Hey guys, having shortly started my credit journey, I pondered on what cards to get that would match my future spending but also let me acquire useful points (to be used for flights). I found an offer for the AMEX Gold Card for 90k points for 4k spend in 6 months (good bonus for once in a lifetime) through a referral. Given that I am at college, the 4k minimum spend can be used for pay for tuition for my next semester worst case but would still net me a decent amount of money. I chose the Amex Gold because it had the highest signup offer for a card I could reasonably get, it had been showing up in preapprovals for about 1-2 months now (VERY SURPRISING).
Background: 18 year old college student, first started acquiring credit in May 2022. (Check signature)
Data Points: (DP)
18,000 income
14% usage (across AU and personal), only 4% (calculated across personal cards and spend)
Double scores pulled: Experian: 759, Transunion: 770
Excited to use the card in order to branch out to different banks. Will be using it to meet MSR for food purchases while at college (main expenses). I plan to casually met MSR with normal purchases and shortly before time runs out, I will pay my tuition in advance with the card (paying a small <3% fee but it will still be worth it given the SUB is an effective 22.5%). That way I don't need to spend money for no reason since I already have a way to meet my MSR even if I spend nothing out of my pocket for the next 5 months since I will need to pay for tuition either way.
Plan for the points: free flights during breaks to my house and back from college (I already checked and it seems like the points will be worth ~ 1.6-1.9 c/p for flights during different school breaks 
).
Plan for Gold Credits: Uber + Grubhub for food, should get >= 70% worth so net fee should be about $82 per year but I think it will still be worth it long term as it will help me establish varied credit with multiple companies.
I think this plan is a smart one but I would love to get everyone opinion. Keep in mind, I would have went for the Citi Premier (lower annual fee and it would be good to future PC into Custom Cash or Double Cash) but citi doesn't seem to like very young profiles. I also would have went for the Chase Sapphire Preferred but Chase already gave me my highest limit thus far so I want to expand a little so they feel more comfortable later for Sapphire Preferred of United Explorer. (Once my points on the Gold Card run out, I will recheck these three cards and do the same strategy but these will have no annual fee downgrade paths.)
What do you all think?
Congrats on the approval and you seem to have run the numbers pretty well, just be cognizant of the fact that the Gold has a fairly hefty $250 AF every year, and on a $18k income, that can be pricy, IMO. Also note that the only downgrade available on it is to a Green card, which still has a $150 AF and far less perks. Just something to keep in mind.
@Mones wrote:Hey guys, having shortly started my credit journey, I pondered on what cards to get that would match my future spending but also let me acquire useful points (to be used for flights). I found an offer for the AMEX Gold Card for 90k points for 4k spend in 6 months (good bonus for once in a lifetime) through a referral. Given that I am at college, the 4k minimum spend can be used for pay for tuition for my next semester worst case but would still net me a decent amount of money. I chose the Amex Gold because it had the highest signup offer for a card I could reasonably get, it had been showing up in preapprovals for about 1-2 months now (VERY SURPRISING).
Background: 18 year old college student, first started acquiring credit in May 2022. (Check signature)
Data Points: (DP)
18,000 income
14% usage (across AU and personal), only 4% (calculated across personal cards and spend)
Double scores pulled: Experian: 759, Transunion: 770
Excited to use the card in order to branch out to different banks. Will be using it to meet MSR for food purchases while at college (main expenses). I plan to casually met MSR with normal purchases and shortly before time runs out, I will pay my tuition in advance with the card (paying a small <3% fee but it will still be worth it given the SUB is an effective 22.5%). That way I don't need to spend money for no reason since I already have a way to meet my MSR even if I spend nothing out of my pocket for the next 5 months since I will need to pay for tuition either way.
Plan for the points: free flights during breaks to my house and back from college (I already checked and it seems like the points will be worth ~ 1.6-1.9 c/p for flights during different school breaks
Plan for Gold Credits: Uber + Grubhub for food, should get >= 70% worth so net fee should be about $82 per year but I think it will still be worth it long term as it will help me establish varied credit with multiple companies.
I think this plan is a smart one but I would love to get everyone opinion. Keep in mind, I would have went for the Citi Premier (lower annual fee and it would be good to future PC into Custom Cash or Double Cash) but citi doesn't seem to like very young profiles. I also would have went for the Chase Sapphire Preferred but Chase already gave me my highest limit thus far so I want to expand a little so they feel more comfortable later for Sapphire Preferred of United Explorer. (Once my points on the Gold Card run out, I will recheck these three cards and do the same strategy but these will have no annual fee downgrade paths.)
What do you all think?
Not sure I understand what the question is, but congratulations on your Amex Gold approval.
Good luck on realizing that much value from the MR points; I've never been able to get more than a penny per point out of them. But since you're going to pick up 90,000 of them pretty easily, you should be ok. My advice, though, would be after 2 years with the card, reevaluate whether it's worth $250 per year to you. Maybe it will be since you're taking so many flights.
