My Honest Review After Six Months With The Amex Gold (2024)

Earn 60,000 Membership Rewards® Points after you spend $6,000 on eligible purchases on your new Card in your first 6 months of Card Membership. Plus, receive 20% back in statement credits on eligible purchases made at restaurants worldwide within the first 6 months of Card Membership, up to $100 back. Limited time offer. Offer ends 11/6/24.

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1. Earning Transferable Points on All Things Food

I’m a huge fan of transferable points currencies. While many flexible points cards offer great rewards on travel expenses, the American Express® Gold Card beats virtually all of them when it comes to earning rewards on groceries and dining.

That’s great for me because my family of four (including two growing and always-hungry boys) spends a lot of money on food. Our food budget is a constant thorn in my side, but there’s some comfort in knowing that at least I’m getting a top earnings rate every time I use my Amex Gold at the grocery store register or drive-thru window.

TheBlue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express earns up to 6% on groceries (terms apply). But neither of those cash-back cards offer transferability. If you want the combination of strong rewards-earning on food with the ability to move those rewards to partners, it’s hard to do better than the Amex Gold.

2. Partners, Partners, Partners

There’s a reason why I focus on earning flexible rewards points. Transferring credit card rewards to loyalty programs, especially airlines, is a tried-and-true method of yielding high redemption values.

With this in mind, I prize the versatility of the Membership Rewards program. Membership Rewards Points are transferable to more than 20 partner loyalty programs, including 18 airlines and three hotels.

That’s more partners than I get with Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points or Capital One Rewards. I can also transfer points to Delta SkyMiles, HawaiianMiles and ANA Mileage Club now–all of which aren’t partnered with any of those other major credit card rewards programs.

If you’re like me and you appreciate the flexibility that travel partners offer, you’ll love earning Membership Rewards points. And the American Express® Gold Card is arguably the best way to earn them on everyday spending.

3. Free Authorized Users

Whenever my wife or I get a new credit card account, we always add each other as authorized users. It’s one of our favorite “two-player mode” strategies that allows us to work together to earn rewards and meet the minimum spending requirements for welcome bonuses.

I appreciate that the American Express® Gold Card doesn’t charge any extra fees for the first few authorized user cards. Primary card members can add up to five additional cards for free (after that, you’ll pay $35 per card).

This gives the Amex Gold an even bigger price advantage over its premium sibling, The Platinum Card® from American Express (terms apply, see rates & fees). On top of having a much higher annual fee of $695, the Amex Platinum charges a separate fee for authorized users. Amex actually just raised this fee in August 2023—it now costs $195 for each additional Platinum card.

If you don’t plan to add authorized users to your account, this fee won’t matter. But for my wife and me, combined spending is a key part of our credit cards rewards strategy. Paying an extra authorized user fee makes this approach a bit less effective and raises our break-even point.

My aversion to authorized user fees is also one reason that I recently chose the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card over the Amex Platinum to be my first and only premium card. Moving forward, I’ll use my Amex Gold to earn 4 points per dollar on food, and I’ll rely on my Venture X to get airport perks and earn 2-plus points per dollar on everything else.

4. Statement Credit Hassles

The Amex Gold offers two different credits that are worth up to $120 each per year. The first is an Uber Cash benefit and the other is a Dining Credit that can be used with Grubhub, The Cheesecake Factory, Goldbelly, Wine.com, and Five Guys locations after enrollment.

Add up those two $120 credits and you get a total of $240 in available statement credits per year. That help offsets the card’s $325 annual fee before you even earn any rewards. Sounds great, right?

In reality, it can be more difficult to use those credits than you might think. Here are three discoveries I made during my first few months with the Amex Gold that are worth bearing in mind if you decide to get the card yourself.

Monthly Credits Require More Ongoing Work Than Annual Credits.

Those $120 credits are broken up into $10 monthly increments. They don’t roll over either so you have to be vigilant to use them before the end of each month. If you don’t, you just lose them and can’t get them back.

This is different from the annual travel credits that are offered with mid-range travel cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or the Citi Premier® Card. With those credits, you can use the entire amount at any time during the year which gives you a lot more flexibility.

There were a couple of months that I forgot to use one or both of my Amex Gold credits. Inevitably, I would realize a day or two into the next month that I had let them go to waste and I’d get really annoyed.

Eventually I resorted to creating reminders on my phone to use them. Yes I know that sounds ridiculous and it’s fine if you want to laugh. All I can say is it solved the problem for me and I’m much happier for it.

Authorized User Cards Don’t Qualify for the Uber Cash Benefit.

Something else that I learned the hard way was that the Uber Cash benefit only applies to the primary card member. Initially, I added my wife’s authorized user card to our Uber account and waited impatiently for our $10 in Uber Cash to arrive. After a few days, I finally called Amex customer service to find out why it wasn’t showing up.

Unfortunately, the representative I spoke to gave me the wrong information. She said I needed to make a qualifying Uber or Uber Eats transaction and the $10 credit would hit my account a few days later. So I ordered a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts through Uber Eats (don’t judge) and waited for my credit to arrive. It never did because that’s not how the Uber Cash benefit works.

Once you’ve added an eligible Amex Gold card to your Uber account, the Uber Cash will show up in your wallet. The problem was that I wasn’t adding an eligible card since we had added my wife’s card instead of my own.

After doing some more digging, I finally figured this out. I switched my Uber account payment method to my Amex Gold card and, just like that, the $10 in Uber Cash showed up a few minutes later. I haven’t had any hiccups since, but it was still a frustrating start.

Credits Aren’t Really Money-Savers if You Have To Spend More To Use Them.

