Sign-up Bonus vs Using the Correct Card for Every Purchase

Yes - I'm going to tell you your Amex Gold or Amex Plat needs to be cancelled. Give this a read and decide.

A lot of people try to use the best card to get x times the points because they get x amount of points. They keep track of this and refer to it before most purchases. If you've spoken to me I will and keep sayings it's not the way to go. To start just the thought of managing this is a headache which negates the time and effort it takes. Second, I've crunched numbers to see for myself that this is not the way to maximise rewards and points.

Simply put focus on new cards and SUB, NOT what card you use day to day for each purchase. You sign up for a card and you use that and only that card until you hit the minimum spend to get the SUB. That should be the only focus.

Of course, there's some exception to this.

1. You need travel insurance so you use a card that gives travel insurance.

2. Rental car. You need to use a card that gives you primary coverage. (You can hack this and use the card with coverage and when you return the car, switch cards and tell them to take the payment on another card - will work).

3. Purchase protection - you need to buy something that you want insurance on lost, stolen or damaged. Very worthy imo.

4. Return protection - you want the peace of mind of returning something later within 90 days.

5. Rent - if you pay and have access to Bilt.

These are the only reason to every think about which card to put your spend on.

Let's think about 2 years. Idk how much everyone spends in a year but on average I'd say for 1 person home we can estimate about 24k a year. We don't care about rent here. This is about 2k a month.

So with this assumption, for 1 and 2 years totals:

Category	Best Card	Points/$	Annual Fee	Annual Spend	Points Earned	Value @ 1.25¢	2 Years Total
Dining	Amex Gold	4x	$325	$7,200	28,800 MR	$360	$720
Travel	Amex Plat	5x	$695	$4,800	24,000 MR	$300	$600
Other	Cap1 Venture	2x	$95	$12,000	24,000 miles	$240	$480
Total				$24,000	76,800 points	$900	$1800
Minus AF						-215	-430

Now let's see how much we can net with SUB:

Card	Bonus Points	CPP Used	Gross SUB Value	Annual Fee	Net Bonus Value
Chase United Explorer	60,000 miles	1.2¢	$720	$95	$625
Chase Sapphire Preferred	80,000 UR points	1.25¢	$1,000	$95	$905
Citi AAdvantage	60,000 miles	1.2¢	$720	$99	$621
Capital One Venture	75,000 miles	1.0¢	$750	$95	$655
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless	100K pts + 1 FN ($125)	0.9¢ + FN	$900 + $125 = $1,025	$95	$930

Totals

• Total Gross SUB Value: $4,215

• Total Net Bonus Value: $3,736

So you see in 2 years SUB net gain is about $3700 vs -$430 for choosing the "correct" card for spend. This is ridiculous. Sure you can argue about the benefits that comes with the Amex Plat or Amex Gold card, but I'm certain that most people don't make use of these benefits every month for the uber credits and the lounge is nice but that depends on how many times you fly. Amex Gold has absolutely no real benefits - most of the good benefits have been stripped in the early 2020/2021.

No keeping track of this and applying to new cards is not "a lot of work" compared to constatly thinking about what card to spend on for every transaction.