it's not dramatically different, but it's still less. But a really unique feature of this one is the first authorized user is free. And this is a real authorized user card, not the free kind that doesn't have benefits. So this is the only platinum card where if you want, let's say, your significant other to be able to get into lounges when they're traveling, then you could add them as an authorized user for free, give them this card to carry around. And so that's a it would cost to pay for that authorized user card with any other consumer Platinum card. Morgan Stanley also has an incentive to spend a lot on their card. If you spend $100,000 or more on the Platinum card, you get a $500 anniversary spend award. So at first blush, I thought,

oh, that sounds pretty good. $500. That's a big, really big percentage of the annual fee. But if you think of it as a percentage on spend, if you, if you stop spending at exactly a hundred thousand dollars and you're just getting an extra half a cent percent, a half a percent of, of rewards from that spend. And if you're only earning like one x on that spend anyway that's not a good rate of return for your spend at all uh if you spend a hundred thousand dollars though on flights so you're getting five x for all that spend then having an extra half percent on top of that would be pretty nice but i don't know how many people do that um i'm sure some people do if you do then then yeah that would make sense i think that's when that

benefit makes sense as if you're right right just as an aside um there's a couple extra advantages to doing this that are not necessarily obvious which is Amex has a couple of reasons why you might want to spend $75,000 on a Platinum card. One of which is if you want to be able to bring in guests to a Centurion lounge for free, they won't let you do that unless you've spent $75,000 or more on the car in the past year. Another is that in 2025, Delta is going to limit the number of times you could get into Delta clubs with your platinum card to 10 day visits. And if you spent $75,000 or more, you aren't going to be limited at all. So there's a couple other advantages to that spend. It's not just the $500 you get. Finally, another unique aspect of the Morgan Stanley Platinum is what they call a $695 annual engagement bonus. Now, having a platinum cash

plus account is either fairly pricey. I can't remember the exact, something like $50 a month, or maybe I think it might have actually gone up from that. Or you have to maintain, again, I forget exactly, $20,000 or $25,000 in this account. It's not an interest-bearing account. So if you think of it, how much interest you'd be losing by keeping that much money in, you could see why Morgan Stanley is willing to give you the $695 because it's not a good deal, especially as interest rates have gone up in the past few years. Yeah, you'd be losing more. You'd probably stand to gain more than $695 putting that money somewhere else. So you can give yourself your own relationship bonus for having a good relationship with your money, your local high interest savings account. So yeah, that one less interesting than

probably the others. But I guess in an environment where interest rates change and they're lower, then maybe it could make sense if you have that much money to just park somewhere. Right. All right. So all that out of the way, we've talked about what's different about all of them. Greg, tell us what is best. All right. So I have my notes laid out by like different cards. The business platinum card is best if you highly value that 35% pay with points rebate, you value the $120 in wireless

credits and the $400 in Dell credits. If you value all that stuff, then the business platinum might be best for you. A consumer platinum card in general is best for you if you highly value all those credits. I talked about how I find it very easy to use many of those credits. Like I talked about how I find it very easy to use like many of those credits. The Uber, the digital entertainment, Saks, those are all really valuable. If you do Equinox, we didn't even talk about that benefit, but that could save you a bunch of money. So, but then, so that's consumer platinum in general, but which consumer platinum is best for you? Kind kind of depends. If you're going to be referring a bunch of friends, then you want the vanilla one. If you want to add an authorized user for free, the Morgan Stanley is the obvious choice.

Or if you're thinking of spending your way to like $75,000 to spend anyway, maybe you'd want the Morgan Stanley because only $25,000 more would get you that $500 credit, something along those lines. And finally, the Schwab Platinum is best if you prefer cash back over travel rewards because of the 1.1 cent ability to cash out points at 1.1 cent each. Also, if you have a lot of money invested in Schwab, then you get that little kickback of $100 or $200. So you can see how it really depends on your situation. So which is best? I don't think there's any way of saying, you know, there's just one right answer here.

No, no, there definitely isn't. You know, and when you talk about the Schwab card and you mentioned that it's best if you prefer cash back over travel rewards, obviously, I think that's true. But it makes the cards compelling. Some of the cards, any of the other cards you might have, compelling as cash back cards. If you look at a card that earns Forex at US supermarkets, up to $25,000 spent per year. If you're able to then convert those points to cash by redeeming for the Schwab deposits at 1.1 cent per point, you're talking about 4.4% back, that's really good return.

Preston Pysh, Jr.: For all your grocery purchases with the Amex Gold card, yeah. Jeff Waller, MD, Right, exactly. Yeah. And restaurant also. I mean, it's a good return. It's a solid return. Preston Pysh, Jr.: Right, right. Blue Business Plus too. It's a free card that gets you 2x everywhere on the first 50k of spend per year. And so that becomes a 2.2% cashback a, you know, we see a targeted welcome offer for the business gold card, for instance, of 130,000 or 150,000 points.

I say, well, I mean, that could be a $1,430 welcome bonus or if it's 150K, what's that? $1,650 that that could become. And so I look at those welcome bonuses significantly differently. And I have opened one before to just cash it out. I'm thinking, well, you know, I mean at those welcome bonuses significantly differently. And I have opened one before to just cash it out thinking, well, you know, I mean, that's a huge win in cash, even though I don't need the Amex points right now, I could look at that and say, well, it's hard to turn down the large cashback bonus. So I think, you know, I think that that's, that's certainly worth considering if you want a consumer card. But then, of course, all of Greg's other points about the fact that it varies from person to person are spot on.