Even with reminders set and the right card on file, it took some creativity to find smart ways to use my credits without adding costs that I normally wouldn’t pay. Admittedly, this was partly a function of where I live. While I love The Cheesecake Factory, the closest location is about an hour away from me in the Orlando, Florida area.

Our family visits Orlando fairly often and there have been a couple times where it worked out for us to eat at those restaurants while we were there. However, I wouldn’t want to make a special trip to Orlando just to use a statement credit. The extra money spent in gas would cancel out the $10 I’d save on the meal.

I also wouldn’t normally order cakes, wine or food gifts from the likes of Goldbelly or Wine.com. So, again, ordering from any of those sites would strictly be so that I could use my Amex Gold Dining Credit. But if that’s money I wouldn’t normally spend, is the card really saving me money? I say no.

So that leaves Grubhub. Unless you’re a Gruhub+ member, you’ll pay a fee for delivery orders in addition to whatever tip you leave for your driver. Yet again, I’d be spending more to “save.” This same issue applies, by the way, to making an Uber Eats delivery order to utilize your Uber Cash benefit.

So what can you do to avoid paying extra costs in months that you aren’t already spending money with Uber or at eligible restaurants? For me, the solution has been to make pickup orders through Grubhub and UberEats. With no delivery fees tacked on, the two $10 credits essentially get me two free lunches per month. That works for me.

Those who live closer to a metro area may have an easier time using their Amex Gold credits each month. But if you’re a suburb-dweller like me, you’ll want to make sure you have your own plan for utilizing them in a way that translates to true savings.

5. Low Yields on Non-Transfer Redemptions

As a long-time Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card cardholder, I’ve been spoiled with its variety of strong redemption options. I can redeem my Chase Ultimate Rewards points for cash at any time at a value of 1 cent per point. Or I can get 25% more value from my points when I use them to make bookings on the Chase travel portal.

The ThankYou Points that I earn with my Citi Premier® Card also redeem at 1 cent per point for cash or any travel booked through Citi Travel. As an Amex Gold card member, however, I’ll only get 0.60 cents per point should I decide to use my points to cover card charges. And with the exception of flights, I’ll get just 0.70 cents per point if I use my Membership Rewards to book travel through the Amex Travel portal.

As already discussed, I can still get great value from my points by transferring them to travel partners which is what I’ve done and will continue to do. I can also use my Amex points to book flights through Amex Travel at a value of 1 cent per point.

Still, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find other high-value redemptions for my Amex Gold points. I was focused on the earnings potential of the card and just assumed that the redemption options for Membership Rewards would be similar to its top competitors. It turns out that I was wrong.

6. The Disappointing Hotel Collection

The Hotel Collection sounds really awesome on paper. When you book an eligible hotel stay, you’ll get an automatic upgrade and a $100 experience credit for things like qualifying dining or spa activities.

I figured that even if I only used the $100 Hotel Collection benefit twice, I’d get an extra $200 of value out of my card membership. The problem is that there are less than 800 hotels in the world that qualify for these benefits and those that do tend to be high-end and pricey.

I was hoping to book a Hotel Collection property for a getaway that my wife and I had planned for last May. I was only able to find one eligible hotel in Tampa and just three more after widening my search to include Clearwater Beach which is about 40 minutes away. All four properties cost much more per night than we had planned to spend.

I considered splurging by staying our first night at one of these hotels and then somewhere else our 2nd night. But you have to stay a minimum of two nights to get the Hotel Collection benefits. I finally decided that it didn’t make sense to pay hundreds of dollars more for a hotel just so we could get a $100 experience credit and a room upgrade.

We ended up booking two nights at a Hyatt property using World of Hyatt points instead. In the six months that I’ve had the Amex Gold, I’ve yet to utilize the Hotel Collection benefit. Maybe I’ll get to use it at some point, but I’m not holding my breath.

I waffled back and forth on this question more than I would have anticipated when I first applied for the card six months ago. But after carefully considering the pros and cons, yes, I’m planning to keep the American Express® Gold Card for a second year and beyond.

While it took a little time, I’ve finally worked out a system for maximizing my $10 monthly Uber Cash and Dining Credits. And the rewards on my food purchases just keep piling up day by day. I also like that I now have a credit card from each of the major credit card rewards programs.

There are certainly less expensive cards that earn Membership Rewards, but none of their earnings rates are better than other cards I own. The Amex Gold, meanwhile, is the only credit card I own that reaps 4 points per dollar at restaurants and grocery stores.

I just got the Venture X a few weeks ago so I’m not interested in upgrading to the Amex Platinum right now either. With all this in mind, the mid-tier Amex Gold still seems like the right Membership Rewards-earning card for my personal situation and goals.

While I like having a variety of transferable credit card points at my disposal, the types of cards that earn them usually charge annual fees. For many people, owning multiple fee-carrying cards won’t be desirable or realistic.

If you could only own one card that has an annual fee, I’m not sure it should be the Amex Gold. It only has three bonus categories, it earns just 1 point per dollar on everything else and utilizing those monthly credits does take a bit of work.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Citi Premier® Card both have more bonus categories and offer travel credits that you can use any time throughout the year. Meanwhile, the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card (rates & fees) earns an elevated rate on every purchase. Each of these cards have annual fees under $100 and earn transferable points.

Speaking of transferable points, you shouldn’t get the Amex Gold card if you don’t care about them. The card’s other redemption options leave a lot to be desired, and there are plenty of great cash-back cards that charge lower annual fees or none at all.

To view rates and fees for the American Express® Gold Card please visit this page.
To view rates and fees for the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express please visit this page.
To view rates and fees for The Platinum Card® from American Express please visit this page.