Why I’m CANCELING This American Express Card

I love using credit cards to earn points miles and cash back in order to get extra value out of my spending in the form of free five-star vacations and just generally free stuff but many of these credit cards especially the higher tier Ones cost a lot of money in annual fees and from time to time you do need to trim your portfolio now I looked at all my annual fees across all of my cards recently and I worked out that I am spending $2,170 a year on annual your fees now that is quite a lot so you do really need to be sure that you are getting value out of those cards now most of my cards I do get good value out of but there is one that I got about a year ago that delivered really positive value in the first year because of the massive bonus I got for signing up but other than the bonus the benefits of the card that I was able to use didn't give me much value and thus in the second year I predict that I will be at a loss and in this video I'm going to go through it all hey credit Warriors welcome to the show my name is Ben Hedges aka the credit Shifu I upload videos on credit cards and personal finance topics almost every day so if you're new and like the sound of that do subscribe it's free and we are all about providing you with positive value on this channel so I currently have two American Express Platinum cards one is the personal Platinum charge swab version and the other Charles Schwab whatever okay Charles Schwab version and the other is is the business Platinum now both of these cards have a $695 annual fee which is massive and it kind of breaks my rule about only having one what I call tier 4 or premium credit card per person it usually isn't worth it to have two or more since there's so much crossover in the benefits like airport lounge access Hotel statuses Etc there may be some situations where it is worth it like if one card is a transferable points card and the other one is a hotel or Airline card card and you're someone who travels a lot on that Airline or staying at that hotel but for most people it just doesn't make sense so the one out of these two that is on The Chopping Block is going to be the business Platinum now let's first look at the first year value I got from the card and then I'm going to show you how much less value I'm estimating to be getting out of the card in my second year so in my first year I got a targeted mail offer for 50,000 points for spending $155,000 in my first 3 months I used the card to pay my taxes of $21,000 and this cost me a fee of about 2% which would be $420 but I triggered the 150 Point bonus worth $3,000 or so if we value the points at 2 cents per Point since the card also earns 1.5 points per dollar on purchases over $5,000 I got over 32,000 points for that purchase as well which has a value of $640 or so at 2 cents per point then I used $94 worth of the airline incidental fee credit on my trip to Hawaii on Delta this was for check bags and some food on board you can see all these small charges add up to $94 then I used $351 worth of the $400 Dell credit on buying two hard drives one was $156 you can see the refund here and the other $194 and actually since that is $200 every 6 months by calendar year I could have got $600 in my first card member year but I actually forgot about this credit when I first signed up for the card and July rolled around and it reset and with these credits if you don't use them you lose them we then deduct the money I paid in fees for my tax payment and the annual fee of $6.95 and we get $2,970 in positive value I got out of the card in my first year of membership so that's really great positive value but let's now move on to show you how different it is going to be in my second year of membership but first almost half of Americans now need credit cards cards to cover living expenses half JP Morgan's leading stock strategist predicts by this summer only the top 1% of Americans will be better off financially than they were pre pandemic and 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more which is why over 900,000 people have signed up so far they've got legendary artists like Banky and Picasso and regular offerings like those have sold out in minutes now there is a wait list to sign up but my viewers can skip that wait list and get started today using the special affiliate Link in the description all right let's now look at what I project on the AMX business Platinum for year two since there's no welcome bonus obviously we won't get that huge number of points but it also makes it not cost effective to pay my taxes with the card since let's say I owed $21,000 again sure I could earn another 32,000 points but that would cost me $420 in fees if we value the 32,000 points at 2 cents per point so6 $40 we lose $420 in fees so that takes us to $220 in value I'd rather put that spend on the Hilton honor surpass card trigger the annual free night for spending over $155,000 which I value at at least $700 and then on top of that earn 63,000 Hilton points which at 0.5 per point would be valued at $315 so a total of $1,015 minus the $420 fee is $595 in positive value for taxes you need a card that has some sort of bonus triggered by high spend to make it worth it whether that is a welcome bonus for a new card or a bonus you can get every year on an older card like a hotel free night so we have no value from the bonus then what about the other credits well in my first year the only credits I got value out of were the Dell credit and the Airline credit and the Airline credit I only use half of it even if I maxed out both of those credits in my second year that's only going to be $600 in value when the annual fee is $6.95 so I'm down $95 but to be honest I have no trips plan right now so I probably won't use the Airline Credit often even if I go on a trip I may not use it if I have a business class ticket since I get everything included there's nothing to use it on then as for the other credits on the business Platinum there's nothing usable for me either the Adobe credit I thought would be useful since I use Adobe Premiere to edit my videos but it turns out it's only a very specific business plan with Adobe that you can get credited $150 a year back forth then you have the indeed credit that's $360 a year and that's only going to be useful for companies regularly using indeed.com to hire new employees I don't need that I have one employee apart from myself and I found him through networking not a job site and he does a really great job well I'm saying that just cuz he's editing this video no I'm joking he really does do a great job so I don't think I need to hire anyone else anytime soon unless that credit is useless then we have the $120 per year Wireless credit and for this one it also seems to be useless to me my phone plan is through Google F I find it really useful because it works in any country unlimited calls and data but sadly it doesn't seem to code correctly to trigger the credit I don't really do any spending on this card apart from that Google F payment each month since apart from the 1.5x on purchases over $5,000 which I don't do very often and business purchases the card earns the exact same points the personal Platinum okay 1 Point per dollar on everything and 5x on Airlines and prepaid hotels through AMX travel and if it was something that I could get 1.5 points per dollar on with this card like a purchase over $5,000 or those purchases in certain business categories I could still just use the chase Inc unlimited which is 1.5 points per dollar on everything and it has some as the same Transfer Partners as this card anyway the other benefits like priority pass Centurion lounges the Clear Credit marot gold Hilton gold Etc I already have from the personal platinum card so I really would just be getting about $600 a year back before you factor in the annual fee and even that is debatable do I really need to hard drives a year I might not need that many maybe I only need one or maybe I won't use the Airline Credit so I am certain that when you factor in the annual fee this card will be costing me more money than it makes in year 2 the only thing that is a little bit of a shame to lose is the 35% back on airline redemptions benefit now I never actually used this because I didn't really understand how it worked at the time but basically if you book a flight that costs 100,000 points in the travel portal which normally that's only going to be good for economy flights all right if it's business class it's going to make more sense to transfer the points out but anyway if you book a flight that cost 100,000 points normally you're getting one cent per point so it' be a ,000 flight you'll be getting 35,000 points back to use on your next Redemption that would be a value of at least $350 maybe as much as $700 back if you can go on and later redeem those points through Transfer Partners so a little sad to use that benefit but like I said I never actually used it anyway so you know maybe not a big deal now we get the impression that there will be some updates to the business Platinum this year especially as they added end dates to the Adobe credit the Dell credit and the indeed credit the three credits that I don't like indicating that they may get replaced with something else by the end of the year you can check out my video on that it looks like this but that is too long for me to wait I don't want to spend $695 just to wait and find out if there is something useful coming so I will be cancelling this C before the annual fee hits in March let me know what you think and if you have managed to get value out of the business platinum in the comments also don't forget to skip the wait list and start investing in artworks like the billionaires do with our partner Masterworks link is below please subscribe if you're new and we'll see you next time bye-bye