Polytonic

Judgmental, perhaps. I don't begrudge someone spending a thousand on a nice bottle of wine, but I think few Americans have the means to spend $1000+ on a single bottle of wine in addition to the cost of their meal, let alone do that regularly. $50k on dining is more than the individual median income in NYC ($76k HHI, $127k for family of 3). Now, granted the customer profile of your Amex cardholder is likely much higher income, but even so, $50k/yr. is a LOT of money to spend on restaurants alone. If anything, as diesteldorf points out, I think this is a way to stop people from milking business lunch/dinner on their Amex Golds and expensing it (and encourage people to get a Biz Gold if that's really the case).

I have this weird issue where they never seem to retain my login info due to how my account was created years ago (thru Facebook) and now I can't set a password or login. It's such a pain to use this, and the Shake Shack near me is abysmal (slow, poor service, cold food, etc.). I wouldn't say that I'm done with this card considering I have the corporate card rebate ($100) but from an incremental cost perspective, I think the SavorOne just got much more attractive in comparison. Has practically all the same multipliers (better even) and no concern over Amex acceptance.

friedablass

5x UR when paired when CSP or CSR is great, but for me the simplicity (using your term ) of just using the Gold at my local supermarket trumps that. 3x from Citi Premier is very good for $95 but like I said for someone like me that uses the $25k max, I will pay $230 to get another 25k points plus $120 uber plus $120 dining (and maybe even plus $100 Resy if I can find it useful).

There's always this conversation when cards are refreshed and AFs increased regarding the continued value of a card and I find at the end of the day it's always going to be a personal choice. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for all, there's no one size fits all approach, and also your needs can change over time. Just as an example, we used to do a lot of shipping and put those charges on the Gold business for 4x, but we changed to a business that doesn't ship often at all but does do a lot of online advertising which also gets 4x on that card. When that card was refreshed and shipping was dropped as a category it didn't matter to us as our current top category was still getting 4x, while for others it was a loss of an extra 3 points on thousands of dollars annually.

notquiteaff

Absolutely. Just throwing options out there, but in the end everyone has different preferences and tolerances for coupon games or giftcard games or number of credit cards or points eco systems. There is no one right answer, and I think that is a good thing.

friedablass

Good to know that Resy has reasonable options too and will keep it in mind; it remains to be seen if this will be a useful credit for me should it come to fruition as part of the upcoming refresh.

airshane

LOL. I never understood the partnership. I worked there for a very short time and refuse to darken their door. I did sign up for the program because there was a Murphy gas station close by, but spending 30-45 seconds trying to get the code from that app was not worth the trouble, especially when I can get gas at Costco and use that card. I cancelled it and wished I would have never bothered. I did laugh when the rep was telling me about how great the Wal-Mart bene was when I was getting a retention offer. I just laughed.

airshane

I had a conversation this weekend with a buddy of mine who decided to exit the game. He took a nice trip with his wife and then transferred the remaining points and pulled the plug on Amex, cancelling all three cards (Plat, Gold, Green). Now he just puts nearly everything on his Costco Visa and spreads the love around to a few other select cards that he kept (mostly hotel cards that give you a free night). We laughed at what a "First World Problem" it is to get back home and realized you used the wrong card, only earning 2x points instead of 4x points, or 2% instead of 5%. Honestly I've been considering the simplicity. Had I not received a retention bonus on the Plat it would be gone. This only my second year for Gold and I only got it because of the SUB (which I apparently got under the wire).

Boraxo

This route is quite tempting. Especially as Mrs B is frustrated by the continuous rotation of different cards into the mix for different bonus categories.

In some ways this makes Amex Gold the perfect choice as it covers her top 2 categories - groceries and dining - but of course only at restaurants that take Amex. Citi provides the same simplicity at 3x points and lower AF.

I know several guys who are quite savvy business people and they all have one card - Fidelity 2% or Chase WN - that they use for everything.

And I think this would make sense were it not for the SUBs and - as I noted above - the perks you can’t get elsewhere like 95k free nights (Bonvoy) Hyatt Cat 4 nights and waived airline fees / perks. Without the lounge access, Amex is a tough sell at a higher AF.

bpc3qh

I'm torn. I can easily use the credits without changing my spending, since I already use GrubHub and Dunkin, and assuming I can use the Resy credit just by using the card at a Resy restaurant without making a reservation I'm good there, too, as one of my 3-4 most frequented restaurants is on Resy. I don't currently have a stellar grocery card, either, and would like to get one, so it's either this or the Strata Premier I think (for points diversification). The high AF is annoying, and if I get hit by PUJ (or the family rule, since I have the Platinum) I'll obviously not go through with it...but I could get the value...something to contemplate while awaiting confirmation of the new structure.

dw

I feel the same way, and as is, I've been paring down my cards over the past year. It just got too annoying to have 5+ closing dates a month on cards I was actively using, plus always having to think before each payment which card I needed to use. And ultimately, I honestly had no idea how much I was even spending.

