In the post “Which Premium Cards are Keepers?” I presented a framework (along with a worksheet) for determining which premium cards are worth keeping. The general idea is to look at each credit card perk individually and ask yourself how much you’d be willing to pay if that perk were available as a subscription. That’s how much you value that perk. Then, you add up all the values for a card’s perks and compare them to the card’s annual fee. If the total equals or exceeds the annual fee, then the card is worth keeping.
The approach described above works great until you have too many cards that are keepers. After Amex refreshed its consumer American Express Platinum Card® (details here), I had a problem. I currently have six of these consumer Platinum cards in my household (half are mine and half are my wife’s): two regular ones, two Morgan Stanley variations, and two Schwab variations. The problem is that the “Which Premium Cards are Keepers?” formula tells me to keep all six. I get more value from each card than its annual fee, even after accounting for the fact that many of the card’s benefits have diminishing value when its the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth Platinum card in my household. That’s great, but dealing with so many cards and coupons is a hassle!
This situation forced me to step back from the numbers and think about what I really value with each card. Forget about whether the card saves me money… Does it make my life or my travel better in some way? From this perspective, the primary benefit I value is access to lounges, including Delta Sky Clubs when flying Delta, Centurion Lounges, AirSpace Lounges, Escape Lounges, and others. With just one Platinum card each, my wife and I get access to all of these. The only way we would benefit lounge-wise from having more Platinum cards is with Delta Sky Clubs because Platinum cardholders are limited to 10 visit-days per year. I’m not sure whether we need more than 10.
I then did a mental experiment: For the extra cards (beyond one each), what if there was a way to sell each of the card’s perks such that I would profit by a couple of hundred dollars per year with each card? Would I keep the cards then? In this scenario, I would have to sell the monthly credits 12 times per year, the quarterly credits 4 times per year, the semi-annual credits 2 times per year, and the annual credits 1 time per year. That sounds like a job that I very much don’t want! I’d much rather focus my time on creating Frequent Miler content! That settled it for me… I definitely need to trim my collection regardless of what the keep/cancel spreadsheet says!
Since my career is centered on rewards credit cards, my card pruning plans differ from what I’d recommend for others. I want to keep at least one card of each flavor in case it’s useful for my work. For example, if the American Express Platinum Card® for Schwab gains new features, I would like to test them out. The one exception is the plain old American Express Platinum Card®. I think I can downgrade to the $150-per-year American Express® Green Card, and upgrade again in the future, as needed. With that in mind, I could trim down to as few as two consumer Platinum cards in my household.
Perhaps my trimmed collection would look like this:
- Me:
- My wife:
- Free authorized user from my Morgan Stanley card (one big advantage of the Morgan Stanley variation of The Platinum Card® is that the first authorized user is free)
- The Business American Express Platinum Card®: I didn’t mention this earlier, but I also want to keep one of these in our household. If it turns out that the 10 Sky Club visits per year from her Morgan Stanley authorized user card are sufficient, we could downgrade this in the future to the Business Green Rewards Card from American Express.
That’s still a substantial collection above, but it would drastically reduce the number of credit card coupons I’ll have to deal with.
I don’t consider the decisions written above to be set in stone. Can you think of ways to improve my plans? Please comment below.
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TY. I agree that the hassle of keeping track of and being sure to redeem all the coupons is not worth it. I appreciate free travel, but not spending hours to be sure to get that last $50 in benefits.
any plan you have is better than being a coupon clipper on 6 cards.
Wow, 6! P2 and I have 4 between us (regular, Schwab). We’re keeping them. The new credits are actually pretty good. Still feel way ahead. Folks who can’t handle it, or won’t use the credits, definitely should close.
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my time is worth alot more than this and keeping track of this is a stress in and of itself. not worth it.
I decided to get rid of my amex cards that have the coupon book model because it stopped being fun. A few credits a year are a neat perk. Multiple monthly use-it-or-lose it credits is work.
You need to value your time more highly. For that reason, I heavily discount the Dell credit on the biz plat b/c it takes forever for me to get an order without it being cancelled, even if I can find something worth buying.
Nice article, Greg. I have been feeling the same way. Yes, even taking out benefits we don’t need or that are duplicative, too many cards are “keepers.” There had to be a better way to think about the benefits. I’ve come a similar conclusion — get them all for the SUBS, but then trim them back to just one of each card type in our household. The only exception is our 4 Delta Reserve and 4 Platinum cards for the 10,000 headstart MQDs each.
Good points, Gene. That 10K MQD headstart is huge.
Let the purging begin.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. I have 4 personal and 2 biz platinums, a strata elite and a CSR. That’s on top of 3 biz golds, 2 summits and a bunch of other smaller AF cards.
Greg, I’m in a similar situation and it does take time and energy to utilize all the credits. It comes down to how much time you want to devote to that endeavor….
Yeah im giving the lululemon to hubbys worker. She was thrilled with 2x$75 gc
Oh yea she gets the netflix off our TmObile too
Lucky girl
So if we get morgan stanley plat amex, add me as free au we both get in lounge? Rn only hubby gets in free so we quit going
For me, once it feels work and not free money, I cancel.
As a general rule do you downgrade your your Plats to a Green. I think I remember Tim mentioning he downgrades to Greens to wait for ungade offers but Nick said he’s never received an upgrade offer. I have a boat load of Biz Plats. Would this strategy apply or would you just cancel?
I’ve done it but recent DPs indicate that it isn’t working or maybe not as often as before
Thank you
I keep getting ABP‘s with the plan of keeping one and canceling the others after the second annual fee is posted but wondering if I should be doing this instead. Can someone talk more about this strategy downgrading from ABP to ABG? I don’t understand why you would pay $150 a year in the hopes of getting an upgrade offer. Why not just cancel it and then apply for a new ABP when you get an NLL offer?
I think JoJo just explained that it’s not worth it. It’s probably just best to cancel
To think about having to sell each credit really puts it into perspective. For some, the game is fun to play. I will say, it’s like managing a household of toddlers trying to nail every credit though these days. Goodness!!
I personally think it’s fun to play up to a point. At some point the complexity is high enough that it stops being a game and resembling actual work for most. I think with this last round, they are there. Now that said, it’s probably still a good business decision for them because most people aren’t going to feel like they are missing out if they don’t nail every credit, and this represents pure profit.
Yes, I totally agree! I have some monthly checklists I use in Apple notes to make sure I hit credits but man… what used to just be 4-5 annual credits is now like 10 monthly, 6 quarterly, and 5 annual, so over 130 credits to track. Insane.
Probably my favorite are the monthly Resy amex and Instacart from Chase. With Instacart, even with small orders we basically save 50-70% on $120/mo in groceries which is a straight up necessity!!