Would Platinum Travel be an upgrade on Neu Infinity for my use case?

[lpshreyas]

Hey folks, I'll try to keep this as short and as coherent as possible.

In 2024, Tata Neu Infinity ended up being my most useful card. I was, and still am, a fan of its versatility. Since getting it in Feb last year, I have spent a smidge over 4.6L on it and here's a broad breakdown of it:

• 2.7L on insurance - I pay 3.2L on insurance annually. The remaining 50k was spent using SC Smart, which I would be closing soon (reduced my limit from 3.75L to 10k)
• Around 80k offline
• The rest on big basket, utility payments and gift cards

And as I mentioned above, I would be needing a replacement for SC Smart. I have spent around 1L on it and all of that is on insurance and NPS (60k annually).

So, here's my query, and dilemma. I am looking for a card that would give me better returns than Neu Infinity for insurance payments and a replacement for SC Smart. Insurance + NPS would add up to 3.8L, so I should be able to reach 4L spends easily to maximize RP on Plat Travel. However, I rarely travel and because of that I am unsure if the returns would actually be better than Neu Infinity. As Mariott redemption would be an unlikely scenario for me, here's what bothers me:

• The annual fee of Plat Travel is ~6k
• I would, most likely, redeem RP as amazon pay GV. So, 30k points would amount to 12k INR (?)
• ...and as this would make it nearly impossible to hit 3L spends on Neu Infinity, I would have to pay its 1.5k annual fee (from next year)

That makes the net return after switching to Plat Travel around 4.5k. Unless I made any mistakes in the redemption ratios or calculation, that seems awfully low (with Neu Infinity, I got 6k from the insurance payments alone). I could potentially close Neu Infinity to avoid paying its fee as Swiggy HDFC would cover the grocery spends. That would increase the return to 6k, which still doesn't seem much of an improvement. Not to forget that I would lose out on the 5% cashback on utility payments, as well as the 1.5% on offline and UPI transactions as well.

Let me know your thoughts, and feel free to correct me if I have gotten anything wrong.

 

[Pissant]

No it would not be. Write to Grievance to convert Infinity into LTF.

 

[coolguy1]

The redemption part is the key and becomes the deciding factor.

You will get 40K points + 10K Taj vouchers on hitting 4L annually.

If you use this at the Mariott hotel, this becomes almost as good as ₹40K worth of stays at Mariott and ₹10K worth of stay at the Taj hotel.
50k on spending 4L is likely the highest reward you can get on any card.

But that's only if you use the points for luxury stays.

Another idea is to get an MRCC that gets you 1K points every month on just 6K spends and full fee waiver at 1.9L every year.
(50% off fee waiver if you spend 90K in a year)

That will get you familiar with the AmEx ecosystem and is a great first card!

I hold AmEx trifecta so speaking from experience, let me know if you have any other questions!
If you plan to apply, DM me and I will share a quick guide on how to earn maximum points from your new AmEx card. 🙂

 

[lpshreyas]

No it would not be. Write to Grievance to convert Infinity into LTF.

Already tried this 3 times in the past year to no avail

The redemption part is the key and becomes the deciding factor.

You will get 40K points + 10K Taj vouchers on hitting 4L annually.

If you use this at the Mariott hotel, this becomes almost as good as ₹40K worth of stays at Mariott and ₹10K worth of stay at the Taj hotel.
50k on spending 4L is likely the highest reward you can get on any card.

Yeah, that's the thing. I don't see myself using the Mariott redemption any time soon which kinda defeats the purpose of this card, I guess.

