When Is A Targeted Credit Card Spend Bonus Worth Taking Advantage Of?

Have a similar issue/offer via AA Platinum Select MasterCard. 3 miles per $1 up to 2,500 miles. Worth it, or stick with CSR?

I was traveling overseas a fair bit, and am taking advantage of the AAdvantage Aviator targeted bonus ($750 in May, June, July, 10,000 bonus miles). This card gives me the advantage of no FTF, whereas I've the blue for business which gives me 2.3 points/$ but has 2.7% FTF. So in my case it's worthwhile I guess.

Nope -- too much work to keep track of the EACH month part. If it were spend $X total, get Y points, it is an offer I would at least consider.

I enter my transactions manually into Quicken. It's easy to add a running balance in the memo section of each transaction so that you always know exactly how much more spend you need to make.

@Lucky for the average joe .... I think of myself as such ... who has, perhaps 4 or 5 credit cards, this is fairly different. Using myself as an example ... I have 4 Amex cards - Platinum, Delta Platinum, Delta Gold, Blue Biz Plus and I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve.

First, I don't have the tracking complexity that you have. Second, since I am really only putting a couple thousand in spend on credit cards every month (except the Blue Biz Plus, where all my business spend goes) ... it's pretty easy to manage that incremental value. I just shift all my spend to that card for 3 months.

It would be more interesting if you evaluated the offer in a way that makes sense to average joe 🙂

Same deal with the Barclays AA card - $750 a month for three months, 10,000 miles. I wouldn't otherwise be using this or my Citi AA card (too many others with better earning), so this is an incentive for me to top up the AA account. I think there's value in diversification of points, on top of their redemption value, that should be considered.

I've found that if I take up an offer like this, and complete it, they'll often offer something higher next time. For example, if I completed the same targeted spend you've been offered, I might be offered something like spend $1000 in November, December and January and get 2000 bonus points per month, plus 5000 points if I spend the minimum in each of the three months.

Have the Aviator 3x$750 offer for 10K. I put the 750 of non bonus spend on here the last 2 months, July to go. It's worth it to me for very little hassle. I'm getting 12,250 points for $2,250 spend which could of been 4500 max with Amex Blue biz.

I also got an Amex bonus offer for 5000 points for any purchases I make over $5,000. I never make purchases that large so doubt I'll take advantage.

way to pretend like you're not going to have your mom buy exactly 750 bucks of gift cards.

These offers are typical from Barclaycard. I've received a few on the Aviator card. There's one now where if I spend $1000 in Jul/Aug/Sep, I receive 5,000 bonus points. Not worth it in my opinion.

I'm also becoming increasingly annoyed with these offers. They're frequent, but not consistent, and managing the spend is time-consuming. Not to mention the requirement per month is kind of restrictive. And AA miles are becoming less and less attractive.

I generally do take advantage of offers for points I find attractive. For example, I have earned 20,000 bonus AAdvantage miles in the last two years on these type of bonuses with my Barclaycard Aviator Red card. I don't do it for lower-values currencies but some are worth the tracking. I already keep a big spreadsheet to track my cards so a few additional cells is no big deal.