How to Earn a HUGE Amount of Amex Points for FREE Travel

Amex Membership Rewards Points, the points currency that many of us credit card enthusiasts earn to redeem for thousands of dollars worth of free luxury travel such as business class flights and five-star hotels. And if you have an American Express card in your wallet, well, you might not have that one. Maybe this one. Chances are you're earning Amex Membership Rewards Points already. But how do you earn enough Amex Points to redeem for these amazing travel experiences? Well, that is exactly the question that I'm going to answer in this video. Once you finish watching, you will be armed with the strategy to earn enough points for you and your loved ones to go on the trip of a lifetime. This is six ways to earn a huge amount of Amex Points. I'm Ben Hedges, aka The Credit Shifu, and luxury travel funded by credit card points is my passion. If you like the sound of that, do consider subscribing. It's also free. But now let's get into the first way of earning a huge amount of Amex Points. Now, if you're experienced, the first couple of ways might seem basic to you, but we're going to get more advanced as we go along. So stick with us. Number one, Welcome Bonuses. Welcome Bonuses are a great way to earn a lot of points very quickly. For example, if you got a welcome bonus of, say, 120,000 Amex Points, you could transfer that out to an airline and easily get a round-trip business class ticket from the U.S. East Coast to Europe. And with American Express, there are many cards that will give you close to or even more than 120,000 points as a welcome offer. But with Amex, it's not as simple as just going to their website and looking at the public offer. There are many ways to get higher secret offers that you may not know about. Just changing the browser that you're using can often give you a better offer. For example, searching for the business platinum on Chrome gives me a 120,000 point offer. Enough for that business class flight to Europe. But if I switch over to Safari, it shows up with a 130,000 point offer. Just that one action, a few seconds of switching your browser gives you one, two or more hundred dollars extra in value. You can also try deleting your cookies and also in Chrome incognito windows as well. That sometimes works. But don't be satisfied with that. There is another way to get an even higher bonus. Number two, referrals. Let's first talk about you being referred for a card. So we found a 120,000 point welcome offer on the business platinum in Google Chrome. We found a 130,000 point offer in Safari, and then we reached out to a friend for a referral link and we got this 150,000 point offer through referral. That was on the business platinum, but the same is true on personal cards as well. The personal gold card has a 60,000 point public offer. But through referral links, you can get 60,000 points and $200 back in the form of statement credits on purchases. Okay, I know that isn't extra points. It's a statement credit. And this video is on how to earn points. But hey, $200 is $200. And you can often find offers for more points through referral like we saw with the business platinum. And these offers change all the time. But it isn't just the being referred that can get extra points or a statement credit. If you're the one who is doing the referral, you can get extra points too. And remember now, Amex lets you refer to any card, not just the one you have. So you can share the link with the card you have and they can actually navigate through and pick whatever card they like. My Amex gold card currently pays me 30,000 points per referral. And there's an increased limit of 100,000 points you can earn per year. It used to be 50,000. Now it's 100,000. And you can do this on multiple cards. My business platinum card is offering me 15,000 points per referral, also up to 100,000 points per year. So that's 200,000 points right there. In addition, there's also a temporary deal on the Amex gold for five extra points per dollar at supermarkets for three months. If you refer one person, the gold already earns four points per dollar on supermarkets. And now we get five more for a total of nine points per dollar for three months. And guys, if you're interested in that 60,000 points plus the $200, I'll put my referral link below that you can use if you want. Also, if you want to refer someone and get that extra five points per dollar on supermarkets, if that shows up in your account, that's also ending at the same time as the 60,000 points slash $200 one that will be June 7th, 2023. So next month. But now let's talk about another big way that you can earn extra points. And that is number three Amex offers. So American Express has offers that you can add to your card and they give you extra value in primarily two ways. One is a statement credit like this offer for MGM resorts, where if you spend $400, you get $80 back. Very useful if you want to go to Las Vegas and stay at the MGM Grand, for example. But then there's a type of offer that we are interested in because this video is about earning extra points. And that is the offer that lets you earn extra Amex points for spending certain amounts at certain merchants like this one for BestBuy.com, where you get up to one extra reward point per dollar. It's important to read the terms and conditions on these, though, because this is for BestBuy.com. You can't use it in store, but you could probably if you're in the store, you could probably buy online and select in-store pickup and then walk over and pick it up. Maybe I don't know. Don't take my word for that. And that MGM one, by the way, was also only valid at certain MGM properties. So MGM Grand was in there, but the Bellagio was not. So always read the terms and conditions, the small print to avoid disappointment. And if you want all of your Amex offers activated automatically for you, a great system for that is the app Max Rewards and their pro version Max Rewards Gold. It will link to your American Express account and all of your Amex offers will be activated automatically. So you may even use an offer and earn a statement credit or some points without even realizing it. And also once Max Rewards has activated all your Amex offers, new offers you wouldn't otherwise have will appear in your account and Max Rewards will activate them, too. The app also gives you a search function where you can search through the offers to see if you have an offer for a certain merchant. That's a feature that American Express does not provide on its own website. Now you guys can get a free month of Max Rewards Gold with my link below. The app also has a load of other free features which are very useful, like showing