Tag Archives: American Express Membership Rewards Points

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I Paid $5,341 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2024 – Was it Worth it?

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your holiday season is going well.  With the end of the year right around the corner, I decided to publish my 2024 version of credit card annual fees I paid this year.  For comparison, here are my previous credit card annual fee posts:

For this year’s post, I decided to break up the list of credit cards into 5 sections:

  • Credit cards with sign up bonuses
  • Credit cards with retention offers
  • Credit cards with product changes
  • Credit cards that were closed this year
  • All other credit cards

For simplicity, I did not include the value of miles or points earned from credit card spend, but I did include the value of miles and points earned from sign up bonuses, referral bonuses, anniversary points, discounted points, and rebated points.  I counted all credits, reimbursements, and retention offers at face value.  I list the value of all tangible and intangible benefits below too.

I went through all of my credit card statements and online accounts to see which Credit Card Benefits I used in 2024 and those values are in the CCB $ column. If I received a retention offer, that is listed in the RO $ column. I listed the credit card annual fees in the AF $ column. Lastly, I used this formula to calculate the Profit or Loss (P/L column) for each credit card: CCB $ + RO $ – AF $ = P/L.  Laura’s card are included as well. Continue reading

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My Frustrating Experience with Etihad Guest Customer Service and the Virtual Visa Reward Card App #rant

Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I have a rant to get off my chest about Etihad Guest customer service and the Etihad Reward Card app.  Long story short, 2,500 Etihad Miles expired while my account was suspended and I wasted 907 Etihad Miles on a $5 Amazon gift card balance reload.  I understand that the previous sentence makes no sense, but if you will indulge me, here is the complete story…

I received an email from AwardWallet on September 23, that my 2,500 Etihad Miles were going to expire in 7 days on September 30.  I received a reminder email from AwardWallet a month earlier about these expiring miles, so I transferred 1,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points to my Etihad account because I *assumed* that receiving more miles would keep my current stash of Etihad Miles from expiring.  Wrong!

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American Express Gold Card Introduces $50K Limit on Restaurant Spending for 4X Rewards (Starting 1/1/25)

Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  Laura was reviewing her recent American Express Gold Card statement and noticed an upcoming change that said:

Effective January 1, 2025, you will continue to earn 3 additional points (for a total of 4 points) for each dollar of eligible purchases charged at restaurants worldwide now on up to the first $50,000 of these purchases per calendar year.

Previously, I do not believe there was a cap on restaurant purchases that would earn 4x AMEX Membership Rewards.  I did some more digging to learn more.

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How to Combine P1 and P2 Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines Miles into a Single Account

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well. In this post, I will show you how we moved Alaska Airlines Miles into Hawaiian Airlines Miles, transferred those miles between Hawaiian Airlines accounts, and then transferred those miles to Alaska Airlines.  We wanted all of our miles to be in a single account (my Alaska Airlines account) to make award booking easier since we would book all of our award tickets from a single account.  Transfers between Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines were free and instant.  Here are the steps we did…

A few weeks ago, Laura and I transferred large chunks of American Express Membership Rewards Points into Hawaiian Airlines Miles when AMEX had a 20% transfer bonus to Hawaiian Airlines.  I transferred 417K AMEX MR Points into 500K Hawaiian Airlines Miles on August 29.

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How to Request New AMEX Gold Card Design: White Gold, Rose Gold or Plastic (Website & App) [Card Art & First Impressions]

Updated at 9:00am PT on 7/30/24: My replacement AMEX Gold Card in white gold arrived today.  Here is what the replacement card looks like compared to my AMEX Gold Business Card that is the standard gold color.  Both the front and back are much lighter than the AMEX Business Gold Card. Interestingly, the 15 digit card number stayed the same, but the 4 digit security code on the front changed, the 3 digit security code on the back changed, and the expiration date changed.  At the bottom of the post, I added the welcome letter and more details about the $100 Resy Credit and $84 Dunkin Credit.


Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  Doctor of Credit just published Refreshed American Express Gold Card Now Live, so I thought I would show you how to request the new White Gold design for your American Express Gold Card.  You can also follow these steps if you would like a Rose Gold design, or an 85% recycled plastic design.  The process is slightly different depending on if you are on the AMEX website or AMEX app, but I covered both processes in this post.

To get started on the AMEX website, sign into your account, select your AMEX Gold Card from the top right corner, and then click Account Services.

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