Amex 3x Referral Bonus And Earning 300,000 Points In Three Months

The Amex 3x referral bonus can help you earn stays at luxury hotels like the Conrad Koh Samui

Amex 3x Referral Bonus And Earning 300,000 Points In Three Months

American Express has a new, limited time only (10/1 to 10/28) offer for their consumer card members. When you refer a friend to an Amex card that you currently hold and that friend is approved for that card, you will earn 3 more Membership Rewards points per dollar for three months. This Amex 3x referral bonus is a fantastic deal!

Like most responsible people, I am currently not traveling anywhere for leisure any time soon. Nevertheless, I am still trying to find ways to accumulate a lot of credit card points so that I can use them when traveling is safe again.

Why The Amex 3x Referral Bonus Is So Awesome

Earning an extra 3x points per dollar is amazing because it effectively means you can earn at least 4x (or 4% back) Membership Rewards points on anything (even non bonused spending) and everything (no maximum or cap to spending!) in the next three months.

And guess what. I have a lot of spending earmarked for the next three months. Increased spending is typical for this part of the year for a number of reasons. First of all, the holidays are around the corner. Second, property tax and quarterly estimated income taxes are due within the next three months. And finally, our anniversary is around this time so we usually take a big trip to celebrate.

Unfortunately, our annual anniversary trip didn’t happen this year (last year we went to France) for obvious reasons. But some day we will travel again!

My Plan To Earn 300,000 Points

After hearing about this offer from several of my favorite points blogs (hat tip to Frequent Miler and Doctor of Credit), I started to plan out how I can use it to amass a ton of Amex Membership Rewards (MR) points.

Initially, I wasn’t going to write about my plans to maximize this Amex 3x referral bonus offer. However, I was inspired to write out a plan after browsing the White Coat Investor Facebook group where I saw one one of the members posting about redeeming Amex MR points for ANA first class for his honeymoon. It made me reminisce about the time we flew on Singapore Suites on our first anniversary. Flying first class is such an extraordinary experience!

After seeing that post, I shared a post with the group how I planned to earn close to 300,000 MR points in the next three months by referring my wife, earning both my referral bonus and her sign up bonus points, and using the 3x referral bonus points to pay taxes.

To my surprise, the post became really popular. I think it had more than 300 likes and 140 comments in the first day.

Okay. I’m sure you all are wondering what I wrote in that post.

Here’s The Plan I Outlined

Since I already have the Amex gold card, I can refer this card to anyone. This card is already valuable (especially during Covid) because it earns a generous 4x on dining and 4x groceries.
I referred my wife (P2) to the Amex gold card yesterday and she was instantly approved. Because of this, I will get +25,000 bonus MR points just for her approved referral. Additionally, I will earn 3x additional bonus MR points when I spend using my own card. And on top of that, my wife will earn a +60,000 MR points as a sign up welcome bonus after spending $4,000 in the first three months of card opening.
My household has a lot of expenses coming up within the next three months which include two installments of property tax (due Nov 1 and Feb 1), quarterly estimated federal and state taxes (due Jan 15), holiday spending, on top of our usual life expenses of food and bills.

Crunching The Numbers

Without using actual numbers (let’s just say these are ballpark numbers) we will earn the following:

60,000 MR points from my wife’s newly opened Amex Gold card. (My wife’s spending would likely meet the minimum spending of $4,000 in 3 months when you include holiday spending.)
25,000 MR points from referring my wife and her being approved.
72,000 MR points from earning 4x points using my own Amex Gold card to pay two installments of property tax. Let’s just say my total property tax bill is $18,000. So therefore $18,000 x 4 = 72,000 MR points.
120,000 MR points from paying quarterly estimated income taxes. Again, using my Amex Gold card would earn 4x points within three months. So let’s just say I pay $30,000 a quarter in taxes. Using the card I would earn 30,000 x 4 = 120,000 MR points.
21,000 MR points from food expenses. Let’s assume the average family spends about $500 a month on groceries and $500 a month on dining out / take out dining. That’s $1,000 a month on food expenses. In three months this expense would total $3,000. Now, don’t forget that the Amex Gold card already earns 4x on groceries and dining. The additional 3x points is on top of the 4x which would then make it 7x on food! So therefore $3,000 x 7 = 21,000 MR points.

Ok. Let’s do the math. That’s a total of 290,000 Amex Membership Rewards points easily earned on our usual expenses. Isn’t that awesome?

Some people ask me how I accumulate so many points and miles. Or how I’m able to fly in business and first class for relatively cheap. It’s by doing things like this. What you see above is literally what I am planning to do.

What’s The Point?

What is the value of 290,000 MR points you might ask.

Well, it really depends on who you ask. But I often value Amex Membership Rewards points more than 1 cent per point. I value them closer to 2 cents per point. Why? Because if you redeem these points for travel (back in the days when we could travel), you can often get even better outsized value from these points.

For example, last year I used about 220,000 Amex MR points and transferred them to Air France then redeemed them for 4 business class tickets to Paris for me, my wife, my daughter, and my wife’s parents.

