American Express Gold Card – Newby to Expert Traveler

We’re inching closer every day to our spring break Costa Rican adventure. Honestly, this is a trip that I probably wouldn’t have dared to do a year ago. When we first started to do international travel (it’s only been a year – we’re still newbies!), every logistical step in the process was something that we needed to examine. How long will we be waiting in customs? Is that layover long enough? How do the trains/busses/taxis work from the airport? Will we be understood if we don’t speak the local language well? Each trip that we take gives us a little more confidence in the process and our abilities to handle those logistical issues.

The biggest logistical hurdle this time is driving a rental car in a foreign country, especially Costa Rica. There are horror stories all over the internet about scams at the rental car counter. Also, driving habits apparently are a little different in Costa Rica and the roads sound like they will be questionable off the major highways.

It’s easier for us to mentally prepare ourselves for what could be stressful driving and perhaps a difficult time at the rental car facility when we don’t have to mentally prepare ourselves for the logistics of flying. I feel like there are parts of travel that we’ve started to understand pretty well and it opens up my mental energy for new experiences. This is really important when you don’t want the negatives of travel to overwhelm what I’m anticipating to be an amazing experience with waterfalls, beaches and volcanoes in Costa Rica.

Hold!!!

Jenn and I have been planning a trip for us with her parents and our good friends who live in Nashville. The biggest logistical issue for this trip was landing around the same time in Rome with us using 3 different flight itineraries. That part has been done, but we’ve only managed to book the flights to Italy, not the return flights.

However, every time I try to bring up the fact that maybe we should book the return trip, Jenn turns into Kirstin Bell from the Carvana commercial and just tells me “HOLD!” I think she’s waiting on the perfect flight home that costs something like 1,000 points in business class with a stopover in Madrid. I’m sure we’ll find something decent since it is off-peak from Europe, but she’s making me nervous. I guess there are worse things in life than getting stranded in Italy.

Anyway the flight we booked to Italy cost us 20,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points each transferred to Flying Blue plus about $90 in taxes and surcharges and $50 each to stopover in Amsterdam for a day. Stopovers are supposed to be free and I go into greater detail as to the $50 charge in this post about Flying Blue Stopovers. I would’ve paid the $50 charge anyway, but it would’ve been nice to know ahead of time.

The redemption turned out to be pretty good. The price of a comparable flight was $658 (with the $50 stopover fee included), so the 20,000 points we used reduced the cost of the flight by $518 each, meaning we got nearly 2.6 cents per point for the Chase Ultimate Reward points which are normally valued at 2 cents per point. You gotta love how great the deals have been on Flying Blue lately.

We also double booked some lodging in Costa Rica. We kept going over the logistics of landing at the Guanacaste Airport at a little past noon, going through passport control and customs, then renting a car and driving more than 3 hours to Grecia, outside of San Jose and trying to do this before dark. It gets dark in Costa Rica around 5:30 and it’s not recommended for people who aren’t familiar with the roads there to drive after dark, so we decided that maybe we should get a hotel closer to the airport and make the big drive the next day.

We ended up booking a local hotel in Playa Hermosa, which is less than 30 minutes from the airport. We booked it through Capital One travel for a little over 16,000 Capital One miles. These are redeemed at exactly 1 cent per point, which isn’t a fantastic redemption of Capital One miles, but it served it’s purpose and now we will get a little beach time while in Costa Rica, when we hadn’t planned to spend any time near the coast. We probably could have shortened our stay at the Airbnb by the day that we are in Playa Hermosa, but it feels wrong this late to change our reservation, and frankly it was only $75 per night at the Airbnb. This also ensures that we can check in at any time the next day.

A Shiny New Amex Gold Card

American Express Membership Rewards is a beloved program in the points and miles space. It has a ton of great transfer partners and has amazing opportunities to accumulate a massive amounts of Membership Rewards points very quickly with enormous signup bonuses, great bonus spend categories and other Amex offers. Up until now, I’ve avoided Amex because their cards tend to have high annual fees.

