Saving Money with Amex Offers

Most Novembers, my father is planning for the American Express promotion known as Small Business Saturday (where we can get free/discounted items bought from small merchants). Here's a recap on the past few years:

- 2014 - 3 x $10 per card
- 2013 - $10 per card
- 2012 - $25 per card

In years past, we were able to save or donate hundreds of dollars each Saturday after Thanksgiving.

This year, however, the promotion is severely limited.

But when God closes a door, He opens a window. As such, the powers-that-be at American Express have increased promotions under their Amex Offers program which are very compelling for people willing to pre-pay for services/goods they will need later on.

After clicking on our AmericanExpress.com accounts and scrolling down to the Amex Offers section, we found some great deals, including $15 off $60 at Amazon (saving 25%) and $10 of $20 at Uber (saving 50%).

My parents were lucky enough to receive the Amex Offer on all 21 of the cards they manage. However, we didn't have anything specific we needed to purchase. Nor did we have any $20 Uber rides in our immediate future.

But we were pretty confident that over the course of the next few months, we'd buy something from Amazon and take Uber rides, so we purchased some gift cards to lock in the savings now.

Of course, the major risk is that we would not buy anything from Amazon or take an Uber in the future, essentially throwing away $60 to save $15 (or $20 to save $10), but we didn't think those downside scenarios were likely. Plus, by having "store credit," we could use it for purchases or rides that were below the respective $60 and $20 spending thresholds.

Per usual, as soon as the purchase is made, American Express sends a confirmation email so you know they're tracking the transaction.

However, it seems that Uber is no longer offering Gift Cards/Certificates, so more to come if this plan is viable or not. They may have disabled this feature so that it actually encourages Uber ride activity instead of people like my father hording Uber credits.

Well, now I'm going to go audit all our past Uber routes to make sure the drivers didn't take the long way to overcharge us.

High Spend Targets

As you know, we accumulate a lot of our frequent flyer miles, hotel points and bank reward points through credit cards.

Most of the benefit, however, comes from initially signing up and reaching the minimum spend (which ranges from $1,000-5,000 within 3 months most of the time).

Some also offer perks just for having the card (priority hotel elite status, priority boarding on airlines).

Then there's the spending bonuses for using your card at certain merchant types (2-5x at groceries, office supply stores, hotels).

The fourth type of benefit is for reaching high levels of spend in a given year. These targets have rewards that are very attractive to people like my father who enjoy gaming the system. There are several cards that have these high spend targets, but we'll only discuss the ones my parents have actively. You can research the rest on your own.

Chase Select Visa - $25,000

For example, for spending $25,000 a year on our Chase United Select Visa allows United MileagePlus members to avoid the Premier Qualifying Dollar (PQD) threshold for earning elite status. Normally to hit United Silver, you'd have to fly 25,000 miles AND spend at least $3,000 in base fares.

Given we take advantage of super cheap fares (such as the $815 fare to NYC from Tel Aviv or the $266 flights to Costa Rica), we hardly ever reached the PQD minimums for United Silver or Gold status.

Citi Hilton Reserve Visa - $10,000

Another example is the $10,000 spend on the Citi Hilton Reserve Visa. For doing so, we get a free Hilton Weekend Night Certificate good for just about ANY Hilton property in the world.

Last year, we used it for my grandmother's stay at the Conrad Hong Kong). Normally, the Conrad Hong Kong would cost 80,000 Hilton HHonors points, so this certificate was a great value for my family. And since we hit $10,000 this year as well, we'll get another free weekend night certificate to use in 2016.

And if we ever hit $40,000 in a year, we'd get upgraded to top tier Hilton Diamond status. That sounds pretty amazing, but we question if the incremental benefits of being Diamond (vs. a mid-tier Gold which already gets you free breakfasts) is worth it. After all, that's an extra $30k of spend we'd have to forego on our other cards.

Starwood SPG American Express - $30,000

Our Starwood SPG American Express also offers mid-tier SPG Gold status if you spend $30,000 in a year. For late checkout and a modest room upgrade to a better view, it's a nice mid-tier status to have.