My daughter was 18 months at the time and a lap infant. I didn’t redeem any miles for her. Instead, I paid 10% of the adult fare for the “lap child fee”.

Anyways, those seats retailed for about $5,000 a ticket. So if you really value those tickets at face value, you can say that I got a $20,000 value for those MR points.

This was my wife’s Air France business class seat for our trip to Paris

There’s a little more to that story, but if you’re interested in reading about it, check out this post.

How To Earn The Amex 3x Referral Bonus

After submitting my post on the Facebook group, a number of people were asking me exactly how to do it. For example, people had questions on how to refer people and earn the Amex 3x referral bonus.

Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Have an American Express Card

This one is relatively self explanatory. But in order to refer an American Express credit card, you have to have an American Express credit card yourself. Note that the Amex 3x referral bonus only applies to consumer credit cards. Thus you would not earn this bonus when referring business credit cards.

Step 2: Log In to Your American Express Account Online

After you log in to your account dashboard should appear. Then, click on the menu button.

A drop down menu will then appear, then click on the “Rewards” button. To the right, under “Card Rewards and Benefits”, there should be a button that says “Refer a Friend”. Click on it.

After you click on “Refer a Friend”, your screen should appear like this.

Amex 3x referral bonus — Yes, this is actually my account. And yes, I actually have eight Amex cards.

Click on any of your American Express consumer credit cards to see the referral options. The Amex Gold card has the most lucrative offer at 25,000 bonus Membership Rewards points, so hopefully you have that card.

You can also see (on the bottom of the page) the limited time referral offer of earning 3 more MR points per dollar.

Step 3: Share Referral Link to Friends

In the above referral page, if you scroll further down, American Express gives you several options to share your referral.

Email (it’ll ask you for your friend’s first name and email, then Amex will send the referral link to that friend via email)
Social Media (post on Facebook or Twitter)
Referral Link (they will provide a direct referral link that you can copy and paste)

Since I was just referring my wife, I copied and pasted the referral link then had her apply.

Step 4: Friend’s Application Approved (Hopefully!) and Confirm Amex 3x Referral Bonus

Once your friend clicks on your referral, she or he would have to fill out the credit card application. Hopefully your friend has good credit and is approved. My wife was approved instantly.

After your friend is approved, you should receive an email that confirm you have earned the Amex 3x referral bonus.

The email should look exactly like this.

Step 4: Confirm That Referral Bonus Points Have Posted

In addition to earning an additional 3 MR points per dollar spend in three months, don’t forget that you also earn bonus points for an approved referral.

For the the Amex Gold card, you can currently earn 25,000 Membership Rewards points for each referral, up to 55,000 points. Other cards have different (less lucrative) offers.

To confirm that you have received these referral bonus points, log in to your American Express online account. Under “Menu”, click on “Rewards”. Then, under “Membership Rewards”, click on “Points Summary”.

Your “Points Summary” page should look like this.

Step 5: Use Your Credit Card

Now that you’ve confirmed earning the Amex 3x referral bonus, you can now use your Amex credit card to earn at least 4x Membership Rewards points (or 4% cash back) for every dollar you spend.

Don’t forget that some people (mainly those who are not W2 employees) can make tax payments via credit cards online. As a response to my post in the Facebook group, a dozen of people were unaware that they can pay some taxes online. And others thought it was unwise due to the fees. The truth is, there is a convenience fee for paying your taxes online. The lowest fee I have seen is with pay1040.com with a fee of 1.87%. So as long as you’re earning 2% return or greater by using your credit card, to me fee is a non-issue. Earning 4% (in the case of a credit card with the Amex 3x referral bonus) will net at least a 2% profit in this case!

You Can Refer Other Amex Cards Too

Don’t forget, this limited bonus offer applies to all American Express consumer credit cards.

Therefore, you can earn a referral bonus for the following cards:

Because the following are business cards, you will NOT earn the 3x referral bonus in these cards:

Full disclosure. All of the above links are my referral links to credit cards I have. Therefore, if you use any of the above links to sign up for a card and you’re approved, I will earn a referral bonus.

Final Thoughts

People often ask me how I’m able to earn so many credit card points and miles while being frugal. A big part of it is taking full advantage of lucrative bonus point offers like this.

If I execute the plan that I had laid out, I will earn about 300,000 Amex Membership Rewards points. And I will earn all of these points by only using credit cards to only pay for our ordinary fixed expenses like taxes, food, and bills. No extra discretionary spending required.

Throughout the years I have earned millions of credit card points and miles which have allowed me travel luxuriously for relatively cheap.

It’s so fun to enjoy champagne travel on a beer budget.

One of these days, when we can resume international travel safely, it’ll be fun once again!

Comments

FreshLifeAdvice says

December 2, 2020 at 9:57 am

Love your blog, Dr. McFrugal! You are a great writer and really laid out the Amex bonus program really well. I’m very jealous to see that picture of your Air France business class seat for your Paris trip. Thank you for detailing the advantage of using Amex. Keep up the great work Doc!