New GAURANTEED 150k Bonus on Amex Platinum - How to Get it...

In this video, I want to talk about a very special limited time bonus. You have a chance to pick up 150,000 points guaranteed on two versions of the Amex Platinum card. This isn't, though, up to X amount of points, and we tell you how much you'll get after you apply, and then they disappoint you with a really low offer. No, this is 150,000 points guaranteed. Hey, credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, aka The Credit Shifu, and on this channel, I cover U.S. credit cards, personal finance, and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe, but let's get into it. So if you just search online, chances are you will see this welcome bonus on the Amex Platinum. 80,000 points for spending $12,000 in your first six months. It's a pretty high spend requirement, but the fact that it's six months instead of three makes it more doable. Okay, $2,000 per month. Many people should be able to hit that, but it's a lot of spend for only 80,000 points. So instead, you could try your luck at using a friend's referral link, and this gives you that up to 175,000 bonus for spending the same $12,000 in six months. The way this works is you apply, and they do a soft credit check, and then tell you what they are going to offer you, which could range from like 80,000 all the way up to the full 175,000 and different numbers in between. Now, there is no risk in doing this since they only do a hard credit check that affects your credit report if you actually accept the offer, but many people don't get offered the full 175,000 or even 150,000. So is there a way to get a guaranteed 175,000 or close to it? Well, yes, there is. Two versions of the Amex Platinum are now offering a guaranteed 150,000 point bonus, and that would be the Amex Platinum for To get these cards, you just have to open up an account with either of these two stock brokerages, which is easy to do, and you don't really have to even use your account if you don't want to. So either of these cards would be a good alternative for people who are considering getting the personal Amex Platinum card but are being ghosted by Amex on that high bonus. Each of these cards offers all the benefits of the regular Platinum with a few extras on top of that. Let's look at the advantages of each one now. So the Charles Schwab Amex Platinum is the card that I have, and there are two main benefits on top of what you get on the regular Platinum. The main one that everyone can benefit from, no matter how wealthy or poor you are, is invest with rewards. You can cash out points into your Charles Schwab brokerage account at a value of 1.1 cents per point. It used to be 1.25 cents per point, which was really good, but they changed it a few years ago. However, if you only have the regular Platinum, then the only cashback star redemption that you can do is a statement credit for 0.6 cents per point, which is throwing your points away. Amex isn't like Chase with like a 1 cent per point cashback option. It's also limited to 1 million points per year, which you wouldn't think that you could hit, but personally I do come close to that most years since I transfer over points that I've earned from Rakuten during referrals, and that gets me a lot of points. But anyway, if you're investing for your future, this is a great way of getting money into the stock market without having to take it out of your hard-earned paychecks. Or you can always just put it into your Charles Schwab account and then withdraw it to another account and spend it, whatever you want to do. The other benefit unique to this card is this, the annual appreciation bonus. A $100 card statement if you're qualifying Schwab holdings are equal or greater than $250,000 and less than 1 million. A $200 card statement credit if you're qualifying Schwab holdings are equal to or greater than 1 million and less than 10 million. And then a $1,000 card statement credit if you're qualifying Schwab holdings are equal or greater than 10 million. So if you're in your kind of mid to late 30s or in your 40s and you have a pretty average size retirement account, I know people in their mid 20s, early 20s won't have this. They won't have built up that much wealth yet. But you know, it's totally realistic that someone in there like who's around 40 years old will have $250,000 or more in a retirement account. And so if you have that with Schwab, you will get $100 back. And then people with more money in Schwab obviously will benefit more. And people with over 10 million get the whole annual fee and then a little bit extra paid for. So if you fit into this category, great. But the thing that everyone can certainly benefit from, even people who are like in their early 20s or something just starting out on their journey of wealth building is the redeeming Amex points for 1.1 cents per point. All you need to be eligible for this card is a Charles Schwab account. It could be a brokerage account, IRA, whatever you want. And there are no account minimums. It was actually a thousand dollars when I first opened my Schwab account many years ago, but now it's