I had a buddy comment the other day “someday I’ll be flying first class everywhere like you” which surprised me, he has a growing business, with expenses, lots of them, why wasn’t his credit card paying his way everywhere, on every flight, often into first class? Since I took the time to write out how I setup the credit card approach for my businesses and how I use it to never pay for a flight or hotel, I figured I’d share it in the event someone is looking for some ideas.
The Amex Platinum charge card is the card I use. Actually, I typically use this and an Amex Gold Card together (just have them in the same account) for reasons I’ll explain later…but yeah, let me walk you through how it goes.
The Amex Plat is $550 a year, and it works IF the benefits are worth $550 to you. In this case the benefits are:
- Lounge access (Delta lounges, Centurion lounge (pretty cool ones) Priority Pass lounges (international)) — so really if you fly Delta, you get the lounges, that’s nice.
- 75$ hotel credit (so you just pay for the wifi on the card or whatever and you get $75 back on your statement)
- Hilton Gold Status (this gets you upgrades and late checkouts and stuff)
- Starwood Gold Elite Status (and this one too but for starwood properties)
- $200 airline credit (wifi, meals, anything you buy on a plane they’ll refund your first $200 back to your statement) — I think I get 10 free gogo wifi passes a year on mine too, but I can’t find that listed anywhere
- Free Global Entry or TSA Pre (pro tip: sign up for global entry and TSA comes with it free) — $100 value
- 1 year platinum global access from wework (never been, but it’s nice to know they want me there)
So you’re about break even IF you use the perks and on top of that, you get 35% discount on first class travel when you book with points. As an example, I looked up on the Amex travel portal SAN to MCI round trip next month so my buddy can come visit me. A flight here cost 36,108 points in economy or 50,126 points in first class or after the 35% discount, it’s 32.5k points to fly first. You could save 4k points by flying first class using points. Another thing with Amex is you can choose a preferred airline (I think I’ve got Delta chosen for mine) and get some pretty good discounts on normal economy flights too, which is nice if you’re flying the team in or something.
The Amex Gold charge card is $295 a year, it has a 25% points back on first class bonus so almost as good as the Platinum. It does 4x points in two categories up to $150k spend, so you can get 600k points quick, which you don’t have that same accelerant on the Platinum that I can find.
The cool thing with a charge card and a small business is you can grow the credit limit pretty fast (the max is around $500k for these cards, which if you’ve got a short return on customer investment, can take you quite a ways). You start at like $10–20k, then spend and payback 2–3 times and request an increase to $40k, then $80k, then $120k, etc. In a few months you should be at $250k in limit if you’re good at paying it off, and that lets you get some serious points through here.
I put both those cards on the same Amex login (again, you can probably get by fine with one of them if you want to save the annual fee and earn points a bit slower) and you’ll share benefits between the two (the points you earn on the Gold can be used for a 35% points discount). When you get to a big enough spend (like when 500k a month isn’t enough) you can contact Amex for a full-on corporate solution and should be able to negotiate that book with points discount to 50% on first class travel (like it was in the old days) and then it’s first class for days people, for days!
Amex points are great for most airline stuffs. If you need hotels, typically the Chase ultimate rewards program is way better. Get the status (Gold in Hilton and Starwood) from Amex, then book your hotel travel with a Chase ink card in their Ultimate Rewards program. Also if you need to fly Southwest or United, often this is a better program to book through. Now your business has a Visa and an American Express option. I do 90% of my spend through my Amex Gold and 10% through Chase and it takes good care of me.
I should note, before you go too crazy just booking through the credit card travel portals, their transfer partners often provide better deals. Sometimes I’ll find that Delta has a better deal in their system than what I can find on the Amex travel portal, so check them both. Sometimes they’ll run promos too and let you transfer to partners at a multiple (1.5x points if you transfer to Hilton through Amex for example). You can get nerdy and track your Value Per Point (here’s the spreadsheet we use, make a copy) and tighten this VPP up a lot, or just be conscious that there are options.
The big transfer partners for Amex are Delta and Hilton and for Chase it’s Hyatt and Southwest. Hyatt sometimes has insanely good transfer deals, just fyi.
As a reminder, you can’t carry a balance on a charge card. It’s not like a credit card that way. Be prepared to pay it off monthly, and as you get bigger, call and get a rep. You can work with them to extend your terms to 45–60 days without penalty and then you have a 60 day revolving line of credit that can be handy when you’re spending into ads to acquire customers (and your ad spend is your 4x points category, ohhhh baby).
If this is helpful, post a pic of you in first class and enjoy the orange juice early on in the flight, it’s all worth it when you get that sweet, sweet canned concentrate on the lips.
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Special thanks to the wonderful points men in my life who did the real work figuring all this out so I can live a great life as I travel and earn — Mike Mifsud, Brock Barton, and Stephen Deardeuff
