Remodeling & Amex: Love/Hate

We are remodeling our kitchen and primary bathroom. It’s going to be expensive, but the good thing is that most of our vendors accept credit cards. So I want to get as many Sign Up Bonuses (SUBs) as possible utilizing that large one-time spend.

My wife was briefly under 5/24, so I got her the Atmos Summit card.

I then applied for a Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business (my referral link) for her, hoping that the Summit card hadn’t posted to her credit reports. Alas, it had, and Chase declined the application. The CSR for Business is a good card to get for the Sign-Up Bonus, but the second year value is suspect.

Getting declined by Chase led me to turn to our old reliable: Amex.

Lately, Amex hasn’t liked me and keeps telling me I’m not eligible for the welcome offer. This is often referred to as “Pop Up Jail” on the Internet.

But Amex just loves my wife! She has 2 Business Platinums (my referral link), and was just approved for a third with the 300K Membership Rewards offer after $20K spend. See my post about the Business Platinum’s value.

She was also approved for a Business Gold (my referral link) with the 150K after 15K spend. That’s not the best possible offer, but it’s better than what Amex was offering me! She has had multiple Amex Business Gold cards, and we always close them after the first year. We closed the most recent one just last month! The $20 per month office supply credit is useful- I buy Chipotle gift cards from Staples.

We’ll also use my Surpass that I opened over a year ago. I’ll put $15K on it to get the Free Night Certificate (FNC). Then, I’ll upgrade to the Aspire to get another FNC. And finish it off by getting to $30K for the calendar year, and another FNC. We love those FNCs and use them at the Carneros Resort (see this Post).

The Business Platinum, Business Gold, and the Surpass/Aspire combo will cover most of our expenditures. I’ll likely need one more card that I’ll open for P3.

The remodels are expensive, but we’ll generate a lot of points!