Rationalizing Amex Business Metal Charge Card AF’s From a Frugal Non-Traveler Perspective

The Wednesday Morning Weekly

I am frugal and I don’t travel much. The last time I flew in a plane was in 1992 for a work related convention — a round trip between Los Angeles and Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). It was also the first time I had ever flown in a plane. Of all my credit cards, the primary travel benefit I make use of is the World of Hyatt transfer partner with Chase allowing us to get $150 rooms w/ free breakfast for effectively $50 per night. We do also make use of the Amex Business Platinum (ABP) $200 annual credit to fly my boyfriend’s mother out to visit every year or so, via a Southwest flight.

Many people believe the only reason to retain any Amex metal charge card, is primarily for the travel benefits. Now I perhaps agree with this with respect to the personal metal cards, but not so much with respect to the business metal cards. The effective annual fee for me on both the Amex Business Gold (ABG) and Amex Business Platinum (ABP) are around $100 each. Even with this one might ask me, “Why are they worth even that if you are not a traveler?”

How are my ABG & ABP annual fees effectively only $100?

ABG. Let’s start with the Amex Business Gold card. Not much in the way of travel benefits compared to the Amex Business Platinum (ABP), but is a great spend card to earn 4x MR which can be used for travel — although I personally cash out all MR from this card at 1 CPP via my ABP combined with my Amex Business Checking account.

This card’s annual fee is $375 now as you know, but it is effectively a $100 AF for me. Now, again I am frugal and generally avoid too many discretionary expenditures — e.g. fast food, streaming, etc. Also, I like to get the very best prices for items I purchase (usually necessities) with the card. So how is my ABG annual fee effectively only $100? (And why is even that worth it?)

First of all I get full value out of the $20 per month Office Supply Store credit the ABG offers by buying $25 eBay eGift cards each month from Staples Online. These gift cards are as good as cash to me, because the only things I usually buy from eBay are necessities — quality (usually used) items at substantial discounts I might add. So this then brings down the effective annual fee to $375 – $240 = $135.

So how do I get $35 more in value to get it down to an effective $100 AF? I value the Walmart+ credit at $35 for the year, which is $2.92 per month. $135 – $35 = $100 effective AF. Amex values WM+ credit at $155 but there are annual subscriptions for $98, however I personally don’t even value the annual subscription at $98 — I’d never pay that and $35 seems fair to me (I’d pay that). Why do I value this credit at $35? I no longer have an Amazon Prime membership because to me it is way overpriced these days:

Why do I no longer have Amazon Prime? Amazon Prime is $140 annually. And if you want to watch Prime videos commercial free that’s an extra $3 per month which brings the total to a whopping $176 per year! No thanks! However, I still occasionally buy items from Amazon by adding them to the cart over a period of time. Once I get $35+ worth in the cart, I am then entitled to free shipping. As of this time of writing, I often buy Pepper Amazon eGift cards at a 12-16% discount (between Pepper boost promotions and 2-4% cashback credit cards) — so I don’t miss the 5% cashback of my Chase Amazon Prime card, when I do buy from Amazon.

But by not having Amazon Prime I don’t have access to quick shipments of small orders. I miss this from time to time. This is where WM+ comes in; I get that back. The other day I bought a bottle of $5.99 Ivory body wash from WM+ and it was shipped to me via USPS within two days — it was the same price as on Amazon. I’ll pay $35 per year for that convenience along with the free access to Paramount+ and free Burger King Whoppers — one of my most favorite burgers of all time.

For those who can make use of the fuel discounts with WM+ there is some added value there as well — a friend told me he gets $60 value, annually, out of that alone.

So this is how I have an effective annual fee of $100 with my ABG.

ABP. Now the Amex Business Platinum card does have some nice travel features and I do make use of one of them right now and might perhaps in the future make use of others — who knows? But I still look at this card from a non-traveler frugal perspective. As you know the current AF of this card is a whopping $695. Now this sounds extremely terrifying to a frugal person at first glance, but I am able to also get this card down to an effective annual fee of around $100 as well!

Let’s start with the Dell credits — which I presume they will continue on into the next year after renewing their contract with Dell; they are $200 twice per year, for a total of $400 in credits. A few people have done some research on the minimum value of these credits if you purchase an item to resell on eBay. If you buy $200 in items from Dell you can sell those and only lose about 35% of the value of the item, taking into consideration 15% Rakuten cashback, sales taxes, eBay selling fees, paypal fees and shipping. This results in a minimum value of around $130 per $200 Dell credit. So this makes the $400 Dell credits worth a minimum of $260. So chopping down this AF a bit: $695 – $260 = $435.

