NEW Amex Centurion Lounge OPENING + 10x Points on Dining With THIS Card

In this video, I want to talk about two things. First, how you can get seven Chase points per dollar on all your dining spend and maybe even up to 10 points per dollar on a portion of it. Then we have a new Amex Centurion Lounge that is opening tomorrow. But we can take a sneak peek. I got a load of cool photos to show you. Hey, credit warriors. Welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, a.k.a. the Credit Shifu. And on this channel, we talk about U.S. credit cards, personal finance and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. But let's get into it. Oh, and this video is brought to you by Revenued. But more on that later. So first of all, you may have seen our video from Monday about the new 5X categories on the Chase Freedom, which are groceries, dining and the American Red Cross. I am pretty proud that I was able to get the categories before anyone else by phoning up a Chase rep who told me he could see them in my account already. And in that video, actually, that I put out on Monday, I was even somewhat doubting the information since it's very rare to see grocery and dining together in the same quarter. I was wondering whether the rep was playing a trick on me. But no, the categories are now public. You can activate them. So it was all real. Anyway, what I didn't think of in Monday's video is that you're actually going to end up getting seven points per dollar on dining and you actually have a chance to get up to 10 points or even more at some restaurants. Let me explain. So we are talking about the Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex cards, which offer five percent cash back slash five points per dollar on one thousand five hundred dollars worth of spending each quarter. But in the dining category, the Chase Freedom Flex, so not the Freedom, which is not available to new applicants, but the Freedom Flex, which you can apply for, actually already has a three percent or three points per dollar dining category just all the time unlimited. And then the 5X you earn on dining for the quarter is not going to be instead of that. It actually combines with that. Now, the obvious thing that you would think is that you'd get eight points per dollar, but no, it's actually seven. So to understand this, let's look at how it works when you're getting five points per dollar. Check out this gas purchase for thirty eight dollars, 18 cents on my Freedom Flex card. If we scroll down, you can see the bonus points added for the five percent category, but it's actually only four percent of 3818. OK, the amount of the purchase. And then we have an additional line item of one percent on all purchases. And together they make up five percent. All right. That's how the five percent is worked out, right? It's one percent for all purchases and then an extra four percent for the category, which gives you five. The dining category works the same way. Look at this dining purchase I made for 1308 halal food. It was really good. But anyway, if we scroll down, you can see this listed even more clearly as one point per dollar on all purchases and then two additional points on all dining purchases. So if dining is the category for a quarter, it works out like this. You get one point on all purchases, two additional points since it's a dining purchase for a total of three. And then on top of that, you get an additional four since dining is a quarterly category, which normally would be combining with one point on everything to make five. But this time it is combining with three points per dollar, one on everything, two on dining and then four for the category to make seven. So seven Chase points per dollar outside of bonuses that you can earn on Chase's travel portal. So like with the Sapphire Reserve and stuff, this is actually going to be the highest point earning rate you can get with Chase on regular merchants. All right. Not their own portal. I would definitely take advantage of it. If you max it out with dining spend, you will have one hundred and five dollars in cash back or ten thousand five hundred points. But I did say it was possible to get ten points per dollar, perhaps even more. Well, yes, it is. Let's look at how to do that now. So you're getting seven points per dollar on dining, but dining is actually one of the easiest categories to get extra points on because there are many dining programs out there. Restaurants sign up to these programs and then in exchange for being promoted through the program, they offer a discount to the people who run the program or a commission, I guess you would say to the people who run the program. And then the program then pays a portion of that commission out to the people using the program as points or cash back or whatever. So with these programs, you just link your card to it. And then when you use the card in the restaurants that are listed on the website of that program, you get extra points. Most airlines have a dining program like, oh, look, the American Airlines dining program. Look at that. But the one I really like is the built dining program, since that earns transferable points, which can be transferred to a load of transfer partners, 17 airlines and eight hotel chains, to be exact. Now, the built dining program adds three extra bill points per dollar on your spending at most of the restaurants in the program. So you could be potentially earning ten points per dollar, seven from Chase and three from built on those built restaurants, which are many, especially if you live in a big city. Built and Chase have some of the same transfer partners, too. So even though you're earning different currencies, you could actually pull the points together in British Airways, for example, and then book a flight on American Airlines or any other one world partner, which is what you can do with British Airways points. So anyway, that's a great little trick to get more points. You just have to sign up and link your card to built. And with built, you can also link your Lyft account to get extra points on Lyft rides, too. I'll put the link to built and everything else I talk about in this video today down below. You could also alternatively use any other dining program combined with the seven points per dollar on the built freedom as well. I just