Questions and Answers

Hello!

This will be a little long, please bare with me.

My boyfriend is currently an American AAdvatange Platnium Pro member mostly from business travel expenses. He wants to status match and switch to Alaska Airlines for MVP Gold 75K because we are based out of Portland, and Alaska flies more nonstop from Portland then anyone else.

Our current wallet is comprised of:
[LIST]
[*]Citi AAdvatange/Executive World MasterCard
[*]American Express Platinum Card (Mostly for Centurion Lounge)
[*]American Express Delta Gold Card
[*]American Express Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant
[*]Barclay Card Apple Rewards
[/LIST]
We currently put about $40,000+ spend a year mostly on the Citi AAdvatange Card. Most of it is Grocery and Dining out and bills and misc purchases.

Since he is planning to switch over to Alaska, and recently with American restricting access to Admirals club, we were going to downgrade the Executive card to the MileUp card to keep the card in the portfolio, but not pay an annual fee.

Since he wants to switch to Alaska Airlines, the natural card we are looking at is the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card. While this card is $75 AF, it doesn’t come with perks like lounge access and the redemption miles on purchase is ok. 3X on Alaska purchase and 1X on everything else. Seeing that his flights are bought on an work expense account, there is really no way to get miles other then putting all of our purchase on this card , but getting 1x on every dollar doesn’t seem to be getting the most for our dollar. I wanted to get some advice on how we can get a portfolio of cards to get the most out of our spends.

This is what I was thinking he should do:
[LIST]
[*]Downgrade the Citi AAdvatange/Executive WorldElite MasterCard to the Citi AAdvatange/MileUp card (to keep the credit limit and history on the report)
[*]Keep American Express Platinum Card
[*]Apply for the American Express Gold Card
[*]American Express Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant
[*]Cancel American Express Delta Gold
[*]Barclay Card Apple Rewards.
[*]Buy Alaska Lounge membership with MVP Gold 75K Discount to access Alaska Lounge and Admirals Club when he flies American or Alaskan.
[/LIST]
Since he will be flying Alaska Airlines mostly for work, he would rack up miles naturally on paid fare via expense account. I don’t see any problem with him getting MVP Gold 75K if he puts all his work expense on Alaska.

Use the AMEX Gold card to pay for personal groceries and dining out to get 4X back.

Use AMEX Platinum for personal non-Alaskan flights purchases to get 5x back.

Use Alaska Visa for personal Alaska Airlines purchases and other misc. purchase that doesn’t get us points back.

For domestic travel use Alaska Airlines MileagePlan award miles and/or paid fare to book flights and utilize the companion fare from the Visa Signature card.

We are looking to travel to Asia (Japan?) possibly in 2021 and it seems that Alaska MileagePlan have great redemption on Cathay Pacific and JAL. AMEX MR does transfer to Cathay but not JAL. So in the future we would book Cathay using Alaska Miles for one person, and transfer AMEX MR for the other (Assuming we can travel on Cathay together then).

What do you guys think my take on this plan for us?

Andrew.