How to Get HUGE Value From the Amex Gold, Platinum Duo

The Amex Platinum and Amex Gold are a common duo of credit cards that people use to earn rewards, get into airport lounges, get free food through the credits they offer, and recently there was this post on Reddit that really caught my interest. A user named Falcon Joshua shared a breakdown of the value he is getting from his Amex Platinum and Gold in a one-year period. His results seem pretty good and in this video I want to go through them and break down each part and we'll also see if he got more or less value than I did in my most recent year-end breakdown of the Amex Gold and Platinum cards. Hey credit warriors welcome to the show my name is Ben Hedges aka The Credit Shifu and on this channel I cover US credit cards, personal finance, and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that please subscribe. Oh and this video is brought to you by Silo, the brokerage where you earn credit card style points on your investments and get your Amex Platinum and Gold card for free but more on that later. Alright so here is the post where he shares all his data. Based on my family's kind of gross amount of spend on dining and groceries both of these work out to net positive. I listed all possible benefits the ones I don't really use just show zero. We're sitting on about 10 round-trip flights from points it's about time to start using them and below he shares that now he has 444,000 Amex points which has a potential value of about $9,000 if you use two cents per point as the value. So let's actually break down his spending and use of benefits and see how it all adds up. First we'll look at the platinum and he's actually in his first year on the platinum card so you will see a welcome bonus on this one. So the first two items are zeros since he did not spend any money on flights or hotels in the past year. Next we have $180 worth of points from miscellaneous spending at one point per dollar. Now he values points at one cent per point so this means that he spent $18,000 on the platinum card in the one point per dollar category which for credit card enthusiasts really makes you go oh that hurts right you feel it right there like it being stabbed in the heart so much spending at one point per dollar but remember he is in his first year so he had to spend $12,000 to get the bonus on the platinum card right the spending requirement now on the platinum is $12,000 which is pretty high. Not sure why he would spend an additional $6,000 but that's only $500 per month so it isn't that much when you split it over the year. Next he lists his welcome bonus and it is a big one. So we see that he got $1,750 in value from the welcome bonus like we said he's valuing points at one cent per point so this would be 175,000 points so he must have got a special targeted offer. He then used the digital entertainment credit for youtube tv so that's $300 but he did not use any of the hotel credit that is a real shame since that is the biggest single credit on the card at $600 per year so that is $600 he left on the table there. That is one credit that I always try to use I did manage to use the whole thing this year but last year like him I did not. He has $17 for TSA pre-check or global entry he's splitting it over five years so I guess he went for TSA pre which is kind of a waste since global entry includes TSA pre anyway although it takes longer to apply so maybe that's why. He didn't get any value from the hotel statuses since he only stayed at Airbnb's last year and speaking of Airbnb if you're in the New York area or the tri-state area why not have a weekend away at my Airbnb cabin in the Catskills mountains link is in the description below. He didn't go to Delta Sky Club so he didn't use any of his 10 complimentary Delta Sky Club visits that's a shame too since the Delta Sky Club is a really good benefit although also I rarely make use of it. $157.62 on Peacock via Walmart plus I guess he uses Peacock that's why he is listing it. $119.88 for Uber One membership and I guess he views that as a valuable benefit. $200 Uber credits he seems to have used. $300 Lululemon credit $75 quarterly and this is one of the easiest ones to use all right since everyone has to wear clothes I mean even if you're a nudist you can't just not wear clothes like on the street right so you have to wear clothes. Now I buy all my underwear from Lululemon I really like their boxer shorts I've bought pants there too and this quarter my wife wants to get some yoga pants. Sure it is a little overpriced but normally I only buy from the we made too much section where everything is about 30% off so that makes the credit go a lot further. Next he did use the Rezzy credit for $400 $100 per quarter this is a Rezzy restaurant credit and it's one I always make use of too and it's really easy to use since it's valid at pretty much any Rezzy restaurant. He did use the Aura ring credit which I find to be the most useless credit on there but he explains in his post that he was already an Aura ring user so I guess he got real value out of that. He did use the airline credit for $200 for drinks and checked bags on a flight. I'm guessing he's not a Delta flyer that's why he didn't use the SkyCub benefit but he did make use of priority pass lounges and he values that at $239 saying that is if he uses it twice a year. I'm guessing he must be assuming traveling with his family since that sounds like a lot of money for just two visits per year for one person okay so I'm not sure the exact details of that but anyway that's the value he gives it. Let's now look at the total value he got from the platinum card for the year. But first over the past year you've probably heard me talking about Silo the investing platform that enables you to earn points on your stocks. It's