zero. So you could totally get a Charles Schwab account just to get this card and then use it to redeem the cash back into that account. But investing is a worthwhile thing to do. So I think if you open an account with them, you probably will start thinking about buying some stocks or just broad market ETFs anyway. Could be a win win. All right. Let's look at the Morgan Stanley card, since the Morgan Stanley version has one very big advantage over other versions of the card. But first, if you do like using credit cards to earn points for free travel, one great way of earning even more points is to sign up and link your existing credit cards to the built rewards program. You may know built as the company that lets you earn points on rent and mortgages. And they also released three new credit cards recently. And yes, they do have all that. But built also has a very good dining program, which lets you earn three extra points per dollar on top of what you'd already earn on your card at the restaurants in their program. So it works great with cards like the Amex gold, for example, since you get four points per dollar from Amex on dining and then three from built for a total of seven points per dollar. You can also earn one extra point per dollar at Walgreens. So that works great with the Chase Freedom Flex, which is 3x at drugstores. So now you're getting 4x. Built has a load of transfer partners and points are worth 1.25 cents each through the travel portal. So sign up with my link below. It's totally free, but don't forget to link all the cards that you plan on using on dining and at Walgreens. And you can also link your Lyft account for extra points on Lyft. You can even link your Rakuten account, too, if you want to earn built points instead of Amex points through Rakuten. All right, let's talk about the Morgan Stanley Amex Platinum. So to get this card, you just need an E-Trade account. Yes, it is available to people with other types of Morgan Stanley accounts, too. We are talking about more high net worth individuals. But for the average Joe, the easiest way to get it is just to open an E-Trade account, which is really easy and has no account minimum. E-Trade also has a promo going on from now until June 30th, where you can get cash bonuses up to 1500 dollars for funding a new account. This card has two useful benefits that everyone can benefit from. First, you can redeem points into your E-Trade or Morgan Stanley account at one cent per point. It doesn't beat the 1.1 from Schwab, but it does beat the standard 0.6 value statement credit from Amex. And it seems that there is no maximum amount per year. Then in addition to that, and this next one is the really big benefit that sets it apart from other versions of the Platinum card, you can get your first authorized user card for free. That's right. First authorized user card, zero dollar annual fee. And then after that, if you want more, it's 195 each, which is the normal price. So this will actually be a very useful benefit for a couple that frequently travels together, since Amex now doesn't allow free guests in the Centurion Lounge unless you spend seventy five thousand dollars per year or open an authorized user card for that person. Well, with the Morgan Stanley Platinum, you can do that for free. So in effect, you can get a free guest in the Centurion Lounge, but it's only for that one person who is your authorized user. There's actually also an annual appreciation bonus as well for high spenders, and that gives you eight hundred and ninety five dollars per year. So it pays the annual fee. Here is the small print of it on screen. If you think that you might be able to get it, just pause the video and have a look. But it's only going to be for a small fraction of people in our audience, probably. So I'm not going to go into all the details. Now, both of these cards, one hundred and fifty thousand point offers are limited time offers. So when do they end? Let's look at that now. So the end date on both of them is July 8th, twenty twenty six. That gives you exactly two months from the recording of this video to sign up. And like we've already said, the spend requirement is twelve thousand dollars in six months to get the bonus. So if you're a big spender, you could get it soon. But a lot of people would end up actually getting one hundred and fifty thousand points sometime in late fall. These are public offers. So you can just search the cards on Google and sign up. Or if you want to try your luck at the one hundred and seventy five thousand point offer and see if you can get it, I'll put my referral link down below. Might as well. And then also I'll put a link to the built dining program down there as well, which once you sign up, you have access to the whole of built to including paying rent and mortgages with whatever card you want. But the dining program is kind of extra special because you can earn extra points on top of what you earn on your existing cards. It's free, kind of a no brainer. I really recommend it. All right, guys, that's the video for today. Please subscribe if you knew. We'll see in the next one. Bye bye.