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Amex EveryDay Preferred Credit Card Review

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Who Is the Amex EveryDay Preferred Credit Card Good For?

The Amex EveryDay Preferred card is designed to reward frequent spenders rather than the usual big spenders associated with American Express.


The more casual name (Amex, rather than American Express) and the lower number of perks and points awarded initially reflect this demographic shift. Still, the Amex EveryDay Preferred has become known as one of the most powerful credit cards for funneling points into American Express’ versatile Membership Rewards program, the oldest point transfer program around, and the one with the most partners.

AIRLINE PARTNERS Aeromexico, Air Canada, Air France KLM, Alitalia, ANA, Asia Miles, British Airways, Delta, El AL, Emirates, Etihad Guest, Frontier, Hawaiian Airlines, Iberia, jetBlue, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic
ANNUAL FEE$95
APR0% for 12 months; subsequently 13.24-23.24% based on credit
RECOMMENDED CREDIT SCORE750+
TYPE OF CARDAmerican Express
ISSUERAmerican Express

Sign-Up Bonuses:

A sign-up bonus of 15,000 American Express Membership Rewards points after a $1,000 spend in 90 days.

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Points Earned:

  • 3 points per dollar spent on groceries (up to $6,000 per year)
  • 2 points per dollar spent on gas
  • 1 point per dollar on everything else
  • 50 percent bonus points each month the card is used more than 30 times

What Do Your American Express Membership Reward Points Get You?

The American Express Membership Rewards program offers a somewhat dizzying array of redemption options. Unsurprisingly, many aren’t a great deal, particularly the ones that don’t have to do with travel.

If you book directly through the Membership Rewards portal, you get a 1-cent-per-point or less value. Thankfully, Membership Rewards has one of the widest selections of point transfer partners, including members of all three major alliances and a number of non-alliance airlines, such as domestic carriers Hawaiian, JetBlue and Virgin America.

Redemption Perks:

  • After 30 transactions, you receive a 50 percent bump on points earned in that billing period
  • Ability to link other individuals’ frequent flyer accounts to your Membership Rewards account for transfers to family and friends
  • Option to pay for travel directly with points or convert to miles
  • Monthly transfer bonuses on select airlines
  • Most transfers are instantaneous

Redemption Quirks:

  • Points transfer at only a 1:1 ratio
  • Pay with Points option gives a value of only 1 cent per point

How Far Do Your Dollars Go?

Though the grocery bonus maxes out, the gas bonus does not, so in a year (assuming you fill the tank every week at $50 per fill-up), you can easily rack up:

  • $6,000 for groceries = 18,000 Membership Rewards bonus points
  • $200 for gas for 52 weeks = 10,400 Membership Rewards bonus points
  • Total category bonus points (on top of your regular spending) + sign-up bonus =43,400 Membership Rewards bonus points

Even more powerfully, the Amex EveryDay Preferred gives you a 50 percent bonus on all spending anytime you use your card more than 30 times in one billing period. If you already pick up a coffee every morning, you’re all set.

When you combine this earning with American Express Membership Rewards frequent transfer bonuses, which are typically around 30 percent for one specific partner each month, you can get nearly six airline miles per dollar right off the bat without even maximizing your miles with high value awards.

Additional Cardholder Benefits:

  • American Express Global Assistance hotline
  • Car rental loss and damage insurance (not available in Australia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica or New Zealand)
  • Extended warranties
  • Purchase protection
  • Return protection

Editorial Disclosure: Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.

UGC Disclosure: The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

Best Amex Credit Card Combo: Amex Everyday Preferred and Amex Platinum

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Best Amex Credit Card Combo: Amex Everyday Preferred and Amex Platinum

The Everyday Preferred card and the Platinum card is the best two-card combination in the Amex cards lineup. The combined benefits of these cards provide just about everything a travel hacker could want in their credit card portfolio—high points earning rates on everyday spend, a valuable transferable points currency and a wide variety of luxury travel benefits and purchase protections.

The ability to get significant value out of just two cards allows travelers to simplify their wallets and reduce the cost of the annual fees they pay relative to a traveler who carries a greater number of cards. The Everyday Preferred card has a $95 annual fee while the Platinum card carries a $450 annual fee. In this post we continue our series on the best credit card combos, with this installment focusing on Membership Rewards-earning cards offered by American Express.

