May 10, 2021|AMEX, Annual Fee, Bonvoy, Chase, Retention Bonus

My wife and I have many credit cards.   We have many credit cards that charge annual fees.   26 to be exact.  In total, we are currently paying $6,585 in annual fees.   That is a LOT of money.   However, with targeted spending as well as signing up for new cards, we get much more value that $6,585 per year.  Let me explain.

I classify the value I get out of cards into six categories — points for spend, referral bonuses, retention offers, card benefits, card offers to be manually added (i,e, AMEX offers and Chase offers).

For purpose of this analysis, I am going to exclude points received for spend as well as referral bonuses.

Here are some of the cards I have that include annual fees:   AMEX Platinum, AMEX Platinum Business, AMEX Delta Gold, AMEX Gold, AMEX Gold Business, Chase Reserve, Citi Prestige.    Some of the fees on these cards are as high as $595 per year.   In some cases, both my wife and I have cards.

This takes some worth each month by tracking in a spreadsheet.  In some cases, I have had to call the credit card company to get a credit that was supposed to post but never did.

Sign-up Bonuses     

Over the last few months, I signed up for a few credit cards.  Some had sign-up bonuses of 100,000 points, which I value at $2,000.    These cards did come with a minimum spend and I was able to meet a lot of these by paying for my kids’ college as well as taxes.   If there were any credit card fees for the transactions, the value of the points gained outweighed the fees.   

Retention Offers

Any time an annual fee came through on a card I had more than a year, I called the bank and said I was considering closing the card and was there any type of retention offer available.   In almost all cases, there were.  In one case, I was given 50,000 points with no spend requirement, valued at $1,000.  

The retention numbers are:

AMEX:  (800) 452-3945 

Chase:  (800) 432-3117 

Citi:   The number on the back of your card.

Card Benefits

Most cards come with additional benefits including Priority Pass lounge access, Uber credits, Peloton credits, airline incidental credits, travel credits, credits for specific vendor purchases (i.e.  Dell on the AMEX Platinum Business and Saks on the AMEX Platinum).  This year, several cards added additional credit since COVID limited travel.   For example, the AMEX Bonvoy for Business card added a $15 credit per month towards cell phone bills.  The AMEX Bonvoy Brilliant card recently added $20 per month dining credits.

Chase and AMEX offers

These are offers that you need to  add to your cards by either logging into your accounts on the apps or the websites.  You must go through the manual process of adding each offer to the card.   For AMEX, you can only add a particular offer to one of your cards.  However, if you have additional cardholders, they might have the same offer and you can add it there as well.  Some example of credits I used were $50 back on $200 spend at Marriott properties, two $50 off $50 spends at Best Buy and Home Depot,  and 10% back from Dell.    These offers can definitely save you lots of money and/or earn you bonus points.

Summary

Below is a table showing how much value I received in the first four months of 2021.   As you can see, I have received over $17,000 in value so far in 2021 — far exceeding the annual fees for all my cards for an entire year.   The year still has 8 months to go to receive further value.  Again, if I add in referral bonuses as well as the value of the points earned on the cards for spend, the value is significantly more.   The key to gaining benefits is being aware of what benefits your cards offer and staying on top of them.