A business owner spent $148,000 across premium American Express cards and paid $1,183 in fees. A simple 2% cash-back card would have earned $3,000 instead, a $4,200 advantage. Travel points rarely beat the fees and delayed value of premium cards.
If you're paying $895 or whatever the annual fee is now for one of those premium travel cards and you're running your business, spend through it, you're probably getting played. My client opened two Amex cards in February of 2025. He has an Amex Business Platinum and an Amex Business Gold. So between these two cards, he ran about $148,000 of spending in 2025. So let's compare what he did to what he could have done. If he ran that same $148,000 through a simple 2% cash back card, he would have earned a little less than $3,000. That's real money, hard cash. It could be sitting in his bank, available today, earning interest even. Now, here's the part that really gets overlooked. Because he chose the Amex Platinum and Gold, he also paid membership fees and other fees. Those totaled about $1,183 for the year. So nearly $3,000 in cash back and $1,183 in fees. That's almost $4,200. So if he went cash back instead of points, he would have roughly 4,200. We're going to round it off more immediately available to reinvest in his business.
