What are the thoughts between the gold and green card once the AF is factored in? I'm starting to wonder. With the gold I get 4x points on restaurant spend, but with the green I can get 3x. I can also get travel spend on the green. I would lose out on grocery spend but have an everyday card that would give me 2.2 pts back on that spend. The green card would cover most of the cost of CLEAR and there is a lounge buddy credit of $100. The lounge buddy credit may be useful with PP pass lounges in incidents where they will close due to compacity to PP but will still let people in with lounge buddy. The gold has a $100 airline credit which is a bit difficult to redeem due to limitations and having airline credits on other cards. Thoughts? Also, can you PC a gold card to a green card?
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For me it would come down to if you don't have another 3x travel card, I have a 3x travel and gas card with my citi premier so green probably isn't as appealing to me. While I agree golds airlines credits are hard to use now since Amex makes it really difficult. I probably would go EDP + Green if I wanted to go all in on Amex. 4.5x groceries,3x gas, 1.5x everywhere else in addition to greens 3x restaurants and travel. That is on the premise that could hit 30 x swipe every month. The AF would almost be same as gold.
@mongstradamus wrote:For me it would come down to if you don't have another 3x travel card, I have a 3x travel and gas card with my citi premier so green probably isn't as appealing to me. While I agree golds airlines credits are hard to use now since Amex makes it really difficult. I probably would go EDP + Green if I wanted to go all in on Amex. 4.5x groceries,3x gas, 1.5x everywhere else in addition to greens 3x restaurants and travel. That is on the premise that could hit 30 x swipe every month. The AF would almost be same as gold.
Yea I see what you are saying but I don't use the EDP+ because I have the amex blue business plus for non-cat spend. This calculation may very well be different if I had regular gas spend in addition to grocceries. Consistently making the 30+ transactions is another thing that is not appealling given that I would not use it on non-cat spend, although the 20+ I could probably make on groccery spend organically. I recently took a retention offer to keep the gold. At the time I was very happy with the gold, but for some reason over the last few weeks I have been reflecting deeply on some of my cards. For example I downgraded my aspire card to the non-AF version and now I am kinda regretting it given some recent developments to my plans. At the very least I am thinking about if I would have been better off downgrading to the surpass and using that card for grocery spend. At 15k I would get a free night. Of course, I just got the hyatt card and since I need to spend 6k on the signup anyway I think it makes sense to go for the 15k cert at least in the first year on that card. Some of these cards may be useful if I want to go into the garden long term.
I personally can't justify Green (other than SUB chasing; not sure if me having The American Express Card, PCed to The American Express Card Now With Membership Rewards, that they thankfully later renamed to the green card LOL, keeps me from being eligible for the Welcome Offer) because of everything else in my wallet/mobile wallet/sock drawer, but if the math works out for you, go for it.
And yes, you can PC up or down within the Green/Gold/Platinum families, including The Classic Gold Card and whatever else is still available but not available for new apps.
FWIW at some airports I have found that CLEAR is a huge time saver. Really regretted not having it at MSP over the summer, for instance. But here at BOS, it just lets me jump past the 2 people in line for PreCheck, if there’s a line at all.
I hold both, with the benefits on each card the annual fees ends up mounting to almost nothing. THIS IS JUST FOR ME and MY OPINION.
