Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Recently I passed my 8th anniversary of owning an American Express Hilton credit card. Four years ago I upgraded it to Aspire, the top dog of 3 Hilton cards from Amex. Every 12 months since then I've carefully weighed whether or not to renew it as it comes with a hefty annual fee (AF) of $450. And now it's increased to a whopping $550. I've paid special attention to tallying my score this year to determine if this card's worth keeping another 12 month with its new, higher fee.

Lots of Points, Lots of Costs

Over the past 12 months I spent $13,300 on this card and earned 144,000 Hilton Honors points. I value Hilton points at $0.005 each, for a value of $720.

Earning over $700 in points is a lot. That's great win, right? Not so much. The fees eat up a lot of the score. First there's the $450 AF. That brings the net score down to $270. Then there's the opportunity cost of the no-AF 2% cash-back card I could have used instead. 2% of $13.3k is $266. Net out that and the AF and my win shrinks to just $4. Four dollars. Net-net, those points are worth practically nothing!

Fortunately this card is about more than the points and fees.

Airline Credits, Hilton Credits, and More

You'd expect a card that comes with a huge AF like $450 would offer more benefits than just some hotel points. And you'd be right. This card is the top-tier offering in the Hilton/American Express partnership. It offers a number of travel oriented perks.

When I first upgraded to this card I remarked that I was "going big." Ironically I decided to "go big" with this costly travel card just before the Coronavirus pandemic hit. Hilton and Amex took care of us cardholders, though, making it worth our while with other benefits while Covid had most of us grounded. I've kept the card since then as benefits such as airline credits and hotel free nights have become valuable again.

Over the past 12 months I've really gone to town with this card's credits. I've nabbed $150 in airline credits, $450 in Hilton hotel credits, and $40 in other miscellaneous credits. This is all cash. Oh, and I earned a Free Night Certificate that I made worth over $1,000 with a magnificent stay at the Waldorf Astoria beach resort in Los Cabos, Mexico last month.

These benefits push my total net win on the card to a staggering $1,644. It's well more than the net win of $758 I scored last year. And that's over and above paying back the $450 AF and $250 opportunity cost.

The Benefits, They Are a-Changing

If I could see my way to another $1,600 net win, over even a $1k net win next year, this card would be an easy pick to play again. I don't see making that kind of score again, though. Late last year Amex announced changes to the benefits offered on this card. Some of the changes are improvements; most are not, at least for me. Though over this year of transition I did manage to score some "best of both worlds" combinations. That's how I got to $1,644 net. For the coming 12 months it looks like this:

• The AF rises to $550. That's what I pay to play. How much I earn after that depends.


• The airline credit is now $50 per quarter instead of $250 per year. This is not only lower overall but is "couponed". It's harder to use up $50 parceled out per quarter than $200 anytime during the year. I risk leaving money on the table because of this.


• The Hilton resort credit is now $200/half year instead of $250/year. This is an increase overall ($400 vs. $250) but also suffers from the challenge of couponing. While I could often manage one resort stay a year, doing two a year in different 6 month periods to maximize this benefit doesn't fit my travel pattern.


• There's also another Free Night Certificate. Making that worth over $1,000 this past time was an outlier for me. With my normal travel patterns I often only make it worth $300.


• There are other benefits such as a Clear membership reimbursement I don't plan to use. The TSA PreCheck lanes I use at my home airport are right next to the Clear lanes, and I don't see them saving me an appreciable amount of time.

My forecast for the next year is that between these benefits and the points I'm not going to significantly out-earn the newly raised $550 AF. Thus I've chosen to close this card.

Closing One, Hunting for an Upgrade on Another

Part of my calculus in choosing to close this card is that I already own another Amex Hilton card. It's their basic, no-annual-fee card. It pays far fewer benefits— but there's no fee. If I didn't already have a copy of this card I'd have downgraded my other card to it. I figure it's worth keeping to stay in the game with Amex and Hilton. The card I'd really like, though, is Amex's mid-grade Hilton card, the Hilton Surpass. I could've downgraded the big card directly to it but I'm hoping that by canceling the big dog I might soon see an upgrade on the little card to switch the middle card. I always have multiple plays running simultaneously in the credit card game!