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How I’m Meeting the $20k Spending Requirement for My Amex Business Platinum – A Full Breakdown

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Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Links in this post may provide us with a commission.

meeting spending requirement 20k amex platinum

Getting to $20k By Many Means

As I wrote about before, I was able to take advantage of a recent offer on the American Express Business Platinum card that gives 150,000 Membership Rewards points after $20,000 in spending during the first three months. That is a lot of spending, but I took it on and sort of consider it a challenge.

Several other bloggers also got the same offer and have set up a competition to see who can make the most profit while meeting the spending requirement. While I am NOT participating in that, I still thought it would be useful to share some of what I am doing to meet the minimum spend.

My Spending Breakdown Thus Far

At first I was planning on using some more common techniques, but then I decided this was a great opportunity to dabble more seriously with reselling and gift card churning.

So far I have spent $12,000 of the $20,000 required. Here is how the spending breaks down:

  • $2k – Large bills that I needed to pay.
  • $5k – Traditional MS. The kind that costs about $4 per $500.
  • $1.5k – Merchant gift cards.
  • $3k – Merchandise for reselling.
  • $500 – Normal expenses.

meeting spending requirement 20k amex platinum

A Few Notes

When I first got this card, I thought that I would participate in more normal methods of MS, hence the $5k in spending. Since then I have decided it would be much better to earn a profit, so I shifted my spending to gift cards and merchandise. I plan to spend most of the other $8k remaining in the same manner.

Reselling & Expected Profit

Hopefully in the future I will be able to break things down more, but most of my buying has been on eBay where I earn eBay Bucks plus portal cashback. I have also been able to stack eBay gift card discounts to some extent.

Since my local grocery store is running a 4X fuel points promotion on all gift cards, I may stock up on those to earn the fuel discounts and then use the cards for future eBay purchases. In the end I expect a 5-10% profit on my reselling and I am making a similar margin when reselling gift cards.

If you factor in the $40 in fees I paid for the first $5k in spending, I am expecting an overall profit of about $200-$300 for the $9,500 in spend that isn’t part of my normal expenses. In the end, I expect an overall profit of about $600 for the entire $20k in spending plus of course 170,000 Membership Rewards points.

Conclusion

As more low hanging fruit methods of MS start to go away, I think it is a great idea to have a backup plan. In my case, this is sort of the beginning of a new business, albeit on a small scale. Either way, I’ll follow up when the spending is complete and the merchandise is sold to see how close or far I am from my totals. I am also doing my best to track my time, so we will see if my return justifies the effort!

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomerhttps://milestomemories.com/
Shawn Coomer earns and burns millions of miles/points per year circling the globe with his family. An expert at accumulating travel rewards, he founded Miles to Memories to help others achieve their travel goals for pennies on the dollar. Shawn also runs a million dollar reselling business, knows Vegas better than most and loves to spend his time at the 12 Disney parks across the world.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Not really related, but I recently applied for the Business Gold and it’s been stuck in the “in progress” stage for the past 6 days. I was told the technology dept needs to confirm some information, but each time I check, I’m told the same thing. Any thoughts on how I can expedite this so I can get a decision?

  2. Reselling is risky but once you have an established practice with a high near perfect rating, you’ll be fine. Like I said in my other comments, I’ve used reselling as my last resort for MS though I rarely make a profit from it (my goal is to at least break even or make a very small profit.) I’ve noticed the smaller the profit = the faster you can sell the merchandise.

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