I applied for and was accepted for the American Express Gold Card. It has an annual fee of $250 and earns 4x on dining, 4x on groceries, and 3x on flights booked through Amex travel or directly through the airline. It also has $120 Uber Cash and $120 Dining Credit every month which is good at a handful of restaurants or Grubhub (so it’ll get used on Grubhub, if at all). Those credits are doled out monthly so it’s really $10 per month for Uber and $10 per month for Grubhub.

I applied with the bonus offer of 75,000 membership reward points and a 20% rebate on dining up to $250 back. The 75,000 membership reward points are awarded if I spend $6,000 in 6 months. There was also an offer for 90,000 membership rewards points without the 20% rebate, but I thought this was a way to get an Amex Gold card for essentially no annual fee, since spending $1,250 on dining for the $250 rebate is practically automatic for us and is equal to the $250 annual fee.

Anyway, On to the Point Check!

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Citibusiness AAdvantage	$1,139	1,139	$17.65	1.0	1.5%
Capital One Venture	$706	1437	$26.74	2.0	4.0%
Wyndham Business Earner Card	$581	3,069	$33.76	5.3	5.8%
Citi Custom Cash	$540	2,539	$45.70	4.7	8.7%
Ink Cash	$531	2,639	$54.10	5.0	10.2%
Citi Premier	$491	935	$16.83	1.9	3.4%
Marriott Bonvoy	$198	995	$8.36	5.0	4.2%
Total	$4,184	12,753	$202.99	3.0	4.9%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

We still haven’t managed to stop accidentally spending on our Citibusiness cards. They are practically useless for normal spend, and the problem is that when we are done with a bonus, we forget to remove them from all of the places where we’ve set up default payments. The most painful one here was when we ordered a dishwasher through Home Depot’s website and somehow managed to use that card instead of a card we are working on a bonus for. $700 worth of spending that could’ve gone toward a bonus, dammit.

Our spending was quite elevated this month because of the dishwasher and we also bought a new couch since the kids and the dog had managed to slowly kill the old one. Aside from the non-bonus spending in the chart above, Jenn spent a little less than $3,400 on her US Bank Altitude Business Connect card and earned a little more than $43 in cash back.

This left us with a grand total of 257,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points, 115,500 American Airlines miles, 75,100 Capital One Venture miles, 38,400 Citi Thank You points, 31,800 Marriott Bonvoy points, 24,900 United miles, 6,900 Hyatt points, 5,100 Delta miles, and $700 in cash back. According to the valuations determined by the Points Guy, these points are worth a grand total of a little less than $10,800.

Jenn asked what she thought was a simple question the other day – “I have a friend who is interested in getting two award flights to Germany, but doesn’t want to open a bunch of new cards, which single card should she pick?” My immediate answer was “Of course, the Chase Sapphire Preferred.” But now I’m second guessing that answer

The reason for my answer was fairly simple, Chase Ultimate Reward points transfer to a number of great airline programs many of whom serve Germany well, especially United Airlines. It’s a pretty good earning card and the transfer partners for Chase are great.

Then I questioned myself, because the Amex Gold card has tremendous points earning potential and some pretty good transfer partners as well. It’s flagship airline partner is Delta, which is not the best way to redeem points to Europe, but it could be a possibility.

Let’s run the numbers and see which of these two cards would be the best fit for a single reward card for redeeming points for two flights to Germany.

The Assumptions for this Comparison

The only categories of spending that are important for the Amex Gold and Chase Sapphire Preferred are groceries, restaurants and travel. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is 3x on dining, 2x on travel and 1x on groceries. The Amex Gold is 4x on groceries, 4x on dining and 3x on travel. Both cards earn one point per dollar on everything else.

The person we are comparing these cards for has a family of 4, and for the purpose of this comparison we will say that she spends $1,000 per month on groceries, $500 per month on dining and $2,500 on everything else, with no real spending on travel. I know $2,500 sounds like a lot, but when you figure that you can charge virtually everything, including shopping, insurance, gas, utilities, etc. that adds up quick when you have a family of 4.

