American Express Business Gold Rewards Card – 75,000 Points

Here we go again! American Express must have found this one-day application approach the best way to go because here is another offer of 75,000 Membership Reward points after $10,000 in spending the first four months (with the American Express Business Gold Rewards card).

They are running this one at the same time they have another 50,000 point offer going one (through November 26). Again, they must have found they get a fair amount of applications with this ONE DAY app routine or else they wouldn’t do it.

Here are the particulars:

• The bonus does not apply to you if you have had an American Express Business Gold, Green, or Platinum card (it is fine if you have the personal versions of these) within in the past 12 months
• You must spend $10,000 in the first four months of the card being opened
• It is a business card
• There is a $175 annual fee (waived for the first year
  

  American Express Business Card Offer - 75K Points Today Only!

  )

 

It’s a great card. I got it just about a year ago when they ran a similar promo (I just converted it to the Platinum for 25,000 more points) and used it exclusively for airfare since you get 3x points per dollar spent on airfare. One of the nice things about it is that, unlike most other cards and their category bonuses, the points for airline tickets I purchased would normally post within 4 days after I bought the ticket (sometimes even if I cancelled the ticket). To me, that is a great thing – I like having my points right away and not having to wait 4-6 weeks for them (I’m not very patient).

Now, $10,000 is a lot to spend in 4 months (particularly if you are a new business, ebay business, etc.) But don’t let that spend scare you away! Here is a fresh idea of how to deal with it – pre-pay your expenses for the next several months. Now, that idea itself is not fresh 🙂 but here is what is. If you are like me, you can’t just prepay 7 months’ worth of expenses and pay it off just like that. Instead, what you do is this – buy grocery gift cards for your groceries, buy gas gift cards, buy Wal-Mart gift cards (Sam’s Club does not take American Express, so this is how you can get around that), buy Amazon gift cards, buy eBay gift cards, pretty much buy gift cards for anything you can think of that would include your normal spending. Now, if you are like me, you get offers all the time from your credit card companies for convenience checks. These are the checks that you can literally write to yourself (without them being cash advances) and deposit in your account for a small transaction fee and, typically, low or no interest for a set amount of time (the offers I have been getting from Chase, for example, are for 1% transfer fee and 0% interest for 16 months). Now, while it is not a good idea to run balances, in this case, it can actually make sense.

Here is how it would work (if I was going to do it): I take one of my Chase checks on an account that I have over $10,000 credit limit on and set the check aside. Now, I would go buy all the aforementioned gift cards and then deposit the check in my account and pay my American Express bill as I normally would. How this works is that I have just bought things I was going to buy anyway over the next 6-9 months. Now, I just pay the Chase card off each month with what I actually spent with the gift cards. Net, it would cost me $100 and net me a minimum of 85,000 American Express points (counting the minimum spending) that I could easily get a value of over $1600 from. Not bad, hmm?

American Express Business Rewards Gold Card – 75000 Point Offer – Application Link (I do not receive a commission for this link)

Helpful links:

• The Benefits of Having Business (related to card applications)
• How To Meet Spending Thresholds