all your transactions, your balances, your points and miles balances, regardless of card issuer, all in one place. There's also a welcome bonus tracker where you can have a little bar that fills up with your spending to track your progress on a welcome bonus. And the app keeps track of bonus categories, some of which are changing every quarter. And we always recommend the best card for every category and even every local merchant. So you get a free month of the Gold version with my link below or just download it and check out the free features. All right. So let's keep a lookout in our Amex accounts for offers that let us earn extra Amex points. And actually, if you're in your account, you can click here and it will show you all of the offers that will earn you extra membership rewards points. You can isolate those ones instead of the ones that offer a statement credit. Although the ones that earn statement credits are definitely worth checking out, too. But anyway, let's move on. Number four, spending on credit cards. So actually spending on Amex cards is really the most basic way you can earn points. And I probably should have started with this one. But anyway, it's good to always make sure you're using the best card for whatever category you're shopping in. So, for example, if I am at a supermarket or dining in a restaurant, I will use the Amex Gold because it in those two categories. That spending alone in those two categories earned me over 60,000 points last year. If I'm booking a plane ticket, I'll use the Amex Platinum because it's five points per dollar on flights booked directly with airlines. And if I'm booking a hotel through the fine hotels and resorts collection, which gives me extra things like free breakfast, room upgrades, etc., I'll use the Amex Platinum and I'll prepay because if you book a prepaid hotel through Amex travel, which is what the fine hotels and resorts collection is part of, you get five points per dollar, too. So that's what I do with the cards that I have. Of course, I have a few other categories that I use cards from different issuers for. But this video is only about Amex. But let's now look at some spending on a couple of other Amex cards that I don't have. But this little trick could be very useful for some people. Number five, frequent transaction bonuses. So there's another type of where the amount of points you earn increases if you make a certain amount of transactions per month. If you have the Amex everyday card, which is a really common first Amex card for a lot of people because it has no annual fee and it doesn't really require a high credit score to get approved for. But if you have that card, you earn two points per dollar on grocery spending on up to six thousand dollars in spend per year. But if you make 20 transactions per month with the card, you get a 20 percent bonus on your points. So that two points per dollar turns into two point four points per dollar on grocery and the one point per dollar you earn on everything else turns into one point two. Now, that may not sound that impressive to the seasoned credit warrior, but it is a great way for a beginner to earn some extra points. However, if you upgrade to the everyday preferred, which has a ninety five dollar annual fee, you get a 50 percent points bonus as long as you make 30 transactions a month. And that card earns three points per dollar at supermarkets already. So that's actually going to become four point five points per dollar, which is more than the Amex gold earns. And the card also earns two points per dollar on gas. So that becomes three points per dollar. And then it would also be one point five points per dollar on everything else. With that bonus, you just have to make a lot of transactions in order to secure that bonus. And the everyday cards, by the way, are a great way of preserving your points. If you want to close down your more expensive Amex cards like the Amex Platinum, say you want to shut it down because of the annual fee or Amex points, they all pool together in one account. So as long as you have one membership rewards earning Amex card open, you will not forfeit your points. So a lot of people open the everyday card, the one with no annual fee just to preserve their points if they want to close their Amex Platinum or Amex gold, for example. All right, let's now move on to our sixth and final way of earning a huge amount of Amex points. Number six, Rakuten. Rakuten is one of the best kept secrets for earning Amex points. Actually, it isn't really a secret. I don't know why I said that. But anyway, Rakuten is a cash back portal where you can click through their website to the websites of many of your favorite merchants and earn extra cash back in addition to what you earn already on your credit card. It can also be a great site to combine with the SACS credit on the Amex Platinum, which is $50 every six months. You can see here I spent 50 bucks on a couple of pairs of socks and it was a 15% cash back promotion at SACS on that day. So I got $7.50 in cash back and the entire $50 was refunded to me through the SACS credit. But I thought in this video we were talking about earning points, not cash back. Well, you see, that is the secret because if you have an Amex membership rewards points earning card, you can link that to Rakuten and then the cash back you earn will be converted to Amex points at a rate of one centing cash back equals one Amex point. And so this is a great way to earn a huge amount of Amex points. And Rakuten often does increased cash back rates for every holiday Memorial Day, which is next Monday. Last year around Black Friday, there were a load of 15% stores. It was then that I picked up this North Face ski jacket through Rakuten and earned a bonus. Anyway, if you're interested in Rakuten, I will put my referral link below. You can get a free $30 in cash back slash 3000 Amex points, depending how you choose to redeem after you make your first purchase. Alternatively, if you have a friend who uses Rakuten, you can reach out to them for a referral link. You'll still get a $30 bonus and they get a bonus for referring you too. But anyway, if you don't have any friends or you don't have any friends who use Rakuten, my link is below. A big thank you to Max Rewards for sponsoring this video. You can get a free month of Max Rewards gold with the link in the description. And now you know how to earn Amex points. Why not check out this video on how to redeem Amex points for maximum value? We're talking business class flights, five star hotels, et cetera. Just click the link on the screen. As always, thanks for watching, guys. Please subscribe if you knew. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.