Why Charles Schwab Investors Should Get The Amex Platinum

I’ve been a Schwab checking / brokerage customer for about 4 or 5 years now and have had the Schwab Amex Plat variant for a couple years.

I currently work as a consultant that travels 100% of the time (yes, every week!) for work and am able to expense my business travel on personal credit cards then get reimbursed for it. So ~$2,000 a week and getting 3-5x Membership Rewards (MR) points for it.

However, even you don’t have an occupation or business that provides you with the benefits to spend money and easily churn out points, if you bank and/or invest with Scwab, this card can provide a ton of benefits that you may want to look into, that I’ll cover in this post:

60,000 MR Point Bonus

You must get the sign-up bonus on every rewards credit card, it what makes it worth it especially for the first year for a lot of credit card churners.

To hit the target, you need to spend $5,000 in the first 3 months of opening the card. If you don’t travel for work or own a business to spend through, many people have paid their rent/mortgages with the card (my rent charges a $30 processing fee to use a credit card) or pre-pay for certain expenses with gift cards. Just spending money you otherwise would have spent ahead of time (e.g. grocery store gist cards, airfare gift cards, etc.).

Each MR point when redeemed into your brokerage account is worth $.0125. So the bonus alone, not counting the spend required to earn the bonus is worth $750 cash that you can transfer to your account and invest the same day.

Schwab Appreciation Bonus

This is what I think really gives this card a leg up for investors reading this site. You’re rewarded with credits on the $550 annual fee for allocating capital to Schwab, and under the terms and conditions, there are four types of holdings that quality:

1. Non-retirement Brokerage
2. Retirement Brokerage
3. Checking & Savings
4. Mortgage & Home Equity Loans

There are two tiers of the bonus that you can get based on a combination of any of the four Schwab holdings above:

1. $100 credit for holdings over $250K
2. $2000 credit for holdings over $1MM

If you have your retirement accounts with Schwab and your rental property mortgaged with Schwab’s partner, Quicken Loans, this is not that difficult to hit.

Invest with Rewards

When you want to redeem your MR points, each one can be converted into $.0125 tax-free into your brokerage account. Many other credit rewards programs have a flat conversion rate of 1 point = 1 cent, but with the Schwab Platinum, you get some upside. If you don’t want to use your MR for travel, it’s nice to have that added optionality and liquidity with your points.

As I’ve mentioned before, I currently work as a consultant traveling every week. Putting all my business travel(~$2,000/week) of my personal cards them getting reimbursed for that spend. Frankly, traveling for work has ruined the experience of commercial travel for me. I’d have to fly private to enjoy travel on my leisure time, so for me, I’ll be cashing out those points.

I have this fun idea of putting all my personal spend on Amex, then going one giant Schwab cash-out and the the money to but a rental property. To get ~$10K, which I think is the minimum you would need to but Real Estate, you’re talking ~800,000 MR points. If you regularly travel for work or own a business, this could be obtained in few months / years of ordinary spend. Again, this cash is all tax-free on money you’re already spending. There’s no downside if your’re somebody who can responsible manage credit.

As I’m a capitalist, I’ve included my referral link below. If you wan’t to support me, this is a good way to do it that wouldn’t cost you anything.

Referral Link:

http://refer.amex.us/GABRIDzhI0?XLINK=MYCP

YouTube Video: