AMC Rocket Up Your Ass

A guy has paid $895 a year for the Amex Platinum. He's carried the card for 3 years. That's $2,685 in annual fees. He got it because a friend said "it's the best travel card," and he loves how it looks when the server picks it up at dinner. What does he use it for? Flights, a few hotel nights, and the occasional Centurion Lounge visit. That's it. Last month, he complained at a dinner party: "I think I'm about to cancel. $895 is insane for a metal card." Across the table, his friend, a former credit card rewards analyst who now helps people optimize their cards for a living, put down her fork and said: "You've been paying $895 and using maybe $300 of it. You've never activated half your credits. You've never enrolled in the ones that need enrollment, so they've been sitting there unused. You've never used the $200 Uber Cash that resets monthly, you've let the digital entertainment credit expire 36 times, you've never touched the Resy dining credit that resets every quarter, you've never booked a prepaid hotel through Amex Travel to trigger the $600 hotel credit, you've never used the airline fee credit, you've never checked the Equinox, lululemon, CLEAR, Walmart+, or Uber One credits, and you've never added an authorized user. You're not paying a fee. You're paying a subscription and canceling every benefit inside it." He pulled out his phone and opened his Amex account for the first time since the day he activated the card. She walked him through 10 steps in 25 minutes. By the end, he'd found over $2,000 in credits he could realistically use in the next 12 months, on things he was already buying. "I wasn't wasting a premium card. I was ignoring a premium card." Here's every Amex Platinum benefit most cardholders never use 🧵