like built is my favorite one. All right. Let's now move on to this new Centurion Lounge that is opening tomorrow. But first, I know business can have its ups and downs. We're just about finishing up the summer months, which is the time of the lowest views on YouTube. And as a business owner, that can really cause a headache in my Airbnb business. I have a similar low season, but in the spring. That is why it's always useful to have convenient access to funding sources. And one source of business funding that I think is really useful is from today's sponsor, Revenued. They offer their flex line to businesses over a year old that have at least $20,000 in monthly revenue and maintain a separate business bank account in making funding decisions. Revenued doesn't look at your credit score. Instead, they link to your business bank account with Plaid and base their decision on your actual business revenue data. So your Revenued get it sounds like a TV show from 2003. You can then use the funds for things like managing cash flow, funding investment in your business, hiring and as a buffer in the slow months. Once opened, you are under no obligation to draw on the funds. But the flex line is there for you when you need it. The Revenued flex line charges no origination, maintenance or draw fees. And you can get a funding decision in as little as one hour based on your business revenue, not your credit score. It's a modern, flexible funding tool for established businesses and a great alternative to traditional bank funding. So don't get punked by the big banks. Get Revenued today by clicking my link below to get started. All right. So tomorrow, American Express will open its third Centurion Lounge in Europe. The other two are in London and Stockholm, Sweden, although actually the one in Stockholm, Sweden, apparently isn't a full Centurion Lounge. So some people are saying this is the first full Centurion Lounge on continental Europe, OK, which doesn't include London. Anyway, the new lounge is going to be in Amsterdam. The lounge is 6000 square feet, which unfortunately is on the small side. I tend to hope that any new lounge I look at will be at least 10,000 square feet to avoid overcrowding. But anyway, it's better than having no lounge. And the photos of this new lounge look really beautiful. The entrance area looks really classy. They have the classic wall of leaves to the right of the check-in desk. A few Amex references like the member since sign and then what looks like a modern take on the classic Amex dog on the wall. We have a shot of the bar here. And then we also have a dedicated blue roast coffee bar where you can get freshly prepared espresso drinks from a barista. So no machine dispensed cappuccinos here, which is what you get in some lounges. They have these little booths that you can see on the right hand side and also a living room kind of set up in the middle. There are floor to ceiling windows. But in the points guy's article about this, he said that there wasn't much to see. OK, so sadly, no runway views. Here's a table and chairs in front of the Amex dog that we saw earlier. Amex has also given us some food shots. And all these shots that I'm showing you now are actually official photos from Amex, by the way. So this one looks like the breakfast buffet. But let's now look at some unofficial photos on some blogs. So Upgraded Points had someone there at the media preview of the lounge, and they have a lot more shots of those little booths, which actually look more like nooks. I was thinking they were like booths with like tables that four people could sit around. But no, it looks like they're just sort of a little nook where you can sit and you get sort of semi-privacy to have a phone conversation or do something on a laptop. And there's also some shots of the food in the points guy's article. His shots maybe are a little bit better and it looks good, although there's nothing that really makes me think like this is to die for. All right. But I'm sure the food will be great and it's definitely going to be infinitely better than what you get on the plane. All right. Let's talk about where this is in the airport, the opening times and how to get in. So opens at 6 a.m. on September 17th, which is tomorrow. That's the first ever opening. And it will be open from 6 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. daily. It is located between the E and F piers of the airport, which is an area used for non-European international departures. I have been to this airport before, actually once, but I was traveling there from London, so I probably wouldn't have been in this section. I can't remember. It's so long ago now. But from that, it looks like they are locating it conveniently for people taking flights to and from the US since they say it's for non-European international departures. Now, how do you get in? Well, platinum and centurion cardholders get in, as do their authorized users. Platinum cardholders, however, cannot bring guests unless they have spent seventy five thousand dollars in a cardholder year on that card. OK, on the platinum card. That was the new rule that was brought in a couple of years ago. And you can see that I am nowhere near that. I hardly spend any money on the platinum card. Actually, it's basically just flights that I use the platinum card for. You know, people say the platinum card, it's like a benefits card. Most people don't use it for the spending, except for flights, because you earn five X points back on flights. But if you do spend more than seventy five thousand dollars a year on the platinum card, you can then unlock guest access and bring two guests. All right, guys, that is the video for today. Thank you for watching. A big thank you to Revenued for sponsoring this video. Check out their flex line in the links below. I'll also put links to all the things that I've talked about below, too. So the built dining program, that's an affiliate link. It really helps us out if you use it. And then we have the two articles, Upgraded Points and the Points Guy, which have some more pictures of the Centurion Lounge below. Actually, a load of pictures that I didn't show in this video. So do click those and give those guys some love, too. Please subscribe to the channel if you need. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.