Best Amex Card Pairings: Which combination is best for you

Hello my fellow travel enthusiasts, today I am going to be talking about the different card combinations you can make with amex cards to help you save on your daily expenses and get you ever closer to those long awaited vacations you've been wanting. The first thing you need to do is look at your expenses, what is it that you're spending more money on and what expenses aren't worth taking advantage of, let's say that you're more of a cook at home person than a dine out person, if this is the case then you're not gonna get a card that saves you on restaurants, you're gonna look for a card that saves you on groceries, makes sense doesn't it? This same approach you're going to take with all your other expenses until you have the math down, after you've gotten all your expenses straightened out it's finally time to go credit card hunting. Now, American Express has a wide array of credit cards to choose from that cover a wide range of expenses, everything from travel to groceries to streaming services (yes, you can save on your streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify and many more) but how you match up your cards is key to getting the best bang for your buck so what I am going to do now is I'm going to go through what I think are the best card combinations for several different types of expenses, so lets get right into it.

The Cash-Back Hoarder

The first card combination on our list is tailored to those who are more interested in saving money on their expenses than getting rewarded for everything they buy, if you aren't interested on the free travel part of credit cards and are more interested in the saving money part then this is the right combo for you. This set-up consists of the amex Blue Cash Preferred and the Cash Magnet card, these cards are cash-back only cards, the cash magnet is a flat rate cash-back card which gives you 1.5% back on every purchase, this is the most straight forward way to earn cash-back, no categories, no kinks, no nothing, just unlimited cash-back on every purchase. The blue cash preferred on the other hand is the card that you get the real juice out of, this bad boy gives you 6% back on US supermarkets and US streaming services and 3% back on US gas stations and transit (taxi/ride sharing services, parkings, tolls, buses and more) that is some hefty amount of cash-back, even if you're more the dining out type  you still get a good amount of cash-back for whatever it is that you spend on supermarkets, plus you get that other 6% on streaming and not to mention that 3% on gas that is pretty appealing as well, so the way to maximize your return is using the preferred for any of its categories and the cash magnet for the non category expenses, this set-up will start saving you a good amount of money on the fly, just keep in mind that the preferred has a $95 annual fee, thought if you use it wisely you'll be saving a lot more than that when the time to pay the fee comes around.

The Point Savvy Traveler

This dynamic duo of cards is one of the best options for racking up points, it gives you a wide array of categories to get rewards points on making it one of the most popular combinations among frequent flyers. Now, what two cards are the ones that make up this duo you might be asking, well that would be the amex EveryDay Preffered and the Amex Green cards. We should start off by saying that both of these cards carry an annual fee, the everyday carries a fee of $95 and the green has a $150 fee, bringing it up to a total annual fee of $245, this may sound like a big amount of money and some may think the return isn't worth the $245 but it actually is, the amount of points that you get out of this set-up greatly outweighs the annual fee, especially when it has arguably the most balanced lineup of categories. Starting off with the everyday card, it gives you 3x back (points not cash-back) on US supermarkets and 2x back on US gas stations. Though this isn't everything that this card has to offer, it also has a really good niche that gets you 50% more points if you use it 30 or more times during the billing statement. Now the green card doesn't need much explaining if you already read my in-depth look on it but lets go over it for reference, the green gives you 3x back on restaurants worldwide and 3x back on travel and taxis/ride sharing services. This combination strikes a balance between when you're at home or working and when you're in full on vacation mode, aside from the fact that you get a little bit of everything with this combination you also get plenty rewards points to redeem however you like. Remember that this is a point centric set-up, so if you're not that interested in travel and prefer regular saving then refer to the first card combination.

The Great Equalizer 

Up to this point I've given you two options, one focused on cash-back and the other focused on points but this next one and last one for today strikes the perfect balance between the two. This last combination consists of the Blue Cash Everyday and the Gold Card. Now, the total annual fee on this set-up is $250 and that's because that's the annual fee on the gold card (the blue cash doesn't have a annual fee) in this case you might turn away from this just on the fact that the gold cards annual fee is $5 more than that of the everyday/green card combo but what sets the gold card up to be a very profitable card are the credits that it has, these statement credits alone basically render the annual fee null and that's not even taking in consideration the rewards rate that the card provides, the gold card gives you 4x back on restaurants worldwide and 4x back on US supermarkets and it also gives you 3x back on flights booked directly through the airline or the amex travel portal, this in and of itself is extremely good value and what tops it off are the statement credits, you get credit of up to $10 each month if you use your gold card on grubhub, the Cheesecake Factory, seamless, boxed and participating shake shack locations, that mounts up to $120 in statement credits each year which makes up almost half of the cards annual fee. You also get a $100 airline credit which basically gives $100 each year to spend on checked bags or in-flight meals and drinks, between these two credits the total annual fee of the card drops down to a very attractive $30, this is the perfect example of how to take advantage of everything a card has to offer. Now that we got the details of the gold card out of the way lets head onto the second player of this team, the blue cash everyday car. This is another cash-back card and this one gives you 3% back on US supermarkets, 2% back at US gas stations and 1% back on any other purchase, now, the purpose of the blue cash is to use it for the 2% back on gas stations and the 1% back on any other purchase, you won't be using the 3% back on supermarkets cause you got the gold card giving you 4x back on that same category, the only reason you would use the blue cash for supermarkets is if you want to save money on those types of purchases instead of getting the points that is another route that you can take, you can just use the gold card exclusively for dining out and you will still get extremely good value. Like I said, this combination strikes the perfect balance between cash-back and rewards but only if you know how to use it and keep in mind that unlike these other cards, the gold card and the green card are charge cards, this means that you can't carry a balance on them, they need to be paid off in full each month, although they do have the option to carry a balance but only on transactions over the $100 mark, so be mindful of this when making a decision on one of these cards. Also, these aren't the only card combinations that you can create with amex cards, there are a lot more you can try out and I will talk about them later on, it just so happens that these three combinations are on the budget friendly side of things. Either way, stay tuned for part two of this article later on and I hope this information has helped you in understanding the different nuances of credit cards and how you can maximize their benefits.