We are massive Amex fans. The value we get from our cards is incredible. Not only have they helped us most of the way to collecting over 1 million air miles, but the perks we have received on top have massively upgraded the way we travel. The Platinum Card is the jewel in the crown for us.
10 years ago I would never have believed I would pay £650 a year to hold a credit card. In fact I was raised to believe that debt is bad and that credit cards were the prime example of that. That might be the case for someone who is bad with money. This strategy requires the discipline (or direct debit) to pay off your card in full each month. And to not look at your credit limit as some kind of pot to be spent. These credit cards have punishing APRs that would probably wipe out all the benefits. But if you have discipline, well you should take a look at those benefits…
If you’re ready to apply for the Amex Platinum card you can get a mammoth 85,000 point (until 13 January 2026) sign up bonus by using our link.
Amex Platinum Benefits
Here is a breakdown of the benefits we utilise from our Platinum Card, which has a £650 annual fee…
Unlimited free Airport Lounge Access for up to 4 people
This was an afterthought but a real game changer for us. We didn’t get the card for this benefit but we have utilised the hell out of it! Prior to getting our Platinum card we would try to get to the airport with as little safe time remaining, grab a pint (usually at a Wetherspoons) and leg it to the gate. Now, with the Amex Platinum card, we casually arrive at the airport within the ridiculously lengthy recommended window, and visit a lounge where we can get a full meals worth of food along with unlimited flight-anxiety-reducing beverages, all included for free with our Amex Platinum lounge access.
Finding the best lounges has become a bit of a game for us. We know the best London airport lounges by heart. We look forward to discovering foreign lounges with new offerings before our return flight (a glass of Etna Rosso before flying home from Catania? Perhaps a margarita or two at the Centurion Lounge in Mexico City?).
We travel about once a month on average, so the minimum this is worth to us just to cover our Wetherspoons pints and occasional Pret sandwich would be about £120 per year. The reality of the value we get is much, much higher. Nevertheless let’s call it £120.
Amex Platinum Worldwide Travel Insurance
This card covers the two of us on all of our travels. Making a claim is easy (recent experience of a stolen phone in Madrid and a laptop left on a flight in Prague to testify!). It covers us for our winter sports too. The travel cover we used to get before these cards cost us £65 each per year. Total value: £130.
Amex Platinum Global Dining Credit
This is an interesting one! Every calendar year Amex load £400 of dining credit for you to use. It’s £200 in the UK and £200 abroad. They break it down further so each credit is £100 from January to June and £100 from July to December.
The list of restaurants is here (and changes every so often so keep an eye on it before you leave the house for this one!). Well you will see there are a lot in London. As frequent travelling Londoners we have never had an issue making full value of this perk.
For years we’ve relished the fact that one of our favourite East London restaurants is on the list (Smokestak). And we have also used the credit for treats we wouldn’t normally splurge on (Bob Bob Ricard and Chiltern Firehouse). Abroad we have to do our research but have frequently found places we would have gone to anyway, such as Figlmuller in Vienna and Casa Lucio in Madrid.
Amex Platinum Offers
Oh ok thats the £650 already. Convenient. Well lets blast past that anyway just to make a point. When you get your Amex Platinum card you will find a section called ‘Offers’ in the app and online. Here lies a treasure trove of savings. In the past 12 months with the Platinum card we have received £769.85 back in credits for travel spend with the likes of United Airlines, Viator, and LNER. That’s not to mention other non-travel offers we have redeemed – usually dining in London.
Ok so that has more than covered the £650 fee for us. Your calculation will be different. But things we do not utilise, which we know other people do, include hotel benefits, such as automatic Gold Status and upgrades with both Hilton and Marriott, and car rental benefits and discounts with Hertz and Avis.
The Amex Platinum Bonus Points
Notwithstanding all of the above, what was the main reason we got this card? Well Amex offer 50,000 Amex Membership Reward bonus points (ordinarily 55,000 but currently 85,000 points if you use our referral link!) for taking out this card if you spent a certain amount in the first few months.
Those points can be converted into many things, including air miles. A widely held valuation (and ours too) puts 1 air miles point at 1 pence. So this alone was nearly enough to justify taking out the card. £550 worth of air miles. You also get 1 point for every £1 spent. So after spending £10k on the card I had £650 worth of air miles and all the perks and savings above were already paid for. You can look at it either way. We could never have dreamt the amount of money this card has saved us.
If you travel frequently like us there is a good chance this card will not only save you money but also elevate the way you travel. We’ve never looked back and we make sure one of us always has one. It really has been a game changer for us. The sign up bonus is currently only available to applicants who have not held the card for 24 months – we might coincidently cancel one of ours every two years and have the other one of us apply for a new one.
The gateway card – Amex Gold Card
Nevertheless, I often recommend a different Amex card for first timers. I remember when I first saw that £650 fee thinking how crazy that would be to spend that just to hold a credit card. It’s more than a credit card really, but it can take a while to get comfortable with it.
My first Amex card, and the one I recommend to many, is the Gold card.
- This card is fee-free for the first year (be sure to cancel).
- It gives you 20,000 Membership Reward bonus points (ordinarily 22,000 but currently 45,000 if you use our referral link – just click on ‘view all cards’ and navigate to the Gold).
- It still gives you 1 point per £1 spend.
- You get 4 free Priority Pass lounge passes (rather than unlimited).
- And you still get access to many offers and a chance to get used to the Amex ecosystem for free.
It’s a bit of a no-brainer if you ask us. To get those 22,000 points you need to spend £3,000 on the card in the first 3 months. By then you would have 25,000 points thanks to the point per £ spend. That alone would be enough for a return flight on British Airways to most of Europe, including Dubrovnik, Lisbon, or Venice.
Thats enough for this article. But we also almost always hold a British Airways Amex card too. More on that here if you really want to get into things!