I spend 3x my revolving limits monthly. Never had a problem. If they get uneasy with you and the gold, they'll call to recommend a payment. If you don't answer, they'll decline the charge and you'll call them.
@Anonymous wrote:I need some clarification on Amex's 3x normal spending. I have heard it mentoned in these forums that Amex may impose a CL on a charge card or impose a FR if a person spends near 3X their normal spend in a short period of time.
By 3X this how many dollars you spend in say 1 month, or a certain period.
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You seem to be referring to American Express's formula that is part of their determination of the internal limit on a NPSL card.
That is only one part of the equation of determining the limit for NPSL and isn't even used at all for many cardholders. I often go many months, perhaps a year or more without making any meaningful charges on one or both of my personal charge cards but if I suddenly make a $10,000+ purchase I have no issues on a card that has seen average spend of $200 or even $0 for months on end.
Financial Reviews and hard limits are never placed as a result of simply spending more than you normally do (obvious exceptions if you decide to start spending $100k a month when you declared a $50k annual income). However, as a result of a FR a hard limit can be placed.
@Anonymous wrote:And if you're unsure of how it will look, call in and talk to a CSR and tell them you want to make some out of the normal range expenditures due to the reasons you mentioned, and ask if they'll note the account and set it up for you to approve. Assurance that the payments will be no problem and will be made weekly as in the past may help your case as well. Blindsiding them may not be so good. K-i-B has a very long and established history of high card usage with Amex and I'm not surprised that his results are as stated. The rest of us would better our odds by letting Amex know that non-normal spend is coming.
Totally agree; also using the Check Spending Ability for large purchases that you plan to make can be useful. (My reply was more addressing the "spending more than 3x your average spending is going to result in a Financial Review," which generally speaking isn't going to happen to most people unless Amex suspects something very risky going on. The more common scenario for people without long and established histories/profiles is that either a charge is declined or charging ability is paused until a payment has been made. But as a matter of course, very few people will ever see an actual Financial Review from Amex, and certainly not for something mundane like spending $2,000 one month when their average statements have been $500.)
Yeah, in your case you can just throw that whole FR thing out the window and comparing $4,000 to your income (unless it's absurdly low like you're a student and only work a minimum wage job for 3 hours on Sunday). You're talking about possibly spending $4,000 in a month. That does not set off huge alarms that someone is money laundering or manufacturing spending to abuse the rewards system. The FR part would only be relevant here if you started your conversation off by saying you make $40,000 a year, and were planning to do something absurd like spend $75,000 at the grocery store each month on your Gold Card which earns 4x MRs at grocery stores.