Amex Green REFRESH Coming? + Last Chance for THIS Sapphire Bonus!

In this video I want to talk about several things. We have some evidence that a new version of the Amex green card may be coming out, with the existing green card getting a name change. Then we have your last chance to get 150,000 points as a welcome bonus on the Chase Sapphire Reserve. We'll tell you when it's ending. Then we have how you can get a bonus of over $300 on the Chase Freedom Unlimited, and we also have several transfer bonuses where you can get up to a 30% bonus transferring your Amex, Citi and Chase points out to various airlines this month. One of these is ending in just a couple of days. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, aka The Credit Shofu, 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. And this video is brought to you by Max Rewards, the ultimate credit card management app, but more on that later. All right, so first of all, let's talk about what seems to be happening with the Amex green card. Check out this Reddit post. Amex retiring or refreshing the green card soon. Hi all, I can't seem to find the message again, but I briefly saw a pop-up in my account this afternoon that said my green card would become classic green card on August 20th, 2026. Has anyone else heard anything about this? And if you want to see what that message actually looks like, someone else posted a screenshot. Here it is, and you can see it's becoming the classic green card on August 20th. Now, although I have the green card, this is actually an authorized user card on my wife's account, so I didn't see this message in my Amex app, but I guess she probably got it. I didn't have time to ask her this morning and now she's at work, so I don't want to bother her. But what might be happening with this? Well, if you are changing the name of the card to the classic green, what feels obvious to me here would be that they're not going to refresh this green card, but instead keep current cardholders grandfathered into this version and then release a new version of the green that's completely different. Maybe you would be able to apply for either the classic green or the new regular green, maybe not. But otherwise, why would you need the name change, okay? If you were just going to refresh it, it would just be the same card but refreshed. And right now there is a system there, the green, the gold, the platinum, so if it was just going to be one green card, why would you change the name? But if you've been in the credit card game as long as I have, you will remember that in the US we used to have the Amex Gold and the Amex Premier Rewards Gold. That card, that Premier Rewards Gold, had a slightly higher annual fee and better rewards than the regular gold. That was ditched though in 2018 with the release of the rebooted gold card, which was way better than both the previous two versions, the normal one or the Premier Rewards Gold, and that's when they brought in the four points per dollar on dining and grocery, which is still a really popular benefit of the Amex Gold. But my point is, we've seen this in the past, right? The idea of having two versions of the same card and you can apply for whichever you think works better for you. Whether or not that is what they're doing here, I don't know, but at least there is precedent for it. However, I think back then a lot of people found it confusing and Amex even recognized that it was confusing to have two gold cards, so I don't know whether they would go back to doing it that way again with the green. So the alternative could be that and if you really want it, maybe you'd be able to get it through a product change. I don't know. And if that happens, what would the next green card be like? I have no idea, but the name is supposedly changing on August 20th, so that's not that long to wait. Presumably details of this supposed new green card would be released around then. Leave your comments below, guys. What do you think is going to happen in August? What would the new benefits on this supposed new green card be? Maybe we'll finally get a green card made of felt. I've been talking about that one for a long time. Amex could be doing their part for the environment by recycling old pool tables from closed down bars. Your card's going to smell like cigarettes and alcohol now. Anyway, on to our next story. Your last chance to get the high bonus on the Chase Sapphire Reserve. So we've seen a few different bonuses on the Sapphire Reserve since Chase refreshed the card last summer. It seems that 125,000 bonus points is the standard, but we currently have a 150,000 point bonus, and that is for spending $6,000 in three months. That should be able to get you a round trip business class ticket to Europe from the US East Coast. Or if you redeem through the travel portal, you're looking at value between $1,500 and $3,000, depending on what level of points boost you're getting. But sites that use affiliate links are now saying that this offer is ending soon. I used to have affiliate links on my channel, and what would happen would be the affiliate network would send out an email close to the end, maybe one to two weeks before, approving you for marketing the card as ending soon or last chance or whatever. But we do actually have a date this