American Express announced that two new cards will available soon. Both cards earn American Express Membership Rewards points (MR) which can transfer to airline and hotel partners. You can find a list of partners here.
Here are the basics of the two cards.
Amex Everyday
- No annual fee
- 10,000 MR bonus for spending $1,000 in the first 3 months
- Earn 2 MR points at Grocery Stores up to $6,000 of spending a year
- Earn 1 MR point for all other spending
- If you make 20 or more purchases a month you will get a 20% bonus on all of your MR points. You will effectively earn 2.4 MR points at grocery stores and 1.2 MR points everywhere else if you have 20 or more purchases
Amex Everyday Preferred
- $95 Annual fee
- $15,000 MR bonus for spending $1,000 in the first 3 months.
- Earn 3 MR points at Grocery Stores up to $6,000 of spending a year
- Earn 2 MR points at Gas Stations
- Earn 1 MR point for all other spending
- If you make 30 or more purchases a month you will get a 50% bonus on all of your MR points. You will effectively earn 4.5 MR points at grocery stores, 3 MR points at Gas Stations and 1.5 MR points everywhere else if you have 30 or more purchases
My thoughts
These two new cards are interesting to me. They both have some value and can be a great card for some people.
The sign up bonus is not so impressive so I don't see a lot of people signing up for that reason.
There are two categories of credit card users with many levels in between. People who only want one card to keep it simple and people who try to maximize spending categories with many different types of cards. Obviously, there are those who maximize more than others.
These cards only really have any use for the first category of people, someone who only wants one card. The requirement of 20-30 purchases a month for the bonus is very significant. It doesn't leave you many purchases a month to maximize on other cards.
I assume most of my readers are maximizers so I don't think most people will get this card, but there is nothing wrong with keeping it simple, right Jon?
Use for Maximizers
Once you get rid of all your credit cards that earn MR points, your points go away with it too. You can now get the card without an annual fee and you will never be without a card earns MR points.
Inexpensive, but annoying, Workaround for Reaching Minimum Purchases
There is a workaround, but it's pretty annoying. You can buy Amazon eGift cards in $0.15 denominations. Even if you need to make 29 purchases to get to your bonus levels, this will only cost you $4.35 and you now have $4.35 in Amazon money. I know, it's really annoying. Not something I would want to do every month.
You can read some more reviews of the card from One Mile at a Time, The Points Guy, View From the Wing and Mommy Points
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