Questions and Answers

I travel enough to get “gold” status on airlines (I had gold on United, but switched to Delta this year), but that doesn’t help. Buying annual membership is more than it is worth (~500 USD) and the credit cards that offer membership are also too expensive (~500 USD). I do my best to avoid spending time in airports, so I don’t usually have more than 15-30 min of time to spare, hence the reason I don’t want to spend much.

[USER=1445]@Dkg[/USER]

Welcome

The cheapest credit card with lounge access in the Diners Club Premier with an annual fee of 95$
[URL]https://www.dinersclubus.com/home/consumer-cards/conscards-l2/diners-club-card-premier[/URL]

Lounges in the US here:
[URL]http://www.dinersclublounges.com/location/usa/[/URL]

[USER=1445]@Dkg[/USER], I’m curious, do you usually find it useful to schlep to lounge for 15-30 minutes? I’d almost think it wouldn’t be worth the effort unless they were very close to the gate.

You might consider the the Amex Platinum cards if you fly DL primarily. With the travel credits, the annual fee does get knocked back to ~$50 for the first year ($450-200-200). You could rotate through the cards (Plat, MB Plat, Business Plat, Ameriprise) to minimize costs.

[QUOTE=”Gaurav, post: 12173, member: 79″][USER=1445]@Dkg[/USER], I’m curious, do you usually find it useful to schlep to lounge for 15-30 minutes? I’d almost think it wouldn’t be worth the effort unless they were very close to the gate.

You might consider the the Amex Platinum cards if you fly DL primarily. With the travel credits, the annual fee does get knocked back to ~$50 for the first year ($450-200-200). You could rotate through the cards (Plat, MB Plat, Business Plat, Ameriprise) to minimize costs.[/QUOTE]
I would not go out of my way to find a lounge for a short time like that, so I would generally only use it if it was close to the gate.

I wasn’t aware that there was a way to get annual fees down at all on amex cards. I will have to look into that. Thanks.

[USER=1445]@Dkg[/USER] – what [USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER] means is that for each calendar year you get a $200 travel credit with that card. So for the first year you hold the card (which will start in one calendar year and end in the next) you can actually get 2 x $200 in travel credits, which effectively knocks the fee down to $50. The annual fee will still be $450, just offset by the credit you get when using the card to purchase travel.

Keep in mind that with Amex’s rules right now you’ll only get the signup bonus once for the personal cards, though you can get it multiple times for the business card.

Thanks for clarifying that [USER=184]@MidSouth Skier[/USER]. I figure even without the sign up bonus, it might be worth $50 to have the cards for someone who travels a lot and really enjoys the lounge access feature after working through all the cards that do offer the bonus.