time from another source. A Reddit user shared a screenshot of an email from StubHub since StubHub credits are a benefit of the Sapphire Reserve, so they have a partnership there. And it seems that it's StubHub that has spilled the beans that this bonus is ending on June 14th. So yeah, if you are after this bonus, apply before June 14th. But if you don't want to apply that soon, but you're thinking about it, what bonus might be available in the coming weeks if you do want to wait? Well, I imagine it will just go back down to the $125,000 bonus, since that is the number that still appears crossed out on the landing page, giving the impression that that is now the standard bonus and the $150,000 was just a limited time high bonus. Okay, let's move on to a huge bonus on the Chase Freedom Unlimited, and then we got some transfer bonuses for you as well. But first, if you have Amex cards, Chase cards, or any credit cards for that matter, I really recommend using the app Max Rewards to keep track of your spending and rewards across all of your cards. You do a read-only link to your banks, so info on all your cards can be displayed in one place, even if the cards in your wallet are all from different issuers. You can see your transactions, your balances, your points and rewards balances, and even things like credit utilization and the value you are getting out of your cards versus your annual fee all in one place. If you have Amex cards, the pro version of Max Rewards, Max Rewards Gold, is especially useful since it activates all your Amex offers for you, so you never miss a deal, and you may even use an Amex offer and save money without realizing it. You can also search for Amex offers across all your cards, something the Amex website and app doesn't let you do, so it's way easier to find offers that could save you money or earn you extra points. And actually, with recent updates to the app, they've added Chase and even Capital One offers to this too, so I can seamlessly search offers across multiple issuers. You can see I'm finding offers from both Amex and Chase here. There is also the most popular tab where you can find offers that many Max Rewards users are taking advantage of, which normally means they offer great value or are for popular merchants. So, check out Max Rewards. Link is in the description below. You can get a 7-day free trial and a 3-month discount on Max Rewards Gold if you choose to continue after the trial ends. There is also a free version of the app that you can check out as well. Alright, let's look at some transfer bonuses next, and then we'll tell you about the Chase Freedom Unlimited bonus. So, a transfer bonus is when a credit card that offers transferable points like Chase, Amex, Citi Thank You Points, etc. gives you a bonus percentage when you transfer out to an airline or hotel. So, if the bonus was 30%, you would get an extra 300 airline miles for every 1,000 credit card points you transferred over. Okay, so you transfer 1,000, you end up with 1,300. And actually, our first example is exactly that. Citi is offering a 30% bonus when you transfer to Qatar Airlines Avios, and this one runs until June 30th. And Avios are actually also used by British Airways and a load of other airlines. So, if you want, you can easily transfer them to BA, Iberia, several other airlines as well. Next, we have Amex, who are offering a 25% bonus when you transfer points out to Flying Blue, which is the joint loyalty program of Air France and KLM. This one also runs until June 30th. And then there's one more running at the moment from Chase, which isn't new. I think I've actually talked about it in a video before, but it is ending soon. So, let's just take a look at it again. Chase is offering a 30% bonus on transfers to Southwest, and that one ends June 5th. And I'm telling you about that one since, you know, it ends so soon in just like two days time. All right, one more story for today, how you can get a high bonus on the Chase Freedom Unlimited. So, I'm sure everyone knows the Freedom Unlimited. It earns 1.5 Chase points per dollar on everything and has a few other bonus categories. The current welcome bonus is $200. But if you go to Rakuten and search the Freedom Unlimited and then click through from Rakuten, you can get an extra $90 in cashback if you are a brand new Chase customer and $50 extra if you are an existing Chase customer. And if you're new to Rakuten as well, which if you don't know, it's a points and cashback portal where you click through from their site to some of your favorite merchants and you can earn extra cashback or extra points. You can get $50 in cashback if you sign up for Rakuten today through my link below. So, if you're new to Rakuten and new to Chase, you could actually get a total of $340 in cashback. $200 from Chase, $90 from Rakuten for signing up for the Freedom Unlimited through them, and $50 for being a new Rakuten member. Just FYI, if you have your Rakuten account set to Amex points, not cashback, then this deal will show no points. It is only available in cashback form. All right, guys, that is the video for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to get a 7-day free trial of Max Rewards and a 3-month discount with my link below. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.