AMEX Plan It on Charge Cards

[NRB525]

Reading through the back pages of my AMEX Green statement today, was first disappointed they are removing "Pay Over Time Select".

However the good news is, they are activating "Plan It" on this Green Charge Card. I much prefer the Plan It to the POT Select option. The terminology in the Disclosures doc still refers to it as "Pay over Time Balance" but then also refers to a Plan Amount. So this probably will still be a form of "Pay Over Time" in the NPSL, but with a more focused offer of how many months to pay it off, as Plan It does.

Next question is whether a Plan It on a NPSL card has a similar limit of availabilty to the POT limit. My POT limit on the Green is $5,000. POT on the Platinum and Gold are $35,000 each.

[M_Smart007]

To be honest, I never use POT .. no real loss.

[Anonymous]

I've only used Plan it once for an unexpected bill and wanted a little extra time to absorb the hit. 

The only real benefit to it being on a Charge versus Credit, IMO, would be the no UT factor because it's an internal limit. So if a person wanted to and got a good rate, you could max out that $5K and it wouldn't report as maxed out. While on a regular CC it would increase UT.

[wasCB14]

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@M_Smart007 wrote:

To be honest, I never use POT .. no real loss.

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I've seen and used no-fee Plan It offers on revolvers, but only heard of the usual 10%-20% garbage "APR equivalents" on charge cards.

[NRB525]

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@wasCB14 wrote:

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@M_Smart007 wrote:

To be honest, I never use POT .. no real loss.

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I've seen and used no-fee Plan It offers on revolvers, but only heard of the usual 10%-20% garbage "APR equivalents" on charge cards.

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I will be watching for the ability to Plan It for some items. The interest rate / Fee Rate for the AMEX Revolvers is a reasonable APR, particularly if you just want to float a "balance" for a couple of months. Hopefully a similarly relatively low rate is available on the Chargers Plan It.

As with the Revolver Plan It, the main advantage is keeping the interest-charged portion of your card balance apart from the ongoing spend on the card. Quite important with the AMEX charge cards and their high earning rewards categories.

[joltdude]

How does one figure out the APR equivalent of a Plan-it fee when its not zero... have tried to do this but havent quite figured out the maths for it....  Plan it fee of x for y months = a rough APR of ....

I havent seen it mentioned anywhere when initiating a plan it and think this would be good to know...

-J

[Anonymous]

You'd have to know what your daily periodic rate is, then add that up over the terms of the proposed plan it time frame is. For a rough estimate say your APR is 20% on a balance of $1K, which would be around $.55 per day for about $16 per statement period. Give or take.

Individual results may vary

[NRB525]

I created a Plan It on my Hilton card in January. $1,431 amount. Monthly fee of $9.48, so 0.6% per month on the original amount. Minimum calculated rate then is 8%, however as you pay down the plan over the term, the remaining balance drops, so the interest rate steadily increases.

But one of the advantages of Plan It is, you can pay it off to stop the monthly fees, so can be a good source of short term financing.

[Anonymous]

Do you know if it's just the Green, or if it's being dropped altogether? I logged in today to check on Amex offers, and decided to check those options and both were still available on Gold. I thought about switching it to Select, but figured since I don't use POT anyways there's no need.

[NRB525]

POT Select due to go away Aug 1. I had set the Green to Select, don't know yet if Gold or Platinum changed, stmts are not here yet. Gold is on Select, Platinum on Direct as I had not changed that one to Select yet, just wrapping up a promo on Platinum POT.