Review: American Express Gold Card

If you’re someone who enjoys food…and, really, who doesn’t…then the American Express Gold Card just might be the rewards card for you.

Add in its travel benefits, and you’re looking at an extremely powerful rewards points earner – the transferrable Membership Rewards points in this case – for those who want a credit card that’ll work for them.

Its major downside is its mid-level annual fee.

Stick with me, though, and you might decide the card’s benefits offset the higher than usual fee you’ll have to pay.

American Express Gold Card

First, let’s start off with a rundown of the card’s benefits.

The card earns:

• 4x Membership Rewards points at restaurants
• 4x Membership Rewards points at U.S. supermarkets (on up to $25,000 per calendar year in purchases then 1x)
• 3x Membership Rewards points for flights booked directly with airlines or on amextravel.com
• 1 Membership Rewards point on all other purchases

Dining Credit

Each month you’ll receive a $10 statement credit when the Gold Card is used to pay at Grubhub, Seamless, The Cheesecake Factory, Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and participating Shake Shack locations.

A recent, and somewhat off-category addition to the $10 dining statement credit, is boxed.com, an online warehouse-club type retailer.

While this credit likely won’t be good enough for a free meal each month, it is a nice savings if you regularly use one of the food delivery services or eat at one listed restaurants.

And if you purchase household staples from boxed.com, that’s $10 off your purchases each and every month.

If taken full advantage of, this dining credit equates to a savings of $120 each year.

Airline Fee Credit

Select one qualifying airline and receive up to $100 per calendar year in statement credits when incidental fees such as baggage fees and more are charged by the airline to your Gold Card.

If you travel at least a few times per year, this airline fee credit can come in very handy.  You can offset those dastardly baggage fees the airlines so love to charge, seat upgrade fees, change fees, etc.  There are restrictions on what is considered a “fee,” so be sure to read the terms before charging something to the Gold Card and expecting it to be credited as part of this benefit.

If for some reason you won’t be taking advantage of the airline fee credit, there are ways to turn the credit into cash.

Airline gift card purchases at American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest all trigger the airline fee credit.  Meaning, if you purchase a $100 Southwest gift card from southwest.com, using your Gold Card to pay, you’ll get an automatic $100 statement credit, effectively giving you a free $100 to spend on Southwest airfare.

American Airlines gift cards purchased at AA.com, in the amount of $100, will also trigger the $100 statement credit.

Delta, however, isn’t quite as easy. Any Delta gift card purchase from delta.com over $50 will not trigger the statement credit.  So you’ll need to buy two $50 Delta gift cards to get the full $100 airline fee credit benefit.

Keep in mind, the purchase of airline gift cards is not supposed to trigger the credit, but it does for the airlines listed above.  This could change at any time.

And it did.  You can no longer purchase airline gift cards with the Gold Card and have those charges reimbursed.

All of the above airlines will allow gift cards to be used toward airfare on that airline.

You can also turn those gift cards into cash by selling them on eBay, or for a more reliable sale, American and Southwest gift cards can be sold on cardcash.com for close to 80% of the card’s value.

If used in full, the airline fee credit can provide a savings of $100 each year.

Annual Fee: $250

Yes, the annual fee is a bit steep at $250, but when factoring in the benefits ($120 dining credit annually + $100 airline fee credit annually) an argument could be made that the annual fee is effectively $30.

Add in the Membership Rewards points earning power of 4x at U.S. restaurants and grocery stores, and the American Express Gold Card just might be the go-to rewards card for many families.

American Express Sign-Up Bonus

If you search for the American Express Gold Card on American Express’ website, you’ll see a current sign-up bonus of 35,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $4,000 in purchases in the first 3 months of card membership.

Sign-up bonuses change regularly – both up and down – a 50,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus on the Gold Card is about as good as it gets.  If you see that sign-up bonus, jump on it.

A 40,000 Membership Rewards points bonus is okay, but anything less…well, I might hold out for a better sign-up bonus.

Currently, my Referral sign-up link to apply for the American Express Gold Card is offering 40,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $2,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of card membership.

That may change, offering an equal or better sign-up bonus than Amex is offering on its website.

I would encourage – and appreciate – you checking my referral link first if applying for the American Express Gold Card is of interest.

Referral Sign-Up Link for the American Express Gold Card

Obviously, I’d go for the highest sign-up bonus possible.

Sign-up bonuses do change, but even when they are lowered publicly, it’s possible to find the higher bonuses by using a few search tricks.  Depending on when you read this, and the current sign-up bonuses that are being offered, you might want to give the suggestions below a try.

First, I would recommend using the incognito mode on your browser and continuing to visit the American Express Gold Card link on the Amex site.  It may take multiple visits to get a new sign-up bonus to show.

Also, clearing your browser’s cache after each visit, or using a different browser – in incognito mode – may help.

And, finally, using a Virtual Private Network such as Windscribe might help in getting a larger sign-up bonus to show, as well.  And, as an aside, it might also be a good tool for browsing, in general, when using public wi-fi networks.

Full disclosure, should my referral link offer the best sign-up bonus at the time you check, I’ll get 10,000 Membership Rewards points for each approved application via the Referral Sign-Up Link above.  Thank you in advance should you decide to apply using the referral link.

Membership Rewards Points

After all that discussion of Membership Rewards sign-up bonuses and bonused earning on restaurant, grocery and airline spend, some may be saying…what are Membership Rewards points, anyway?

Membership Rewards is American Express’ rewards program.  Points are earned via spend on select American Express credit and charge cards.

Membership Rewards points can be used in a variety of ways, the most lucrative being to transfer to travel partners for free airline tickets and hotel stays.

Airline travel partners include (and their transfer rates):

AeroMexico  (1,000 MR to 1,600)

Aer Lingus (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Air Canada  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Air France/KLM  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Alitalia  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

All Nippon Airways  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Asia Miles  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Avianca (1,000 MR to 1,000)

British Airways  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Delta SkyMiles  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

El Al  (1,000 MR to 20)

Emirates  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Etihad Guest  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Hawaiian Airlines  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Iberia  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

JetBlue  (250 MR to 200)

Singapore Airlines  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Virgin Atlantic  (1,000 MR to 1,000)

Transfers of Membership Rewards points to U.S. airline frequent flyer accounts incur an excise tax offset fee of $0.0006 per point with a maximum fee of $99.

For example, if you transferred 50,000 Membership Rewards points to your Delta SkyMiles account, your linked credit card would be charged $30. The same would be true for transfers to Hawaiian Airlines and JetBlue.

• Choice   (1,000 MR to 1,000)
• Hilton   (1,000 MR to 2,000)
• Starwood/Marriott   (1,000 MR to 1,000)