Introduction
I mentioned a while back that I had cancelled my AMEX Business Gold card since it wasn’t worth the $175 annual fee. Reader Josh commented on that post that I could have downgraded to the $95 Green card instead of cancelling the card. And he was right. Now that my wife’s and my AMEX Business Platinum cards were up for renewal, I didn’t think the cards were worth the $250 net cost ($450 AF minus $200 airline credit,) but I thought they were worth downgrading to the $95 Green card.
How is it worth the $95 annual fee?
It’s fairly easy math. You essentially have to find a way to extract over $95 of value over 12 months on the card. With only 1 card, that’ll be very difficult. However, since you can add authorized users on the card for free, this’ll make it a lot easier. So let’s say you have 4 total users on one primary card, you then would need to only extract $25 out of each card. The best way of achieving that is through AMEX Offers. Since our Serve cards were all slaughtered and AMEX seeming to only do “real card” offers these days instead of open Twitter offers, it’s even more imperative to take advantage of having authorized users.
This year’s AMEX Offers have been very weak. The only great offer so far is the Rite Aid $5 off $15 offer. That means I’m hoping for a Staples or Best Buy or any $20 offer this year, which I’m fairly confident will happen. With Citi now doing card offers and AMEX losing cards left and right (Costco, JetBlue, SPG most likely,) they’re going to need to increase the marketing budget. Either way, I’m willing to take that risk.
Is it worth $250?
Recently I’ve been thinking if it makes sense to even pay the $250 net for the Platinum card. With 4 cards, you’d need around $60 of AMEX Offers per year to make the math work. In 2015, this could have been done with the Sam’s Club, Amazon, Best Buy, Staples, Home Depot, etc offers. I just don’t know if the Offers will be as rich in 2016, so we’ll see. You’d also have to value the lounge benefits as well, which for me, is worth about $10 per visit since the Centurion Lounge in Seattle is a mini-lounge compared to the other ones. If you have more AU’s, then it could be worth it…
Conclusion
Since charge cards don’t hit up against your 4 AMEX ‘credit’ card limit, it doesn’t really matter if you keep it or cancel it. To me, I think I can get $95 of value per primary card. Do your own math to see if you think it’s worth it for you to downgrade your Platinum card to the Green card before cancelling your Platinum card.
You also get 5k MR after downgrading a biz gold/plat to green and making 1 purchase.
That’s the first I’ve heard of that. How do I get that offer?
Its automatic. Been available for at least several years. I got it again last month so it still works. I didn’t ask or confirm. I just downgraded, made the purchase, and the points posted.
Ah good to know. Thanks Mike.
Wouldn’t you need to pay $175 to add users to the plat biz card so it would be more then $60 per since it would $425 divided by 4 cards? Or is that only for adding users to your personal plat card?
On the biz plat, it’s free to add GREEN cards. See link in article. On the personal side, you want to do this – https://milesperday.com/2015/09/american-express-personal-platinum-cards-add-up-to-5-amex-gold-authorized-users-for-45/
Awesome – did not know that. Thanks. Newer to the blog but I like what I have read so far keep up the good work!
I canceled my BRG a few days ago and was approved for a Gold and Green Amex card a few weeks ago. $0 AF the first year and I get 50k MR points for both cards. And my existing MR points are now safe. And for some reason Amex backdated both cards to “member since 2012”. I thought they’d stopped doing that.
That is odd. You’re the first I’ve read that they are still backdating. I’d suggest you get one of those free MR cards like the old classic blue or maybe one of those stupid EDP cards that use MR. That way, you don’t need to worry about lost MR points.
I tried for days to get the highest ED offer, but it wasn’t happening. I got the highest for the Green and Gold cards so I went with that. I’ll try for the no fee ED card when the AF is due next year on the Green and Gold cards.
This one bonus per lifetime is killing me, especially because I was going to apply for the Biz SPG card again this week. I’ve gotten a single targeted mailer in the past few years, and luckily it was for a no fee Ink+ card that I got.
https://twitter.com/aNomAli_/status/703267822818848769 guess no one is paying attn, not even DoC
Ah thanks BW. Dude, you were supposed to cc me too! I’ll need to check my wife’s new Hilton to see if it got backdated too.
My Hilton credit card is backdated .
Thanks for this post. I will have to make a decision about this later this year, but I’m thinking convert. I absolutely hate seeing my AAOA drop. It was 9+ years prior to getting into this hobby…