I have the upgrade offer on my biz green and AF is due in a few days. I don't even know what I'd do with the Dell credit (I'd be asking y'all for ideas lol) but I'd like the extra airlines credit. I'm looking for a MSR cause college tuition is due in a couple weeks and I've got nowhere meaningful to put it
I was buying SB's but I stopped after they took away the sale price. I didn't look too much into the break even buying on Dh's account since no MSR to worry about right now.
Good news. Amex works for tuition via Plastiq!
If tuition is >$5,000, the Biz Plat earns 1.5x on single transactions >$5k.
The conundrum is, do you take the offer to upgrade the Biz Green to a Biz Plat for "only" 50k MR on $10k spend, but have 5 months to meet MSR; and lock yourself out of getting 100k MR on a new Biz Plat by calling in?
Or do you call in and open a new Biz Plat for 100k MR with a $10k MSR that has to be completed in 3 months? (Hopefully no pop ups over the phone.)
If the latter, what are you going to do with the Biz Green?
You could close it, since you'll have just opened up a new Biz Plat.
You could keep it open and pay the AF, and hope that the 50k MR upgrade offer to a Biz Plat is still available on that card in late November/December to triple dip the airline fee credit ("$600" value) and get the June-Dec 2019, Jan-June 2020, July-Dec 2020, and Jan-June 2021 Dell credits ("$400" value).
But what I think happens with the AFs on the upgraded card (and someone please check me on this), is the Biz Green's $95 AF is refunded to you pro rata, then you are charged a prorated AF on the Biz Plat's $595 AF for the remainder of your Biz Green cardmember year; then you are charged a full $595 upon the upgraded card's original anniversary, but you can't cancel or downgrade the upgraded Biz Plat at that point until one year after you accepted the upgrade or risk a clawback. So yeah... fees.
As for the Dell credit, wait until Ebates pays out 12%, 14% or 15%. Try to stack it with the Amex Offer for 10% back at Dell, and maybe even the 1 additional MR point at Dell. Dell sells all sorts of electronics, including headphones, cameras, lenses, video game consoles (Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox), Xbox gift cards that you can load into your Microsoft account and spend at the Microsoft Store. You can use up to 3 credit cards per transaction. So if you happen to have 2 or 3 Biz Plats, you could use the credits on all of them on the same order. Or if you have your Dell Amex Offers scattered across different cards, stack them. Happy Guy GCs also have Dell as a select merchant, and you could probably enter it as one of the 3 credit card payments.
Hope this helps.
ETA: I know your family flies Southwest. As you know the airline credit still works on <$100 tickets, and there are ways to apply that value towards more expensive tickets you'll actually use. If you choose Southwest as your selected airline, the Biz Plat rebates 35% of MR points used towards flights on your selected airline, which works out to a 1.53 cpp redemption. That's a feature not available on the personal Plats.