A relatively painless way to earn 1.2M+ bonus points (per person) from 2 credit cards in 2023

PSA as the music might be ending soon

(my AMEX point balance above as of the end of March 2023. Katherine’s account is on a similar trajectory)

Most people want to earn a lot of credit card points without it being a headache. One of the easiest ways to do this is by taking advantage of the points parade AMEX is currently offering in its business credit card portfolio.

Typically it’s difficult to earn a ton of points with AMEX because you can only get a sign-up bonus “once per lifetime” (which means once every 7 years or so in practice). However, for the business platinum and business gold cards, AMEX has links floating around that allow you to continuously earn the sign-up bonus without the “once per lifetime” constraint. This means that the only real constraint is that you can only open a new card for a new sign-up bonus every 90 days. Given that this is available in 2 cards, you can open a new card staggered every 45 days switching between business platinum and business gold cards up to 10 charge cards per year per business. The following year these can be cancelled and replaced with a new card and sign-up bonus.

As far as opening a business card goes as an individual, you can read this. To generate extra spend, see my previous post here for tactics/strategies.

Here is the business platinum link and here is the business gold link with no lifetime language. You should try to use a referral link from friends/family for your first of each card (should get you 130k points for the gold, 150k points for the platinum).

Price/value of both cards are summarized below.

Business Platinum Card:

• Annual fee: $695

• Noteworthy Benefits:

  • $200 airline credit every calendar year (can get 2-3 uses of this per card cycle)

    • This is basically cash to me. I buy Delta airfare with this (see details)

  • $200 Dell Credit every 6 months (can get 3-4 uses of this per card cycle)

    • These can be used to buy xbox gift cards which can be liquidated or used at the Microsoft store (or to buy from Dell.com)

  • Other benefits are not that interesting for most consumers. These two easily offset most of the annual fee for me

• Signup Bonus:

  • 170k AMEX points = 155k AMEX bonus points + a minimum of 15k spend driven AMEX points

  • I tend to redeem points for at least 4-5 cents/point implying a value of ~$6,800 - $8,500

Business Gold Card:

• Annual fee: $295

• Noteworthy Benefits:

  • No credits

  • Earns 4x points/dollar at gas stations (best in class), on airfare, and at US restaurants

• Signup Bonus

  • 105k AMEX points = 95k AMEX bonus points + a minimum of 10k spend driven AMEX points

  • 4-5 cents/point implies a value of ~$4,200 - $5,250