Signup Bonuses

I always start with the Frequent Miler best offer page when I’m determining which credit card I want to sign up for, since it always posts the best publicly available offer. In this case, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is offering a 60,000 point bonus when the card holder spends $4,000 in 3 months. The Amex Gold is offering a 75,000 point bonus when the card holder spends $6,000 in 6 months as well as 20% back on dining up to $250 back. We are going to ignore the 20% back on dining, because that isn’t terribly common for Amex to offer that, but it is a fantastic deal. Neither one of those spend requirements will be a challenge for this card holder to reach.

Everyday Spend

So for this example, we are going to use the assumptions set earlier, $1,000 per month on groceries, $500 per month dining and $2,500 per month on everything else. The other assumption here is that she will use this card exclusively for 1 year. So which one will earn more points?

Category	Chase Sapphire Preferred	American Express Gold
Groceries	12,000	48,000
Dining	18,000	24,000
Everything Else	30,000	30,000
Signup Bonus	60,000	75,000
Total	120,000	177,000

I’m going to be honest, I thought the Amex Gold card would earn more points over the course of a year, but I didn’t think it would be that much more. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is a very beloved card in the travel hacking world and to see it get outperformed by 57,000 points by the Amex Gold was a little shocking.

That being said, the Amex Gold does have a $250 annual fee compared to Chase Sapphire Preferred’s $95 annual fee. In the case of someone who is using it in this manner, the Amex Gold definitely is worth the extra $155 in annual fees though, which may not be the case for someone like me who churns and burns a lot of cards.

Comparing Flagship Partners

When comparing points you have to consider the most important transfer partner. In this case, Amex has Delta Airlines and Chase has United Airlines. Since the person in question here was looking for 2 tickets to Munich, with flexible dates, in the summer, let’s look to see what these points can get.

With Delta, the points calendar from Chicago to Munich in July looks like this.

The lowest available round trip is 164,000 miles. That would essentially eat up all of the points earned from the Amex Gold with one round trip ticket when the points are transferred to Delta. That’s not great.

With United Airlines, it’s a bit better with round trip tickets available in the summer for 80,000 United miles.

In this comparison, you would be better off with 120,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points than you would with the 177,000 Amex Membership Reward points, because on the flagship partners, the points go much further on United than on Delta. Neither one was able to get the cardholder to 2 roundtrip tickets to Munich, though. Luckily, those aren’t the only transfer partners for Amex and Chase.

Does Chase or Amex Have Better Airline Transfer Partners?

On the face of it, Amex has more airline partners, but as we all know, quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. In the chart below, Amex has 15 airline partners while Chase has 9. There are some key overlaps for trips to Europe, namely Avios, Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic and Air Canada. Amex has Avianca Lifemiles, which I have used before, and I like due to their low taxes and fees. Chase and Amex both have JetBlue but Chase has a better transfer rate than Amex. Chase also has Southwest Airlines, which is a great partner, but it’s irrelevant for flights to Europe.

Airline Partner	Transfer Rate	Chase Ultimate Rewards	Amex Membership Rewards
Avios (Aer Lingus, Iberia, British Airways)	1:1	Yes	Yes
Aeromexico	1:1.6	No	Yes
Air Canada Aeroplan	1:1	Yes	Yes
ANA	1:1	No	Yes
Avianca Lifemiles	1:1	No	Yes
Cathay Pacific	1:1	No	Yes
Delta Airlines	1:1	No	Yes
Emirates	1:1	Yes	Yes
Etihad	1:1	No	Yes
Flying Blue (KLM, Air France)	1:1	Yes	Yes
Hawaiian	1:1	No	Yes
JetBlue	1:0.8,1:1	Yes (1:1)	Yes (1:0.8)
Quantas	1:1	No	Yes
Singapore Airlines	1:1	Yes	Yes
Southwest Airlines	1:1	Yes	No
United Airlines	1:1	Yes	No
Virgin Atlantic	1:1	Yes	Yes

A Quick look at Pointsyeah!

We need to talk a little bit about PointsYeah. This is a fairly new website that allows you to search available airline award space across 14 different airline programs. It also shows you which transferable points transfer to those programs as they display the results of the search. It’s an unbelievable free tool that is making searching for award flights super easy. There are other tools out there like Point.me and Seats.aero, so it’s a matter of preference, but my favorite right now is PointsYeah.

