Your Benefit Guide to Amex Rewards System (US based) - Part 1 - Green& Gold Card
- The Lo Down
- Mar 4
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 8
Unlock the full potential of your American Express card with this guide to maximizing rewards, points, and exclusive perks, along with key details you need to watch out for, like expiration dates, transfer ratios, and category bonuses
1. American Express Bonus Points
Every American Express card offers bonus points. A good offer for the Green Card is 60k points, Gold is 90k points or more, and Platinum is 120k points. While higher offers do come up occasionally, they aren't very frequent, so you won’t miss out too much with these standard offers. You can earn each bonus offer IF YOU START BY APPLYING FOR THE GREEN CARD. However, if you apply for the Gold Card first, you won’t be eligible for the Green Card bonus, and if you apply for the Platinum Card as your first card, you’ll lose eligibility for both the Green and Gold card welcome offers.
2. AmeX Benefits that you MUST KNOW
For all cards, pay attention to the Trip Delay Insurance, Baggage Insurance, and Rental Car Coverage. Each card may have slight differences in the amounts covered, but having these insurances means you won’t need to spend as much on separate travel or rental insurance. They will reimburse you for your expenses.
Especially in the case of flight delays or cancellations, it can be a real hassle to request reimbursement from airlines or hotels. With American Express, you can simply submit your expenses through the insurance claim website, and you’ll get your money back up to a certain amount, so remember to save your receipts for hotels, transports, restaurant receipts for days you faced delayed and cancellation. BUT, please read the individuals card holder benefit information when you received your cards for full details.
For Green Cards:
It is one of the best card for Hotel stays throughout the credit card game. You can earn 3x points(second highest for direct hotel bookings, the only better for hotel bookings is bilt on the 1st of every month {4x}) on all travel expenses. However, besides that the only reason that justifies the annual fee is the CLEAR credit. A great entry for American Express card
For Gold Cards.
The best restaurant dining credit card! Some credits you need to know include the following:
$10 in statement credits monthly at Grubhub/ The Cheesecake Factory/ Goldbelly/ Wine.com and Five Guys. It must show that you enrolled in order to receive credit.
$7 per month in statement credits at Dunkin' It must show that you enrolled in order to receive credit.
$50 in statement credits semi-annually after you pay with the Gold Card at U.S. Resy restaurants. It must show that you enrolled in order to receive credit.
$120 a year in Uber cash
Add your Gold Card to your Uber account and you will automatically receive $10 per month in Uber Cash that you can use for Uber Rides and Cash
$100 Hotel Collecton credit
When you book a room in the American Express Travel portal, look out for the Hotel Collection, for two consecutive nights you would get $100 hotel credit to spend on qualifying resort experiences. ( I don't find this useful because most of the hotels are really expensive)
3. Amex Credit Card Shopping Offers
I find that Amex Benefits provides some of the best credit card shopping offers across all card types. Just take a look at a few examples below—I can almost guarantee you'll find an offer that fits your shopping, travel plans, or streaming services. One thing to keep in mind: there's a limit on how many users can save an offer. Once the limit is reached, the offer may disappear. Saving offers not only ensures you can use them, but also allows new offers to become available that could benefit you even more!
4. Credit Card Transfer Partner Examples
I don’t think booking your travels on the American Express Portal is the best way to maximize your travel, it is usually not cheaper than the direct websites. If anything goes wrong, you would have to contact Amex, instead directly contacting the airline or property, you would have to go through amex, and they have to contacting someone else.
Instead, Always keep an eye out for transfer partners offering bonuses—they can be very useful. I don’t recommend pre-transferring without a planned trip unless the bonus is substantial. Personally, I’d consider pre-transferring at a 30% bonus or higher. Here are some examples of how you could maximize your American Express Points.
Air France/ KLM is a great American Express Transfer Partner. They often run flying blue promos around this time of the year, which have really really great deals. For example: instead of paying 733 dollars, you can pay 15000 miles (with this transfer bonus you can get be in Paris for 12500 amex points) A basic Amex green card gives you 40000 points. You can go this 3 times with change.
Maximizing American Express points can unlock a world of incredible travel and lifestyle rewards. With thoughtful use of transfer partners, bonuses, and strategic redemption options, you’ll get the most value from every point. If you’d like to apply for an American Express card using my affiliate link, it would be a huge support for my work and allow me to keep sharing more tips to enhance your travel and points experience. Thank you for being here!
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