But, I also understand from reading here Amex is like your spouse, and you must do things to keep them happy.
Or a high maintenance mistress who'll deny you more honey if you don't keep spending on her while trying to maintain your marriage to a girl named Chase.
The Platicorn is in my cardmatch the couple of times I’ve done one. I’m not going to lie, it makes me smile when I see it
, however, while it’s a great offer, as you spelled out it’s not really a keeper card long term for me. So as I said I want to proceed with caution. Also excellent info on Gold and [supportals]. That card has always been appealing to me.
I did see you guys mention the new Centurion lounge in Phoenix. That might be enough for me to keep the card.
Almost anyone will tell you that the Platicorn is worth a "hall pass" from Chase. This is your one chance to get a 100k MR bonus on the personal Platinum card.
As I mentioned before, the public offer on the Platinum is 60k MR, although you can pull a 70k or 75k MR offer with a little effort via incognito mode on your browser. If you or P2 had a Platinum, one could support the other to their own Platinum (assuming no Platicorn) for a 15k MR support bonus and probably one of those 70k or 75k MR incognito offers. (DO NOT self-refer.) That gets you close to the 100k MR offer, but your haul is split between two MR accounts (which probably won't matter much if P1 and P2 eventually transfer the MRs to Hawaiian and pool them into one account.) And note that the above scenario assumes one of you already has a Platinum card from which to support; so while getting that second Platinum card will get your team a combined 85-90k MR, what SUB did you get on the first Platinum? Only 60k, 70k, or 75k MR, assuming no supportal?
Say you or P2 went for the Gold card first and take the 50k MR SUB. Good bonus, but you could've done better if you had a Platinum to support from for another 15k MR support points plus pulling that 50k MR SUB in incognito mode. The Gold support can support to a Platinum card (or any other Amex card and co-branded cards), but its support bonus is only 10k MR. So while you can probably pull up a 70k or 75k MR incognito offer for the Platinum via support from the Gold, you'll only get a 10k MR bonus for that supportal and under this scenario you didn't have a card to support to the Gold, which could've cost you as much as 15k MR.
The idea is you should start big somewhere and then try to get the best possible offer on any subsequent Amex card by leveraging incognito and targeted offers and cross-support for additional bonuses between 2 Players, since Amex signup bonuses are generally once per lifetime per card product. It doesn't get much bigger than the 100k MR Platinum, which you can use to refer P2 to his own Amex cards at 15k MR a pop (up to 55k MR/year).
The tricky part is what do you do with the Platinum after you've met MSR because then it becomes a shiny 1x MR earner (how often are you going to pay for flights or book travel through Amex for 5x MR?) and a perks (Uber credits, Saks credits, lounge access, Gold status at Marriott and Hilton) card. You need to keep putting some spend on the Platinum to keep Amex happy. Amex Offers help and I'll add most of my Amex Offers that I intend to use onto the Platinum unless it's the type of spend that earns a 3x or better bonus on another one of my Amex cards. I have an Amex BBP that earns 2x MR on everything, but the difference between 1x MR on the Platinum and 2x MR on the BBP isn't usually too much, especially when spend is discounted with an Amex Offer. Generally, I don't mind too much putting some "everything else" spend on my 1x MR earning Platinum, even though I have a 2x MR earning BBP, just to have some spend on the Platinum every month. So it's still suboptimal behavior to spend on the Platinum when there are objectively better cards to spend on, just to keep Amex happy. I will almost always put spend on another card if it earns me a 3x or better return. This becomes harder when you have a Gold card that you can use to buy VGC/MCGC at supermarkets during a $10 or $15 off deal and earn 4x MR, then put your "everything else" spend on those VGC/MCGC. And all this assumes just organic spend maximizing category bonuses, not new cards with MSRs you could be spending towards.
And what happens after you've had the Platinum card for year and you've used up the airline fee credit, Saks and Uber credits? Call in for a retention offer. You'll probably get offered something like 20k MR for $3k spend, 30k MR for $4k spend, or 50k MR for some or
no spend. Look at your 5/24 status. If you want to keep a Platinum to access the lounges and other perks, do you have room to churn another flavor of the Platinum to pocket a 60k MR bonus for $5k of spend? If not, is the Biz Plat (which won't add to your 5/24) with a 100k MR SUB for $10k MSR doable for you? There are options to consider.
And then there’s Barclay. I’ve read enough here about people’s experience the Barclay “AA” Biz to be thoroughly nervous about that route. Although it’s an excellent offer, that would be a leap of faith application, but man otherwise I would do it in a minute. Food for thought. They did a hard pull for my Aviator Red last month so I might give that one some more time and try to keep some spend on the Aviator. If that matters
Yeah... Barclays is cray cray. I don't have too much experience with their cards, but I have heard they're somewhat spend sensitive as well.