But since my father has Platinum status, we don't go out of our way to hit this SPG Amex high spend goal -- though admittedly, some years we hit it without actively trying to do so.

Citi Thank You Prestige Mastercard - $15,000

This card doesn't really fall into the same category as the others. Rather than being a recurring high spend benefit, the Citi Thank You Prestige card offer we received when we signed up was as follows: 30,000 Thank You points after spending $3,000 in 3 months PLUS another 30,000 TY points for spending $15,000 in the first 12 months.

The "regular" offer is 50,000 miles after spending $3,000 with a $450 annual fee, but my father wanted the special $350 annual fee offer which happened to be the 60k points for $15k spend in the first year offer.

Conclusion
Having been fortunate enough to hit both the United Visa and Hilton Reserve Visa targets earlier this 2015 year, now we can focus our extra spend on the $15,000 target for the Citi Thank You Prestige Mastercard over the next 11 months, having already hit the $3,000 first target in Month 1.

But as soon as January 1, 2016 comes around, we're back to the races with the United and Hilton Reserve Visa cards. Thank goodness for being able to use our 5 Nationwide Buxx cards to load/unload $5,000 each month.

SPG Amex - New Benefits Are Active

Our beloved Starwood SPG American Express card is getting an overhaul today. In addition to the new look of the card itself, there are new benefits that are now active (plus an increase in the annual fee from $65 to $95/year).

For my family, having the Starwood SPG Amex is a must for my father's yearly pursuit of SPG Platinum status. Just for having the Personal Card and the Business Card versions, he gets 4 stay credits and 5 night credits per year, reducing the requirement from 25 stays to 21 stays and from 50 nights to 40 nights.

New Benefits
But as of August 11, 2015, there are 3 new benefits being added to the Personal version:

1. No Foreign Transaction Fees — You can now enjoy international travel without foreign transaction fees from American Express when using the card for purchases abroad. 
2. Complimentary, Unlimited Boingo Wi-Fi — Receive Wi-Fi access on up to four devices to more than a million hotspots worldwide, and pay no Wi-Fi roaming fees. 
3. Complimentary Premium In-Room Internet Access — Complimentary premium in-room internet access at participating Starwood hotels. 

Plus, if you have the Business Version of the SPG Amex, you also get another new benefit:

1. Sheraton Club Access — If you have the Starwood Preferred Guest Business card, you’ll get free access to Sheraton Clubs when you book rates that are eligible to earn Starpoints. 

Are They Worth The Additional Fee?
Being a SPG Platinum elite member, however, my father already gets the Premium In-Room Internet and Club Lounge Access, but the first two benefits are marginally valuable.

We will of course use these SPG Amex benefits, but we don't value them that much, especially since:

• We have multiple SPG Amex cards between my two parents, so duplicate benefits aren't worth anything. 
• We have other credit cards that already waive Foreign Transaction Fees, such as the Citi Thank You Premier, Citi Hilton Reserve, US Bank FlexPerks, Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase IHG just to name a few.

But the Boingo Wi-Fi could be handy, especially when we're at an airport where we don't have free lounge access. But to access the promotion, you need to sign up here.

Conclusion
In and of itself, the new benefits aren't worth another $30 per year per card. Remember, we have multiple cards, so $95 fees on each adds up quickly.

However, having American Express cards allows us to access the Amex Offers, including Small Business Saturdays. And because each individual card (including free Authorized User cards) are eligible, we can get multiple bonuses and promotional offers for each card account we have. So while the free increase isn't ideal, it's a net positive to our young family.

Amex Offers - Free $50 on Airlines Spend $300 or more, get $50 back

American Express is one of our favorite credit card companies. In addition to having some great points-earning cards, such as the co-branded Starwood credit card, they have wonderful and frequent offers (such as Small Business Saturday) that can save you significant money that more than compensates for the $95 annual fee.

Earlier today, my father was on his Amex online account, looking at the various Amex Offers his cards were available for.

As it turned out, there were a few that were of interest to our family, including one that was on both my father and mother's Starwood Amex accounts.

Save On Your Air Travel Purchase - Spend $300 or more, get $50 back
Details. Get a one-time $50 statement credit by using your enrolled Card to spend a total of $300 or more on purchases made directly with any airline by 9/15/15. See terms and conditions for details and exclusions. 

