The Offer
- American Express Charles Schwab is offering up to 125,000 bonus points after $8,000 in spend within the first 6 months
Card Details
- Annual fee of $695 is not waived the first year
- Authorized Platinum cards are $175 for three user (then $175 per Platinum)
- Authorized Gold cards are free
- Full details here
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 5x points per $1 spent on purchases made with airlines or with American Express Travel
- 5x points per $1 spent on hotel & airline bookings made directly from the American Express travel website
- 1x points on all other purchases
- $200 airline incidental credit per calendar year
- $200 Uber credit ($15 per month and additional $20 in December)
- Lounge access:
- Centurion lounge access
- International American Express lounge access
- Delta SkyClub lounge access
- Priority pass select membership
- Airspace lounge access
- $240 digital entertainment credit. This is a credit of $20 per month and can be used on Peacock, Audible, SiriusXM and The New York Times.
- $200 hotel credit. This can be used on select prepaid bookings (Fine Hotels + Resorts® and The Hotel Collection) when using American Express Travel
- $179 Clear credit
- Walmart+ monthly credit. Cardholders will receive a $12.95 credit (covers the full cost of membership).
- $300 Equinox credit. This is a $25 credit each month
- Global Dining Access by Resy
- The Global Lounge Collection
Our Verdict
Previous best offer was 100k points + 10x on shop small/restaurant purchases. We will add this to our list of the best credit card bonuses.
Even though the lifetime language is there does Amex still prompt you that you’re ineligible for the bonus before you hit submit, similar to PUJ?
Yes. You’ll either get PUJ, LL pop-up, or no pop-up at all.
nah
They need to get rid of the lifetime language
you need the removal, they don’t
Never had this Platinum card so i’m just getting up to speed. Looks like you can do a loophole to deposit MR points into ROTH IRA account to bypass income limits as it doesn’t count as contribution.
I’m already doing mega backdoor ROTH up to max $69K/year, wondering if this would count against that limit.
I remember looking into that before. Everything I know about tax law tells me it should count as a contribution, but apparently Schwab doesn’t code it that way and they report it as interest/appreciation. Probably low risk considering how long they’ve been doing it, but wouldn’t surprise me at all if the IRS shuts it down at some point. If that happens hopefully they don’t try to go after everyone for penalties for making excess contributions, but I don’t think you can know for sure.
Also, FYI your $69k limit on your mega backdoor is from the limitations on contributions to your 401k. There’s no limits on rollovers if you’re rolling the funds to a Roth IRA as part of your mega backdoor Roth. But depositing points could count toward your $7k contribution limit to a Roth IRA (or $0 contribution limit if your income is high enough). Also, a decent number of people don’t know Roth is a name, not an acronym. You don’t have to capitalize the whole thing.
Can someone confirm that, perhaps, this is how this card is meant to work (i.e., the MR should be added to a Roth IRA)?
The reason I never did it is because Fidelity does the same thing and codes it as contribution. It would also be hard to argue it’s “interest” if you have 0 other funds in the account
Is it possible to pc from regular to Schwab?
No
Is it possible to PC from the Schwab Investor Card to the Schwab Platinum Card? I doubt it, but that would be a nice way to at least get $300 since I’m ineligible for the 125k.
Best Plat card, highest ever bonus. I’m in for a triple dip.
Wouldn’t triple dip require applying around mid-December, not now?
Only matters when AF posts. You can cancel 30 days after AF.
Remember if you have any version of the platinum card (Morgan Stanley, Regular) you aren’t eligible for sign up bonus.
Are you eligible if you’ve had other versions before, but never gotten a Schwab Plat?
No
Used to but they got rid of it.
also does business platinum count?
No
No. The family language is for personal charge cards. Business platinum is separate
or if about 7 years have passed since your lsat version
If you cash out the SUB at 1.1cpp rate, you can cover the AF w/ 63,182MR. Makes the SUB 61,818 MR?
Sure, if you want to think of it that way.
that makes it 61,818 MR for 8,000 spend which can be transferred for best value. I might be able to use the $200 hotel and the $200 airline. personally i would wait until i need it for a vacation, which means i wont get it.
Worth mentioning with this flavor of the Amex plat you get all the normal benefits plus:
1.5% cash back conversion option
$100, $200, or $1000 annual statement credit if your Schwab holdings exceed 250k, 1m, 10m respectively.
I thought that MR to cash conversion was only 1.1%. Did that change recently?.
It did not. Lucas maybe getting confused with the Schwab Investor card which offers 1.5% cash back on spend since they are posted on the same page. If it had changed, every churning blog under the sun would be posting about it.
Lucas is right on the statement credit but not on cash conversion
https://global.americanexpress.com/card-benefits/detail/schwab-appreciation-bonus/schwab-platinum-card
My bad. 1.1%. I was going off of the wrong card description
That $1000 is new, right? I used to have the Schwab card and I recalled only seeing the top tier of $200 appreciation bonus.