Amex EveryDay Preferred

Like with most credit card issues, Amex offers several variants of cards within the same family.  In this case, the Amex EveryDay Preferred card is the upgraded (annual fee) version of the Amex EveryDay card.  Like the EveryDay card, this card earns MR points, but it has a $95 annual fee. 

Welcome Offer

At the time of posting, the Amex EveryDay Preferred card has a welcome offer of 15 000 MR points after spending $2 000 in 6 months.  The extra 5 000 MR points don’t really quite justify the $95 annual fee, in my opinion.  Usually, cards with higher annual fees come with sufficiently higher welcome offers that completely offset the annual fee increase.  For a point of comparison, the Chase Sapphire Preferred has the same annual fee and currently has a welcome bonus of 80 000 Chase UR points.

Earnings

This card’s basic earning structure is three tiered: it earns 3x points/$ at US grocery stores (up to $6 000/year), 2x points/$ at US gas stations, and 1x points otherwise.  However, since Amex wants you to use the card ‘EveryDay’, you earn a 50% bonus on your points if you make at least 30 transactions in a given billing cycle.  Assuming you do this, its return becomes 4.5x points/$ at US grocery stores, 3x points/$ at US gas stations, and 1.5x points/$ on everything else.

Benefits

Interestingly, although this card has an annual fee, beyond the points it earns, it doesn’t offer any credits to offset the fee like Amex’s charge cards and its co-branded cards. The only additional benefit it offers is access to Amex offers, which can often represent excellent value if used well. 

How to use the points

There are two primary ways to use Membership Rewards Points.  The first way is to redeem them for flights at a rate of 1 pt = 1¢.  Redeeming the points this way has the big plus of the tickets counting as revenue tickets for the purpose of earning redeemable and tier qualifying points on the airline.

The second way is to transfer them to a partner to redeem them for reward travel.  Amex sometimes has transfer bonuses to partners, which is a great way to get even more value out of the points.  Based on how I’ve redeemed transferrable points in the past, I peg the value of Amex points at around 1.5¢/pt on average when used to book travel. 

Examples of using the card

Spend per month

These calculations assume that you meet the 30 transactions per month threshold.

	Example A		Example B		Example C		Example D
Groceries (4.5x)	$300	1 350	$200	900	$600	2 700	$400	1 800
Gas (3x)	$0	0	$100	300	$200	600	$100	300
Airfare (1.5x)	$700	1 050	$200	300	$0	0	$400	600
Hotels (1.5x)	$1 000	1 500	$200	300	$0	0	$300	450
Gen Travel (1.5x)	$400	600	$0	0	$300	450	$100	150
Dining (1.5x)	$600	900	$300	450	$300	450	$0	0
General (1.5x)	$1 000	1 500	$500	750	$500	750	$400	600
Total	$4 000	6 900	$1 500	3 000	$1 700	4 950	$1 700	3 900
Average cashback/$		1.73		2.0		2.91		2.29

Since this card is designed for everyday spending, rather than travel, the range of points is less extreme because most people go to grocery stores frequently but it’s not generally the majority of a monthly budget.  As a result, the average point earnings range from 1.73 – 2.91 points/$ (2.60 – 4.37 ¢/$)

Specific examples

Card	World Traveller ($750)  (% return)	Marriott Hotel night ($230/night)	Points values (WT/Hotel)
No rewards card	2 728 Avios (4.9%)	2 200 MP (7.3%)	$37.10 / $17.60
Amex EveryDay Preferred	2 728 Avios + 1 125 MR (7.2%)	2 200 MP + 345 MR (9.9%)	$53.98 / $22.78
Amex EveryDay	2 728 Avios + 900 MR (6.7%)	2 200 MP + 276 MR (9.5%)	$50.61 / $21.74
Chase Sapphire Preferred	2 728 Avios + 1 500 UR (7.9%)	2 200 MP + 460 UR (10.3%)	$59.60 / $24.50
Amex Gold Card	2 728 Avios + 2 250 MR (9.1%)	2 200 MP + 230 MR (8.7%)	$68.60 / $20.82

Is this credit card right for you?

For travel/dining heavy budgets, like the no annual fee version, this card is not the best fit.  However, for anyone with a gas/groceries-heavy budget can potentially find great value in this card; it’s tough to beat 4.5x points/$ at grocery stores, 3x at gas stations and 1.5x on everything else off a $95 annual fee card.