But before we clicked to add the great offer, we first opened up different web browsers for each of our Amex cards that had this offer. This way, we could sign up for the offer on each of the cards. Otherwise, it will only go to the first card you sign up.

Immediately, we received the confirmation email from Amex Offers. However, given we just booked a flight for Phoenix in October, we weren't sure if we'd have another flight to purchase before 9/15/15.

But of course, my father had another trick up his sleeve.

So instead of buying a flight before we were ready, we locked in the $50 savings by going onto United Airlines Gift Registry and contributing $300 to my father's Registry.

That meant our Amex card would be immediately charged the $300 required to trigger the $50 statement credit without having to book a non-refundable flight right now. The $300 of Gift Registry balance is basically credit towards for future United flights - which in my family are as good as cash. Soon thereafter, my father received the Congrats email.

Since we have the same offer on 2 of my parents' other American Express cards, we can save another $100 for making another $600 of Gift Registry contributions. But we'll wait a few days until after the first $50 statement credit safely hits my father's Starwood Amex account.

UPDATE 7/16/15 - The statement credit just posted on my father's American Express account.

Warning - Clearly, I would not encourage anyone to speculatively spend $900 to save $150. My parents are willing to take the risk, because we know we have a flight to Israel each year. Let's just say those tickets cost more than $300/person.

Besides, we actually were planning on visiting our friends in Chicago later this summer. The timing works out well.

Mid-Year Check In

We've reached the halfway point in 2015. So far it's been a pretty busy year for the Songer family. In addition to our usual long weekend trips, my father's been balancing a few different clients as well as my mother taking classes to improve her English.

I've been continuing my domination of daycare and preparing for the transition to Pre-School (which seems to be the same thing as far as I can tell).

But June 30th is always a good check in point to see how we're tracking for our annual goals of elite status qualifications for our favorite hotel and airline programs.

Starwood SPG Platinum

Platinum status with Starwood is probably our most useful status. We have had it the past 2 years, and we really get value from our hotel room upgrades, complimentary breakfasts, lounge access and a variety of other perks.

As of today, we're well on our way to hitting the minimum of 25 stays (our Sheraton Brussels Airport stay was our 20th after including the 4 stay credits we get from having Starwood Amex credit cards).

Plus, this July 4th weekend, we'll have another 2 stays bringing our YTD total to 22 stays. So chance are, we'll hit 25 stays before December 31st. However, we're only at 34 nights (soon to be 36 after this weekend). Nevertheless, we only need either 25 stays OR 50 nights to re-qualify for SPG Platinum.

Some Starwood properties we've enjoyed so far in 2015 include:

- Westin Disney Swan
- Westin Lagunamar Cancun
- Sheraton Kansas City
- Sheraton Brussels

Of course, hitting 50 nights this year will earn us another 10 Suite Night Awards (SNA) to use for 2016. We actually still have 9 of our SNA's that we earned last year, but having more is always nice just in case we wanted to use them for multiple long stays over the next 12 months.

United MileagePlus Gold

My father has had United Gold status for the past several years, ever since he started flying back and forth to Israel (which gets him almost 11,000 Elite Qualifying Miles round trip).

However, to qualify for Gold, he needs to hit 50,000 EQM. For being a United Gold member, we receive access to Economy+ seating at booking, international airport lounge access, free same-day changes and the occasional flight upgrade, in addition to Priority Check-In at Business Class counters, Priority Baggage treatment, etc.

He can earn up to 5,000 EQM from his Chase United Select credit card each year if he spends $5,000 on United.com, but that's still 45,000 EQM he needs from actual flights each year. So far, after our flight back from Tel Aviv last week, he's at just 24,658 EQM - just short of achieving United Silver status (25,000 EQM). So at the halfway point, it looks like we're at the halfway point to Gold.

Unfortunately, however, it looks like we'll fall short this year as we don't have any long flights coming up in the second half of 2015 as my mother's been adamant about shorter domestic trips within the United States. It also didn't help that we overslept one morning and missed our United flight to Kansas City and had to rebook using United miles (which didn't earn us any elite qualification credit for that trip).