Earning Points

The most important contribution to this combo from the Everyday Preferred card is the ability to rack up large quantities of points. The Everyday Preferred card earns 3 points per dollar at supermarkets (on up to $6,000 of spend per year), 2 points per dollar at gas stations and 1 point per dollar on all other purchases.

In addition, you receive a 50% points bonus for any month in which you have at least 30 separate transactions. This is an easy threshold to cross by simply making a bunch of small purchases when you go to the store. With the 50% bonus, the effective earning rates increase to 4.5x at grocery stores, 3x at gas stations and 1.5x on all other spend.

These are excellent rates, and the bonus categories are actually useful since people spend a significant amount of money on groceries and gas on average. The Platinum card only gets 1x on all spending, so it’s not very useful for earning points.

Point Redemption Options

Amex allows you to redeem points by booking directly through the Amex Travel website, however the point values you will realize using this option are quite low (1 cent per point or less). Therefore, the best redemption options are via transferring points to Amex’s network of transfer partners.

Currently there are 17 airline partners and 3 hotel partners. Two of the hotel partners (Choice and Hilton) typically have very low redemptions values, and the third partner, SPG, transfers at a horrible 3:1 ratio. So the best options are definitely various airlines.

All 3 major airline alliances are represented, plus some independent airlines, so just about any travel desire can be fulfilled. In addition, Amex offers transfer bonuses from time to time, so be on the lookout to maximize the number of miles you can get. Some good redemption options, in no particular order are:

Delta Airlines – In spite of the often used “SkyPesos” moniker, Delta miles can be quite useful in the right situations. If you live near a Delta hub or stronghold and are flying to another, odds are there are a high number of daily flights between the two cities. If you are willing to fly on lower-demand flights you can usually find reasonably priced award availability. They also tend to have a nicer domestic product relative to the other major U.S. airlines, United and American.

All Nippon Airways – ANA has excellent premium cabin products and reasonably priced awards for long-haul routes to Japan, South America and Europe.

Singapore Airlines – Singapore has some amazing premium cabin products. Singapore Suites class is one of the most extravagant first class offerings in the sky, and Singapore does not release suite awards to its partners. Therefore, if you want to enjoy this amazing product you need to book directly with Singapore. Singapore gives you a 15% discount if you book online through their website, so even expensive first class redemptions can be had at reasonable prices.

Singapore Airlines First Class
Redeem Membership Rewards Points for Singapore’s Airlines First class

British Airways – British Airways has a distance-based award chart that is essentially useless for long-haul awards, but has excellent values for short flights. One-way awards start at 4,500 Avios for flights outside the U.S. and 7,500 Avios for those originating or terminating in the U.S. Even with the slightly more expensive price for U.S. short-haul awards, they are still cheaper than domestic awards on the big three U.S. carriers which are typically 10,000 to 12,500 each way.

Other Travel Benefits

The Platinum card offers a wide variety of travel benefits which we outline below:

  • Airport lounge access – The Platinum card comes with the best lounge access of any premium card. Not only do you get the standard Priority Pass network access, but you can also get into Sky Clubs when you fly on Delta and the top-of-the-line Amex Centurion Lounges.
  • Annual $200 airline fee credit – This benefit effectively reduces the annual fee on this card to $350.
  • Annual $200 Uber credit – You’ll get $200 worth of Uber rides every year! With this benefit, your annual fee is effectively reduced to just $150.
  • Fine Hotels & Resorts – This is a program that gives automatic benefits when booking hotels, such a $100 spa or dining credit, early check-in, late check-out and free breakfast.
  • Automatic Gold Status with Hilton and SPG – Gold status with Hilton is one of the most valuable mid-tier hotel statuses since it comes with free breakfast at most of Hilton’s brands.
  • Global Entry or TSA Precheck application credit – This will save you either $100 or $85 once every five years depending on which program you apply for. Note that if approved for Global Entry, you automatically get TSA Precheck as well.
  • Platinum Concierge – This benefit can be a bit hit or miss, but there are many stories out there of people having extraordinary or unusual requests fulfilled by the concierge. Amex also still seems to have connections at many top restaurants, so this could be a way to get a table without a reservation.

Conclusion

While Amex may no longer have the most valuable transferable points program, there is still a lot of value to be found. And with these two cards, you can earn and redeem a ton of points for some great travel experiences.

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