like what Bilt has done with earning points on rent but for investing. Now we have an exciting update about Silo that I know viewers of this channel in particular will find interesting. They've just launched their travel portal where you can use Silo points to book travel at one cent per point with over 300 airlines and hotel brands and they also have two transfer partners coming in the next month and more will be added both airlines and hotels. If your account with Silo is big enough you unlock status benefits. At $200,000 they'll cover your American Express blue cash preferred annual fee and Costco executive membership and at $1,000,000 they'll cover your Amex gold annual fee and even cover the $895 annual fee on your Amex platinum too. They even say that if you are in the Chase or Citi credit card system instead of Amex you should reach out to them because they may very well pay the annual fee on one of those cards for you instead. This is all in addition to up to 250,000 points on your portfolio balance each year and an up to 250,000 point welcome bonus in the first year so a total of potentially 500,000 points in your first year. That bonus is only available until transfer partners launch which is any day now so if you've been thinking about creating a Silo account this is your last chance to get up to a 250,000 point welcome bonus. While credit card companies give you points for spending money Silo has turned that concept on its head and gives you points for saving and investing money so if you want to get your Amex gold and platinum for free while also earning points on your portfolio that you can use for free travel use my link silomarkets.com slash ben and get started today. Okay so he deducts the annual fee which is $895 and that gives him a value of $3,178.40 for his first year. That is valuing the points at one cent per point though. If you value the points he earned at two cents per point the points value alone is $3,860. So if you did the math again with the points valued at two cents per point and all the other credits minus the annual fee that takes you to $5,108.40. He also shows his value without the bonus of $1,428 which is his assumed second year value although it probably would be a little less since I don't think he's going to spend $18,000 on the card if there's no bonus in play. This means though he got a little bit better value than I did out of my platinum card last year. I estimated $1,066.39 although that was using a very strict method not counting any credits that I consider to be at merchants that I wouldn't spend money at if I didn't have the platinum card. So well done to this guy and if he uses the hotel credit next year he will do even better. Let's now look at his gold card. So the first thing you are going to notice with the gold card is his insanely high spending on dining and grocery. He says he earned $1,440 worth of points in those categories which are four points per dollar categories. So that means that he spent $36,000 on dining and groceries. To give you context in the past I think the most I have spent is about $18,000 in these two categories combined so that is half what he spent but I don't really dine in very expensive restaurants okay not like Michelin start or anything I'm more in the mid-range and I'm out in the countryside too where prices are lower anyway but if this guy is in like San Francisco or LA or somewhere I can totally see him spending a lot more and for groceries too like maybe he goes to Erdogan for his grocery shopping or something. Next he lists the $100 resi credit as a benefit he did use and he didn't use any of the Dunkin credit. This makes me think even more that he might be in San Francisco since there is only one Dunkin in the whole of SF and it's at the airport which is a place that you don't go to very often. He did use the $120 dining credit though through Grubhub which is a strategy that I use too since Grubhub has pretty much every restaurant in the US on there so you can kind of order from any restaurant. He also went to Cheesecake Factory and Buffalo Wild Wings too. He did use the $120 Uber credit as well and annually that all added up to $1,780 minus the annual fee of $325 and that takes us to $1,455 and that's valuing the points at one cent per point. Let's now see if he got more or less value than I did out of the gold card. I'm guessing more because of his massive spending and yes he totally blew me away on the gold card. In my most recent video on the gold card which tracked my use of the card in 2025 I got $293 in value out of it if I value the points at one cent per point. Last year was a low spend year on the gold card for me and I didn't really maximize the credits either so I think this coming year probably I will get a significantly higher value out of it but for him yeah it mostly came from his $36,000 worth of spending in the 4x categories that's what really drove the value for him and I commend him for basically just using the gold card exclusively in those categories because he didn't list any you know points he'd earned at one cent per point. Alright guys that's the video for today and if the guy who made this post Falcon Joshua sees this thank you so much for sharing your feel free to leave a comment let us know if there's anything we missed I'd also love to know what city you're in the size of your family where you dine and shop for groceries also your zodiac social security number blood type no I'm just kidding. Anyway don't forget guys if you want to get your Amex gold and platinum for free whilst also earning points on your portfolio use my link silomarkets.com slash ben to get started quick because their 250,000 point welcome bonus will only be around for a few more weeks. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new we'll see you next time bye