I've been putting nearly everything this year on just 2 AMEX cards (+ a MC when Amex isn't taken), and honestly it has been somewhat eye opening to me how much I typically put on my cards. (Something Gary Leff has written before has stuck with me now: "You probably spend more than you think.")

synthzero

I would consider myself a moderate player. It's hard to imagine leaving the game given the benefits we get from it as a family - but I would say we limit our involvement in the game to a few SUBs a year, various promotions we pick up from certain miles and points blogs and podcasts, and our core set of cards - Amex, Chase, BILT, and Capital One. So far, every year we've gotten multiple international trips at significantly reduced cost, with flights often covered entirely, hotels covered a lot of the time, and lots of perks and upgrades and spectacular experiences we would never have paid for in cash. And I don't even go to the lengths of maximizing gift card purchases and so on - too much of a hassle and I'm always concerned about some bank or other deciding that while they haven't cracked down on this until now, you never know when they might start. So I'm sticking with relatively straightforward SUBs and category spend, and still get phenomenal value from it all.

The coupon books are annoying, but - one of the positive things is most of them actually cover MORE than the annual fee right now without having to take advantage of every single one of them. Sometimes you need to use certain "tricks" to make them work (while I'm not big on MS I am willing to do these tricks, since I feel the worst case scenario is likely a clawback of points rather than an account shutdown). Thus far, I get enough value from the coupon books that the overall annual fee cost is low enough to be worth the many perks we get.

There's an intangible value for my family with Globalist status, suite upgrade awards, points stays in luxury hotels we would never pay for out of pocket. If anything, we've gotten a little bit tired of SO much travel, and are probably going to scale back a bit next year. But there's no doubt the value for us greatly exceeds the effort and cost.

OrangeRange

I think eventually simplification will be the natural conclusion for most of us. Clearly they’re heading in the route of duplicating most credits across multiple cards, which makes justifying holding more than 1-2 cards more difficult.

At some point additional spend optimization begins to yield smaller returns not worth the effort. Gold covers flights, groceries and dining. That’s all I really care to optimize honestly. I’ve thought of chasing a few more SUBs, but I’m also contemplating downsizing to just Gold + Surpass or Aspire next year, and putting everything but food on that so that I can enjoy 1-2 FNCs + a likely additional night from the points earned.

dw

Plus, with Amex’s new family rule, unless one really wants the spending multipliers and/or benefits on a card, not getting a SUB definitely disincentivizes acquiring a new card.

synthzero

But that's the thing - there seem to be always new sources of SUBs if you want to spend the time to keep abreast of the options. For example, even with Amex and their famous "one SUB per card per lifetime" - it's not actually that strict. They OFTEN have "no lifetime language" card offers, and they still give out retention bonuses. In one of the funniest things that happened to me this year, I have two Platinum cards (back when you could get a separate SUB for different flavors of Platinums) and I had always planned to downgrade one of them to a Gold. I called in, they offered me an OK but not compelling retention bonus, so I downgraded to a Gold (a card I didn't have yet, and now with the one family rule I can't get the SUB on a new application anyway so why not), thinking I can then use the multipliers. Less than a month later, they gave me a HUGE incentive to REUPGRADE my card back to a Platinum - I can't remember what it was, something like 120,000 points. So I obviously re-upgraded and took the points (which were FAR more than the retention bonus they had offered me a month earlier).

Similarly, there are new cards coming out from other banks - like BILT, which has done a ton of crazy 2x transfer bonuses from time to time. And there are referral bonuses with Amex that don't seem to go away. And you can keep getting SUBs for business cards with Chase for some reason (though that's 5/24 and they're getting prickly about continually applying for new business cards).

Combining all these things it's certainly possible, without extreme effort, to accumulate enough points to cover a few very nice vacations every year.

But yeah, as it is I have to bend over backwards to use the Resy credits - though you can split the bill on two cards and that works well enough, but also Resy is pretty good in LA so we don't mind using it twice. I wouldn't want five cards with Resy credits, though.

OrangeRange

Five cards with Resy is want you're going to get in the next 2-3 years, ha.

You have a good point, there are other SUBs out there to chase and potential up/downgrade offers with Amex. Only issue is it's been dry season for good upgrade offers for me recently, and I'm finally trying to get below Chase 5/24 for the first time in 3 years, so I'll be sitting on the sidelines with new accounts for a while. Still, downsizing to a few core keeper cards + 1 or 2 new cards a year for churning SUBs is the ultimate end goal.

Boraxo

How do the Resy credits work? I don't pay anything for open table reservations.
Do these apply only to restaurants where I get charged in advance? Take-out orders?
Or do I just make a reservation on Resy and then charge my meal to the linked Amex card?
Confused!!