Searching on PointsYeah and using flexible dates in July, I was able to find these award flights from Chicago to Munich with the dates of July 1st through July 4th:

20,000 Flying Blue Miles and $105.38
24,500 Avianca Lifemiles and $26.70
26,500 Virgin Atlantic Miles and $149.40
30,000 Iberia Avios and $231.20
40,000 United Miles and $5.60
63,000 JetBlue Miles and $42.80
160,000 Delta Miles and $5.60

Returning, the flights from Munich to Chicago with the dates of July 8th through July 11th were:

22,000 Flying Blue Miles and $223.20
28,250 Iberia Avios and $237.60
30,000 Avianca Lifemiles and $109.30
43,900 United Miles and $124.60
63,000 JetBlue Miles and $156.20
160,000 Delta Skymiles and $288.21

Since there is no real penalty for booking one-way award flights, this is really like picking a first course/second course to piece together the round trip. If you are really trying to conserve points you could go with the two Flying Blue awards and pay 42,000 Flying Blue miles and $328.58 in taxes and fuel surcharges. Both Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards to Flying Blue so in this case, it wouldn’t matter if Jenn’s friend picked the Chase Sapphire or the Amex Gold. Either way it would cost a grand total of 84,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards and $657.16. In either case, Jenn’s friend would have points to spare, but $657 is a lot of taxes and fuel surcharges for 2 economy tickets.

I would be tempted to go with Avianca Lifemiles both ways which would cost 54,500 miles and $136.00 in taxes and fuel surcharges round-trip. Avianca has a $25 fee for booking, so I think you would have to tack on an additional $100 for the two round trip fares. Avianca transfers from Amex Membership Rewards, and not Chase Ultimate Rewards so the total for the two flights to Munich would be 109,000 Membership Reward points and $372.00. That’s not too bad for flights in the summer.

You could also do a flight out using United miles and back using Flying Blue miles. That would only be available with Chase Ultimate Rewards, since United is a Chase partner and not an Amex partner. It would cost 62,000 Ultimate Reward points and $228.80 in taxes and fuel surcharges each. For two tickets, it would cost 124,000 Ultimate Reward points and $457.60. In this scenerio, there wouldn’t be enough Chase points available in one year, so this would have to take 13 months to earn the points for this trip instead of 12.

Disclaimer

There are a lot of factors at work here, including the fact that if you wanted to use Iberia Avios, for example, you would try to find the best times to get the best prices for those flights. I just used a random stretch of days in July, so you would most likely do better than this if you were searching over a longer period of time. There are also occasional transfer bonuses, so you can sometimes transfer points from Chase Sapphire Preferred or Amex Membership Rewards and get more than a 1:1 ratio, making your points work harder. Also, just because Flying Blue is offering great prices now doesn’t mean they will in six months, and just because United is charging 40,000 for a saver fare now doesn’t mean they won’t offer a flight for 30,000 later. Change is the only constant in miles and points.

What Wins – Chase Sapphire Preferred or Amex Gold?

In this case, I would say hands down the Amex Gold wins. This is simply because Amex, for someone with a decent amount of grocery and dining spend, earns a lot of points. This is also because with Amex Membership Rewards points, they could book the Avianca Lifemiles example or the Flying Blue example. In the Flying Blue example, they would be left with 93,000 Membership Rewards points that could be used on a different trip. In the Avianca Lifemiles example, with lower fees, they would be left with 68,000 membership rewards points after booking the trip.

With Chase Sapphire Preferred there was enough points to book the Flying Blue example and would be left with 36,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after booking the two flights. They didn’t have quite have enough points after one year to book the United/Flying Blue combo with lower taxes and fees.

Conclusion

Honestly, I’m a little surprised that Amex Gold outperformed Chase Sapphire so easily in this comparison. That being said, this is a narrow comparison with a mid-summer trip from Chicago to Munich, these things vary wildly based on destination and timing. There are plenty of circumstances when you would be thrilled to have access to United miles or Southwest Airlines miles and you don’t have that access with Amex. However, doing this kind of search ahead of time can help you determine the best credit cards to sign up for before you potentially make a mistake.

Tag: American Express Gold Card

Points Check February 2024