Additionally, Dell has many one year software subscriptions available for purchase, e.g. Office 365 and Adobe Photography Plan. I do personally make use of the Adobe Photography Plan giving me full access to Adobe Photoshop as well as Adobe Lightroom — the free GIMP image manipulation software just does not do it for me on my Mac. I’ve always bought this regardless of the Dell credit for $120 annually and it is the same exact price at Dell. So for one of these $200 Dell credits I immediately get $120 of value out of it. I am left with a remaining $80 Dell credit. From the previous paragraph, Dell credits are worth 65% of their value if you sell the item on eBay, etc. — perhaps even worth more if you can sell on Facebook Marketplace. So 65% of $80 = $52. So this $200 Dell credit, between the photography plan and selling the $80 Dell item, is worth $172 for me. So the $400 in Dell credits for me are worth more than just $260 as mentioned in previous paragraph. For me personally, they are worth $130 + $172 ~= $300. I am now down to an effective annual fee of $695 – $300 = $395. Let’s reduce this further.

There is a monthly $10 cell phone credit. Just pay your phone bill with it — getting some great protections with it. This amounts to $120 in value. $395 – $120 = $275. Now on to the airline credit.

Now at the start of this article I stated I am not a traveler and it is true. But we do like to buy a Christmas gift for my boyfriend’s mother to fly her out here every year or so. We use the ABP $200 airline credit for this — she flies Southwest. My BF goes in on half of this expense, so I am reimbursed $100 of this $200 credit. A totally worthwhile gift and mandatory for us. We would do this regardless of whether or not we had an ABP, so we value this credit at the full $200. This brings down the effective annual fee to $75. $275 – $200 = $75. Now some might make a valid argument that I could get a better discount using UR / MR instead of this credit and that this credit isn’t truly worth the full $200 — I agree with this. So instead of saying it’s an effective annual fee of $75 for me, let’s settle on $100 for simplicity? 😸

So you see, for me the effective annual fee to own both cards is around $100 each with frugal non-traveler mindset. Not so bad!

But why keep the cards paying $100 per year effective AF?

Amex Business Platinum.

• The ABP combined with Amex Business Checking allows us to cash out MR at 1 CPP
• There are occasionally spend offers
• There are retention offers
• There are ABG downgrade offers
• There are often employee card offers
• All of the offers stack, meaning expenses count towards the MSR of each individual offer you might be concurrently enrolled in.
• No Chase 5/24 hit nor hard pull.
• Business credit utilization does not affect personal credit utilization.
• The more spend you do on these cards, the higher chance for app approvals, and perhaps additional offers?

Amex Business Gold.

• The ABG gives us access to lucrative referral offers — a recent one being 30k MR referral bonus for 200K SUB ABG.
• Often there are offers to upgrade it to ABP — e.g. 120k to 140k recently; I just recently upgraded my ABG to ABP for 120K MR.
• There are retention offers.
• There are occasionally spend offers.
• There are often employee card offers.
• All of the offers stack, meaning expenses count towards the MSR of each individual offer you might be concurrently enrolled in.
• No Chase 5/24 hit nor hard pull.
• Business credit utilization does not affect personal credit utilization.
• I also do like that I get 4x on two select highest spend categories of each month on this ABG.
• The more spend you do on these cards, the higher chance for app approvals, and perhaps additional offers?

Summarizing

In my opinion, the $100 effective annual fees are totally worth it for all the above benefits, which aren’t even travel related. I really like that Amex regularly offers so many ways to make money with these cards. I love that the spend requirements of these offers are stackable. The money I can make with each card to me far outweighs the effective annual fee of $100.

Then of course, as a bonus, there are several travel benefits available if I ever decide to make use of them — which are outside the scope of this article, but fortunately there are hundreds of youtube videos, podcasts and blog articles which go over these in great detail.

P.S. I dream of infinite money making loops with zero impact to 5/24, hard inquires as well as personal credit card utilization.

Additional Thoughts

CLEAR Credit on ABP.

• CLEAR: Get $75 Uber Voucher on Signup (Free with Platinum Card) [DoC]
• CLEAR & Public Brokerage Partner ($100 SUB) [DoC]