What is an American Express card?

An American Express card is a form of credit card that runs off its own system instead of piggybacking off Mastercard or VISA like most other credit cards. American Express is the company name which offers a variety of different credit cards across the world.

How long have I had an American Express card?

I got the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card back in January taking advantage of the referral scheme at the time. There is still a version of this available in the UK where you can get 25,000 points when you sign up through my link and spend £3,000 in your first 3 months. Here’s my referral link.

How did I spend £3,000 on my American Express?

Before getting a card, I was sure that I was going to spend a large amount on the card in the first 3 months of the year booking holidays and on business expenses so I was confident of being able to hit this limit. Of course, it’s vitally important that you don’t spend £3,000 to get the points if you cannot afford to pay off the balance in full.

How many American Express points did I earn?

I moved most of my spending so far this year to the American Express card (where they accepted it, as they don’t accept it everywhere) and as a result managed to amass 40,000 points including the sign-up bonus, additional bonuses for spending £X amount and double point on travel spending.

How have I spent my American Express points?

You are able to exchange American Express points in a number of ways, which I have broken down in my previous blog here. I was keen to utilise these points in a relatively efficient way but without any upcoming longhaul flights realised that the best way to do this would probably be in the form of transferring my points to a hotel partner.

Knowing that there was a Hilton sale (still on at the time of writing) I had a bit of a mooch online to see whether I could utilise my points in this way and was able to get a relatively good rate where I transferred the 40,000 American Express points to 80,000 Hilton Honors points which then paid for two nights at a 5 star hotel.

Had I not used the points for these two nights, the additional cost would have been just shy of £400 for the two nights which is considerably better value than using the points as statement credits, which would have bagged me £180 or Nectar points which would have bagged me just £200.

Is it worth having an American Express card?

Overall, I have spent just over £6,000 on my American Express card so far this year which attracted these points. It’s worth noting that I did use this card for any of our grocery spending and instead continued to use the cashback apps and other methods I mention in this earlier blog to achieve a higher return on this spending.

Therefore, the alternative for this spending would have either been putting it on a non-rewards credit card (for the protection element of credit cards) or using Chase to get 1% cashback which would have worked out at just £60 back.

It’s also worth noting that I have taken advantage of a number of the other rewards available for the American Express card including recently booking two airport lounges for upcoming trips which alongside the other rewards have probably added another ~£150+ of value so all in all, I would say it was well worth taking the card out.

Most of the points did come from the initial sign-up offer so once the free period for this card ends, I plan to switch it for another rewards credit card to rinse and repeat.