50K Rewards Point Amex PRG Offer...

[krismac]

So, got the mail today and my hubby, who does not have a CC under his name (AU for my CC account), got an offer from Amex for a PRG charge card with a 50K rewards point intro offer, have to spend 1K in 3 months to get the 50K, 175 annual fee waived, 3x points for airfare, 2x points for gas, and 1 point for everything else. He was so surprised, he doesn't know if he should accept his pre-approved offer. He currently has a 732 CS, only has an auto loan, and that's about it. 

Should he take the offer?

[Cdnewmanpac]

Before answering that, he needs to decide if he is looking for cards to keep long term or just "churning" cards and intends to close after a year. Personally, I think someone with no revolving credit should be looking at cards he intends to keep, so I will answer using that assumption. If he intends to close after a year, please ignore the following:

To make the PRG worthwhile, you need to fly a lot (enough where the 3 points on travel offsets the 2 points that many other cards offer after you subtract the difference in AF) or run at least 30k/year through the card to get the spend bonus. If you want to count the initial bonus MR points against the AFs in subsequent years and if you are able to make the best possible use of those MR points (maybe filtered through starwood during a bonus, then converted to airline during bonus, etc.), they might be worth as much as 3cpp, but lets assume you do pretty well and get 2cpp. That gives you $1000 cash equivalents (assuming you use them for things you would have spent cash on). That would offset almost 6 years worth of AFs, assuming AF remains the same and they don't devalue MR points. But only if you can then make use of the card's bonus structure.

If he doesn't travel much and won't run 30k/year through the card, I think there is a long list of cards that offer better long term rewards.

[krismac]

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@Cdnewmanpac wrote:

Before answering that, he needs to decide if he is looking for cards to keep long term or just "churning" cards and intends to close after a year. Personally, I think someone with no revolving credit should be looking at cards he intends to keep, so I will answer using that assumption. If he intends to close after a year, please ignore the following:

To make the PRG worthwhile, you need to fly a lot (enough where the 3 points on travel offsets the 2 points that many other cards offer after you subtract the difference in AF) or run at least 30k/year through the card to get the spend bonus. If you want to count the initial bonus MR points against the AFs in subsequent years and if you are able to make the best possible use of those MR points (maybe filtered through starwood during a bonus, then converted to airline during bonus, etc.), they might be worth as much as 3cpp, but lets assume you do pretty well and get 2cpp. That gives you $1000 cash equivalents (assuming you use them for things you would have spent cash on). That would offset almost 6 years worth of AFs, assuming AF remains the same and they don't devalue MR points. But only if you can then make use of the card's bonus structure.

If he doesn't travel much and won't run 30k/year through the card, I think there is a long list of cards that offer better long term rewards.

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Thank you for your input! I'll definitely have my husband read your comment!

[distantarray]

Amex recently had a 75k point bonus with 10k spending in 4 months, and 100k points with Amex Platinum recently so I would say no, but it all depends on what your looking to do with your points.

If your looking for travel for me Chase is the best since 50k bonus on the United Mileage Plus + 5k for adding authorized user + 10k for spending $25,000 a year (not hard with paying mortgages on your card) effectively making a 1.4 point per dollar card if you spend exactly 25k on it annually.

65,000 United miles or Chase Ultimate reward points (1:1 transfer) will get you a round trip ticket to Asia regardless of the season and easy to find and use award tickets are plentiful. 

I have the Ink (50k bonus) Sapphire (40k) Freedom (10k) MileagePlus (50k + 5 + 10k) all together got me 165k total in sign up bonuses, plus if you max out the bonus categories you can get 65,000 points for spending just 30k a year (including mortgages to make it easy) only on bonus categories this doesn't include anything else.

Free trip every year to a country halfway across the world is nice. the numbers were with $3,000 gas a year (60 a week) 60 a week on restaurants, freedom 5 points categories maxed (easy to do) , and putting everything else on the mileage plus.

This is the best deal for me personally, but high annual fee on the Gold doesn't make it worth while for me. I pay only $190 a year with annual fees on the Sapphire and Mileage Plus combined.

[Walt_K]

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@distantarray wrote:

Amex recently had a 75k point bonus with 10k spending in 4 months, and 100k points with Amex Platinum recently so I would say no, but it all depends on what your looking to do with your points.

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Was the 75K on the personal PRG?  I think you're talking about the business version. 

100K offer on the Platinum was also dubious as to whether they intended to offer that or whether cards.com or whatever was promoting an expired link.  Moreover, when that deal was out, which only lasted about a day before being shut down, the offer for the PRG through the same site was 50K IIRC.  

I'd say 50K for the PRG is a good offer.  There have been better offers in the past, but it's been a while since I recall seeing better, and then they were targeted. 

[CreditScholar]

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@Walt_K wrote:

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@distantarray wrote:

Amex recently had a 75k point bonus with 10k spending in 4 months, and 100k points with Amex Platinum recently so I would say no, but it all depends on what your looking to do with your points.

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Was the 75K on the personal PRG?  I think you're talking about the business version. 

100K offer on the Platinum was also dubious as to whether they intended to offer that or whether cards.com or whatever was promoting an expired link.  Moreover, when that deal was out, which only lasted about a day before being shut down, the offer for the PRG through the same site was 50K IIRC.  

I'd say 50K for the PRG is a good offer.  There have been better offers in the past, but it's been a while since I recall seeing better, and then they were targeted. 

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There are 75k offers on the personal PRG floating around. I know I got one for 75k with 1k spending over 3 months.

The 100k "publically-available" offer on the Amex platinum was a mistake. Period. Anyone expecting to see one of these again as a non-targeted offer is likely to be quite disappointed. 100k offers are typically targeted only, and are offered only to fairly specific people.

[nickn86]

It's a good offer considering the low spend requirements.  Amex MR points aren't the greatest anymore, but 50k points is worth at least $500 and probably more like $750 or so to the average person.  Considering you only need to spend $1,000 (and thus don't need to resort to the prepaid debit card card/buying gift cards to meet spend), I think it's a good idea to sign up.

What people have said above about whether this is your first card or not is solid advice.  However, I think it'd be perfectly fine to open this card and then cancel it after 10 months or so (before the big annual fee hits).  After establishing a revolving history with Amex, he should not have a problem getting another card.  The PRG is not worth having if you are not putting a lot of sending through it or booking a lot of airfare.