I mean, it's going to depend on what it is you value or want or need. So what is it that you value or want or need, Greg, the Frequent Mylar? You had to pick one platinum card. Which one would it be? Yeah. Which one would it be? Yeah, if I can only have one, that would be so hard. Because as a blogger and podcaster, the ability to get big points for referrals is so compelling with the Vanilla Platinum card. but if it wasn't that situation, I think I would prefer the Morgan Stanley Platinum because of the ability to, with one annual fee, give my wife a card that would also get her into lounges

and be done. That makes sense. I think that would be a smart pick. Yeah, I mean, same for me that the Vanilla Platinum is the one that I think I would have to keep because of the situation that we're in as bloggers and podcasters but i think for the average person that's not a compelling argument and truthfully there are lots of other ramix cards that offer good bonuses so and in fact you know when you mentioned something like the current one at the time of recording this

of the extra 10 points per dollar at restaurants i wouldn't prefer to have that uh or to refer for my my platinum card anyway i prefer to refer for my platinum card anyway, I'd prefer to refer from a gold card in that case. So it's not always the case that the platinum card is going to be the one you're going to be most excited about referring from anyway. So that consideration is big for us, but probably not big for everybody else. So I think the Schwab platinum is honestly one that is worth considering for all of the reasons that I said before, in terms of being able to cash out points and giving your points more flexibility and

a little bit of lift. Now, like we said, there are other ways to get up to one cent per point, but this is really simple. It's just one thing. And you do need a Schwab account, but there's no minimums. You can create a free investing account with Schwab and a free investor checking account. And so you can cash out your points and put them into your checking account. It's simple. So I think I like that for most people. That 35% pay with points rebate, though, it can be huge for more advanced award hobbyists, I think, because if you want to get it, and I'm talking about now about the business platinum card, because there are plenty of situations where you may be able to book a business class flight for the same number of points or even fewer points than what an award

would cost and pick the exact flight you want and earn miles. And in some cases earn a lot of miles. And so I think the business platinum is really good for kind of more advanced hobbyists that are willing to look for those opportunities that are going to say, okay, you know what, there's a cheap round trip from Europe to the United States. I'll just go to Europe twice and use that as a, you know, my way to get back to the United States and back to Europe sort of a thing. You know, if you're willing to play those types of games and look for those types of opportunities, then I think the business platinum becomes pretty compelling. But the Dell credits are the big problem. And I feel like Amex has to change that because the Dell credits are just not

super useful anymore. Dell stopped carrying so many different things over the last few years that I also have run out of things that I need or even remotely want from Dell. So I'm much less excited about the credits on that card. So while those credits are still kind of broken in my mind, I think the Schwab Platinum is the one that I would pick. Yeah, there you go. And, you know, I should have mentioned that when I was talking about the Morgan Stanley card that the Schwab card is much easier to get because setting up a Schwab investment account for free is you'd be done in a minute.

Morgan Stanley, they used to have this access investing that you could start with $5,000 deposit. They don't have that anymore. So I don't even know what the path is if you want to get started, but don't want to invest a lot with Morgan Stanley. So there's a much bigger hurdle there to get started. So I think that alone is a selling point for the other two consumer. Yeah. But I think your consideration in terms of getting your wife lounge access is one that, you know, that does make some sense. And, and I'm of course in a very different situation where I got my wife and two kids. So being able to get just my wife in is not going to do me any good because then I'd still have to pay 50 bucks a kid or whatever. I'm not going to do that to go to the Centurion Lounge. So that's not

helpful for me. But if it was just two of us, then that obviously becomes more of a consideration if you're able to get the Morgan Stanley card. So yeah. Great point. We've got lots of different considerations there. So you've got lots of different options. Alright, I think that

wraps up this week's main event. We'll do a very quick question of the week, Greg. So this week, Mark writes in and says, Greetings, I have 5500 Qantas points from a recent round trip on Emirates. I wanted to transfer them to a US airline, but it doesn't look like that's possible. They expire in 18 months. I won't be flying Qantas anytime soon. What are my options? What can I do with these 5500 points? Is it possible to keep these alive, Greg? And is there anything useful for someone who's not going to be flying Qantas? Yeah. So Qantas is a one-world airline, and that means you could use those points to book any of their partner airlines, which include American Airlines or Alaska Airlines.

And they also have a distance-based award chart with very cheap awards if they're very, very short distance. So I don't remember off the top of my head if the shortest flights would fit within his number of points. No? Not quite, but you probably have some transferable points that could transfer to Qantas. If you've got Amex membership rewards points, we were talking about the Platinum card today, you can transfer those to Qantas, for instance. So you can check out all the various transfer partners. We have guides for the transfer partners of the various programs that you may have access to. So you could keep those points alive. You could top them off with points from one of your transferable currency

accounts. And yeah, the shortest distance span is flights of zero to 600 miles, class 8,000 points one way in economy class through Qantas. So if you're able to find partner availability, you do have some options to use those to fly domestically in the US, like Greg said, on American or Alaska. So you've got some options. And even a more expensive flight, if you have transferable points, you can top it off and book your flight that way.

It doesn't have to be flying Qantas at all. But yes, you were right that you cannot move your points from Qantas to another program. That's not something that hardly any program allows. Yeah, it's not usually a thing, moving points from one airline to another. Not usually. Yeah, obvious is the biggest exception. Yeah. Exception there, yeah.

All right. That brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about, you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media and join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group. And if you have a comment that you'd like to be considered for a giant mailbag or a question you'd like to be considered for a question of the week, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.