Amex Offers - Fairway Groceries

My father went to college in Manhattan at the uptown university. As an undergraduate, he and his roommates would sometimes shop at the bigger grocery store, Fairway.

It had a large retail footprint (relative to other Manhattan groceries) and had the brands he grew up with.

However, where we live today, that college Fairway location (and others in Manhattan) were very far, so we had to settle for other markets, such as Trader Joe's and Whole Foods which were within walking distance.

Unfortunately, those options often didn't carry the brands that my father wanted. He could only do so much "private label" or "smaller brands" when it came to his regular food.

Sure, he could get by with Trader Joe's cereal or unbranded produce from time to time, but for his regular consumption, he wanted his trusted Dorito's, Hotpockets or Heinz Ketchup - especially when they were cheaper than the small batch, local companies that couldn't mass manufacture to scale.

So when Fairway started expanding into different Manhattan markets, my family was quite excited. We have been shopping at Fairway pretty frequently.

Then a few weeks ago, American Express started offering $15 off any $75 Fairway purchase when registering your Amex cards and using it at Fairway.

Similar to Small Business Saturday, the more Amex cards you had to register, the more frequently you could take advantage of this offer. We had the offer appear on 8 of our family's Amex cards plus 4 of the Amex Serve cards we have. So 12 cards x $15 savings = $180 of free groceries.

The offer, however, would expire on June 30, 2015, so we didn't have much time to shop for $900 worth of groceries to unlock the $180 in rebates.

Of course, we could have just overstocked on Tostito's with Lime for the rest of 2015. But my father knew that we had another way to lock in our savings without overcrowding our small Manhattan kitchen like a snack food hoarder... the Fairway Gift Card.

By "pre-paying" $75 of grocery spend, we'd get $15 back on each gift card we purchased. Since we knew that we'd eventually go through all 12 of these gift cards over the next several months, we weren't actually spending more than we would have normally - just pushing that spend forward to June. As long as we didn't lose any of the gift cards or let them expire (they don't expire), we'd be just fine.

At the end of the day, you may wonder why we'd go through so much trouble to save $180, but if you've learned anything about my family, we're really good at math, and (as I'm learning in school) even little numbers really add up.

Laguardia Amex Centurion Lounge

Thanks to our family friend Hannah, my family was able to check out the American Express Centurion Lounge in LaGuardia Airport before our flight to Chicago this morning.

Because my father was added as an authorized user under Hannah's primary account, he had his own Platinum American Express card in his name. Of course, my father promised not to use it for any charges, but we could use it to gain complimentary access to the handful of American Express Centurion lounges across the country. Currently, there are AEC lounges in Las Vegas, Dallas, San Francisco and New York.

So Thursday morning, before our 8AM flight, we arrived at LGA around 6:30AM, so we had about 40 minutes to enjoy the lounge and get complimentary breakfast. Unfortunately, the Centurion lounge is located upstairs BEFORE security, so we had to estimate how long it would take us to get through security. Luckily, we had TSA Pre-Check though.

The lounge is much better than the United Club Lounge as you can see from the photos.

But where these lounges really shine is in the kitchen. So we left the living room area and went over to the cafeteria section, past the hallway of green couches.

To their credit, American Express recruits some great chefs to prepare the meals. No carrot sticks and crackers here. We get something comparable to a hotel breakfast buffet. Today, we had our choice of fried eggs, breakfast quiche, brioche french toast, and Belgian waffles.

 How was the food?  Take a look at my face!

Retention Year 2

Last year, my father called up his favorite banks and asked if there were any offers to compel him to keep their credit cards open for another year. After all, spending $65-95 every year for each premium credit card can start to add up... especially when we have 30+ cards. So either (a) the banks will have to give him more than that in value each year or (b) will have to waive the fee.

Some cards that we will keep open forever include the Starwood American Express cards (as it helps us re-qualify for Starwood Platinum status each year, offers 2x on Starwood spend and has great Amex promotions) and United Select Visa (as it helps my father re-qualify for United Gold status each year and offers 3x on United spend).

