My experience with American Express cards
For years I only used Visa and MasterCard. The only real exposure I had to American Express was through marketing (commercials, direct mail, etc.), and the pressure put on me by Costco to get an American Express card. I always ignored the hype / ads, but lately I’ve been noticing the great benefits of high cash back benefits. I use an Emigrant Direct credit card which gives me 1.4% cash back on all purchases, which, to the best of my knowledge, is pretty darn good. At Costco, however, I noticed that American Express cards beat that 1.4% in certain areas—specifically by giving 2% back for travel and 3% back for restaurants (which, I’ve noticed, also seems to apply to bars / pubs, which is very cool for us younger guys).
After I saw these benefits, and thought about the fact that every time I fly to Denmark (where I have family), I drop about $1,000 on various travel expenses, I started to think about getting an American Express card. Using the Denmark / Euro trip example, that’s $30.00 cash back—and that adds up over time. Even comparing it to my already impressive Emigrant Direct card at 1.4%, that’s a $16.00 improvement—good enough for me to sign up, especially since the offer I was faced with had no annual fees (I believe, do not quote me on this).
While I’m on the topic of my finances, I’ll also ramble that I’ve been getting more and more interested in trading stocks online. Online trading has been a big deal for years now, but, like American Express cards, it’s something I’ve somehow avoided. Most recently, I’ve been doing online trading through Ameritrade. For some reason my “free trades” I was supposed to get for opening the account didn’t seem to work—not sure what that was all about—but so far online trading has been an easy and positive experience for me.