AMEX Everyday Archives - Your Mileage May Vary

AMEX Sent Me A Great Referral Offer For The Everyday Preferred, But There’s One Catch

American Express has one of the most generous referral policies of all the major banks. If you have an AMEX card, you’re able to generate a referral link that’ll reward you with points, miles or cash, depending on the card, when someone is approved for a card . Where AMEX differs from other banks is that not only can you refer people for the same card that you have, but they can also sign up for any number of other cards and you’ll still get the referral bonus.

These are only some of the cards available with one of our AMEX referral links:

Today we received an email from American Express with a referral offer for the Everyday Preferred card. It’s a tempting offer for a card that normally doesn’t have that great of a signup bonus.

But there’s a catch to the offer, which I’ll get to in a second…

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How To Maximize Your Points Earned With A Large Expense

No matter if it’s planned or unplanned, no one likes being faced with a large bill that you need to pay. It could be something you know is coming, like your tax payment. You could also be planning some renovations that’ll cost a pretty penny. There are also unplanned expenses like car repairs or emergency medical bills. Needless to say, there is any number of these things that you’ll need to pay. One thing you want to happen is that they’ll accept a credit card for the amount due.

Hopefully, you’ll have enough money stashed away to pay these bills. You don’t want to carry a balance on your card and pay the interest charges. However, if you can put the charge on a card, you can earn a bunch of points and miles for these expenses, if you’re prepared.

Here are some of the ways you use large expenses to your advantage to maximize travel rewards.

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How I Spread Out Our Credit Card Spending For The First Half Of 2019

It’s now the second half of 2019. Besides being a good time to look at how we’re doing on our New Year’s Resolutions (I’ve joined a gym but I’m not going as much as I’d like), it’s as good of a time as any to look at our points and miles situation.

Some bloggers are looking at their progression on qualifying for status with airlines or hotels (Ben from One Mile at a Time wrote about his progression, and congrats to him for figuring out it doesn’t pay to be loyal). Since I couldn’t care less how many nights I’ve stayed at a hotel chain or how many miles I’ve flown with an airline, what can I look at?

After sign up bonuses for credit cards, ongoing spend is the next most important way I accumulate points and miles. Looking into where I’m putting that spend and if it fits the plan I have for our points earning is a smart thing to do.

Thanks to Quicken and some scrap paper, here’s a breakdown of our spending for the first six months of 2019.

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The Best Credit Cards To Maximize Grocery Store/Supermarket Spending

According to USA Today, the average American family spends 10% of their income to pay for food, with that spending split almost evenly between eating out and eating at home. Plenty of credit cards provide bonuses for spending on restaurants, fast food and coffee shops but far fewer provide a bonus when buying groceries.

For a spending category that, on average, is 5% of your income, it makes sense to have a card that maximizes the points earned on those purchases. If you don’t want to have a card just for grocery spending, you should at least know which one of your cards will earn you the most amount of points possible.

These bonuses do not include grocery purchases made at Walmart, Target or any discount club like Sam’s Club, Costco or BJ’s.

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Credit Card Review: American Express Everyday Preferred

While you can get a quick boost to your points and miles balances through sign up bonuses, we earn a significant portion of our points through everyday spending. Earning miles while buying groceries or gasoline is not the most exciting part of this game but it’s important to try and get the most out of all your purchases. Paying attention to little things like this will help you build up a nice stash of miles. Continue reading “Credit Card Review: American Express Everyday Preferred”