But coincidentally, these were the ones we threatened to cancel last year in the hopes to receive an attractive retention offer. Recall that last year, my father received 2,000 SPG points in exchange for paying the $65 annual fee for his SPG Amex and an additional 5,000 United miles for paying the $95 annual fee for his United Select Visa.

But every year is different.

This time around, my father called Amex and asked to be transferred to an Amex Retention Specialist. My father said he was doing some planning for which credit cards to use and which to cancel for 2015, then asked if there were any upcoming Amex promotions he should know about. Unfortunately, he was told that since he received a promotional offer last year, he was ineligible for another one this year. No harm, no foul.

He did, however, fare better with Chase when he called to inquire about his United Select Visa. This front line customer service representative was authorized to offer my father a $100 statement credit if he kept his card open another year. That would more than offset the $95 annual fee, so he was actually being paid $5 to keep the card. This offer was on top of the regular 5,000 United miles that he receives each year anyway.

Then another day, we called for my mother's Chase British Airways Visa. We signed up a year ago when they were offering 100,000 BA Avios for spending $20k in the first 12 months. We used those BA miles to fly us to Chicago last year and to fly our friends to Orlando last week. When we discussed waiving the annual fee, they told us it wasn't an option. So we told them we'd like to close the account. Then came an offer to give us 9,000 Avios for spending $1,500 in the next three months. That comes out to 6x vs. the usual 1.25x per dollar spent.

So my father accepted that offer and kept the card open. We quickly found a way to spend $1,500 in a few transactions that week and now are awaiting the bonus to post in the Feb 1st statement. Even though we receive the bonus, we'll still close the card afterwards, since the bonus was only contingent upon spending $1,500 on the card and not paying the $95 annual fee.

We still have to call Citi (for my mother's American Airlines Amex) and Barlcays (for my father's US Airways Mastercard), but we'd be OK with closing those down if no compelling offers are made.

[UPDATE: For my mothers American Airlines Amex, we were given a $95 statement credit if we made a $95 purchase, which was actually $10 more than the $85 annual fee. For my father's US Airways Mastercard, they refunded him $89 for the annual fee, though he was only charged $44.50 for the annual fee.]

Amex Blue Update! Got $625 Back

Remember how my mother's American Express Blue Cash card was suddenly cancelled a few weeks ago? Well, it was incredibly frustrating because we "lost" out on over $1,200 Amex Reward Dollars that we could have used to redeem as statement credits.

My father was pretty upset, though he had very little to complain about given he had been exploiting an Amex loophole since January. Nevertheless, he still held a small grudge and decided to delay payment of his $4,300 outstanding balance at the end of November since he had a wonderful 0% interest promotion until April 2015.

He spent a few days trying to find a clever way to replicate the lost earnings power of his favorite credit card and came up with a few approximate, but un-scalable alternatives. While he didn't find the magic bullet for future reward earnings, he did find a small victory this afternoon.

As my father does from time to time, he was trolling around on FlyerTalk and came across a subtle but very important post. Oddly enough, no one seemed to react to it at all. But my father did.

User exarkun posted that "Had account closed on November 25th. I had tried amex online chat a couple times to redeem my rewards but was shut down. Just for the hell of it, I tried again today and was successful! Thank you Scarlett! I received an email confirmation of my rewards redemption already."

With that, my father jumped online to Amex Chat to see if he could replicate that success with his stranded Amex Reward Dollars.

Not the Scarlett we were talking to

Scarlett: Hi! Welcome to American Express chat. My name is Scarlett. How may I assist you?
you: Hi Scarlette, I was calling about the Reward Dollars on my Amex Blue Cash card
Scarlett: Hello there! Scarlett: Sure! you: I understand that American Express closed my account, but it seems unfair that they did just before I received my rewards for past spend
Scarlett: I apologize for the inconvenience of having to contact us today. I understand your time is precious, let me look into this right away.
Scarlett: Am I chatting with Mother Songer?
you: yes
Scarlett: Thank you for confirming.
Scarlett: Please allow me a moment while I pull up the account.
you: ok thank you
Scarlett: Checking it for you now.... I see that you have $639.25 rewards available on the account right now.
you: I was hoping to use that for a statement credit
Scarlett: I will be happy to see if the redemption can be done.
Scarlett: That might take some time, please bear with me.
you: thank you Scarlett:
Just a heads up... The rewards must be redeemed in increments of 25 Reward Dollars.
you: ok, then is $625 available?
Scarlett: The credit appears on the statement within 2 - 3 business days from redemption. The credit does not apply to the balance until the next month’s statement.
Scarlett: Yes!
you: that would be great!
Scarlett: I am on it...
you: Thank you Scarlett.

