Tag Archives: American Express Membership Rewards Points

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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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Midyear Review: My Credit Card Retention Offer Thought Process & Results

Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well. A few days ago, I wrote about my Midyear Review: My 2024 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions (as predicted, my success rate was terrible). Thankfully, my success rate when it comes to credit card retention offers is much better. Let me ask you a question, if you could make $50, $100, or $150+ from making a phone call, would you do it? If you said yes, then you should make credit card retention offer calls.

In this post, I will share my thought process when it comes to making retention offer calls and then share my midyear results. Here are my thoughts:

1. I call every time a credit card annual fee posts to my account. I have also found that no annual fee business credit cards sometimes have retention offers, but I haven’t had much luck with no annual fee personal credit cards. Lastly, I try to call a few days after the annual fee posts to my account, but several weeks before the credit card payment is due. Continue reading

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Comparing Alaska Airlines, British Airways & Qatar Airways Award Prices for 2 Finnair Flights (DUB-HEL & HEL-ARN)

Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday!  Last week on the Miles to Memories Podcast, I mentioned my upcoming Summer trip with Laura to Dublin, Helsinki, and Stockholm. I wanted to share my award booking strategy for 2 flights: Finnair flight from Dublin to Helsinki (DUB-HEL) and Finnair flight from Helsinki to Stockholm (HEL-ARN).

I found these flights using the Point.me award search tool and saw that there were many different airline programs that could book the same award.  So which airline program was best?  Spoiler alert: no single airline program was best for all economy and business class awards, but I will show you the various options available for each flight and tell you which program I picked for each flight.

Flight 1: Finnair from Dublin to Helsinki (DUB-HEL), 3 hour flight

I picked a random date in the Summer (June 5) and the flight was 257.64 EUR ($276.43 USD) for economy and 297.64 EUR ($319.35 USD) for business class.  I didn’t pick the cheapest option since I will have more than 8 kilograms (17.6 pounds) of carry on bags and would need to check a bag.

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