[Part where American Express asked a series of questions to confirm my mother's identity.]

Scarlett: Thank you for your patience. And it is done...
you: wonderful

Credit Card Moneyball

Just before Thanksgiving, my parents found out that their favorite credit card had just passed away.

We had been using this to generate a lot of psuedo-spend while we "earned" almost $2,500 in cash back rewards (and had another $1,000 pending when the music stopped).

While their team of 30+ reward credit cards definitely lost their MVP last week, my father is nothing if not a resilient, analytical problem solver.

This situation really reminded me of the story (book not movie) of Moneyball where the 2002 Oakland A's had lost 3 of their best players, including the reigning American League Most Valuable Player, Jason Giambi. Or so I've heard, given I wasn't born until 2011.

When confronted with losing their MVP, they worried that they would be unable to replace his individual production. However, the clever General Manager Billy Beane understood that it wasn't a question about replacing an individual's contribution, but rather, how do you maintain the value of the collective team. So instead of finding a single replacement, he went for a multi-pronged solution of several players that would together allow the team to continue.

And thus, my father went through his strategic planning mode. He took a single unit transaction to analyze the lost return potential now that his Old Amex Blue was cancelled. Let's just assume he had a $500 purchase he needed to make (say my daycare expense). What would be the best way to make that purchase?

• Typically, he would purchase a $500 Paypal My Cash reload from Duane Reade with his 5% earning Amex Blue card. 
• But the My Cash reload card came with an additional fee of $3.95. 
• So for $503.95, he would earn $25.20 in Reward Dollars, but paid $3.95 in fees, so a net $21.25 of profit per My Cash card. 
• However, since he would load that card onto his Paypal account (which was linked to a 1% earning Paypal Debit card), he would get back $5.00, bringing his total profit back to $26.25 (or 5.2% cash back).

Now that he lost his MVP, he had to find a way to get as close to a 5.2% return as possible for that $500 spend. So he looked at the reserves sitting on the bench.

1. American Express Starwood - earned 1 SPG point per $1 spent (valued at 2.5 cents/pt)
2. Citi Double Cash - earned 1% cash back on purchase and another 1% when paid off
3. Barclays Arrival+ - earned 2.2% worth of statement credits for travel related spend

Clearly, using either of these cards seems woefully inadequate compared to the Old Amex Blue. Depending on your own valuation of a SPG point, the best card would seem to be Starwood (2.7% return your $503.95 spend) but still only half of what we were earning with the Old Amex Blue.

However, when we start to look at adding a few iterations, the math started to look better. In this scenario, instead of the 2 step process of (a) using the Starwood Amex to buy a Paypal reload, then (b) using the Paypal Debit to make the $500 purchase, we would add and change a few steps.

1. Purchase the Paypal Reload (seen  below as MS for Manufactured Spend)
2. Find another way to withdraw the $500 from the Paypal account to your bank account.
3. Use the Starwood Amex again to directly make the originally intended $500 purchase.
4. Use the $500 cash in your bank account from Step #2 to pay off the Starwood Amex.

So by doing it this way, we see that the Starwood Amex can in fact generate 4.2% of net rewards (and possibly even more if you value a SPG point more than 2.5 cents/pt).

Of course, this scheme only really works well for a single $500 purchase and would be much more difficult to scale up to $8,000-10,000 each month - especially since Paypal is notorious for surprise shutdowns for people adding / withdrawing cash quickly instead of using their payment system as intended.

Well, looks like my father failed, but then again, I don't recall the Oakland A's winning the World Series lately either. Back to the drawing board for both of us, Billy Beane.