Another idea is to get an MRCC that gets you 1K points every month on just 6K spends and full fee waiver at 1.9L every year.
(50% off fee waiver if you spend 90K in a year)

Initially, I planned on taking MRCC itself. We even had a conversation in DMs about it. But with all that's going on with Gyftr's GV availability, the denomination of GV made available and now, the 0.75% service charge, I see MRCC to be a hassle. I need a card that is rewarding for single, large transactions (I am talking 50k+ multiple times a year). Collecting 3L+ amazon pay balance using trinkets of 250 INR amazon GV is equivent to getting stung by 1200 bees. While I want to maximize returns, I do not want it to become a chore

 

[coolguy1]

Initially, I planned on taking MRCC itself. We even had a conversation in DMs about it. But with all that's going on with Gyftr's GV availability, the denomination of GV made available and now, the 0.75% service charge, I see MRCC to be a hassle. I need a card that is rewarding for single, large transactions (I am talking 50k+ multiple times a year). Collecting 3L+ amazon pay balance using trinkets of 250 INR amazon GV is equivent to getting stung by 1200 bees. While I want to maximize returns, I do not want it to become a chore

Oh yeah, I remember.

The 0.75% fee is annoying, but with that in place, I hear rumours that the bigger value GVs might make a comeback.
Would be exciting and definitely make lives easier.

 

[lpshreyas]

Oh yeah, I remember.

The 0.75% fee is annoying, but with that in place, I hear rumours that the bigger value GVs might make a comeback.
Would be exciting and definitely make lives easier.

That would be great! It would definitely make my decision a lot more straightforward

 

[jk51]

Hey folks, I'll try to keep this as short and as coherent as possible.

In 2024, Tata Neu Infinity ended up being my most useful card. I was, and still am, a fan of its versatility. Since getting it in Feb last year, I have spent a smidge over 4.6L on it and here's a broad breakdown of it:

• 2.7L on insurance - I pay 3.2L on insurance annually. The remaining 50k was spent using SC Smart, which I would be closing soon (reduced my limit from 3.75L to 10k)
• Around 80k offline
• The rest on big basket, utility payments and gift cards

And as I mentioned above, I would be needing a replacement for SC Smart. I have spent around 1L on it and all of that is on insurance and NPS (60k annually).

So, here's my query, and dilemma. I am looking for a card that would give me better returns than Neu Infinity for insurance payments and a replacement for SC Smart. Insurance + NPS would add up to 3.8L, so I should be able to reach 4L spends easily to maximize RP on Plat Travel. However, I rarely travel and because of that I am unsure if the returns would actually be better than Neu Infinity. As Mariott redemption would be an unlikely scenario for me, here's what bothers me:

• The annual fee of Plat Travel is ~6k
• I would, most likely, redeem RP as amazon pay GV. So, 30k points would amount to 12k INR (?)
• ...and as this would make it nearly impossible to hit 3L spends on Neu Infinity, I would have to pay its 1.5k annual fee (from next year)

That makes the net return after switching to Plat Travel around 4.5k. Unless I made any mistakes in the redemption ratios or calculation, that seems awfully low (with Neu Infinity, I got 6k from the insurance payments alone). I could potentially close Neu Infinity to avoid paying its fee as Swiggy HDFC would cover the grocery spends. That would increase the return to 6k, which still doesn't seem much of an improvement. Not to forget that I would lose out on the 5% cashback on utility payments, as well as the 1.5% on offline and UPI transactions as well.

Let me know your thoughts, and feel free to correct me if I have gotten anything wrong.

The worst case scenario if you go for Amex Plat Travel and divert spends on it is return of 4.25% excluding base rewards and any other fee waiver offer. (12,000/- in terms of Flipkart vouchers and 5,000 cash value of 10,000/- Taj Voucher). This can be optimized further if you spend at least 1,68,000/- on reward multiplier to get 10,080 MR points which can be redeemed for fee waiver upon renewal to have another option at hand and ensure the above mentioned return rate with more certainty.

Other option is Gold Charge card which shall yield approx 4.21% on spends of 72,000/- if you use it strictly for Amazon vouchers through multiplier (considering you get partial fee waiver upon renewal).

I would recommend to stick with Tata Neu Infinity if you can and take up Gold Charge for the first year so that you don’t have to divert more spends and can check how it works for you.

 

[tachniki]

2.7L on insurance - I pay 3.2L on insurance annually. The remaining 50k was spent using SC Smart, which I would be closing soon (reduced my limit from 3.75L to 10k)

Just out of curiosity, what is pattern for insurance payment? I was hoping, return will be higher with Tata neu.

 

[lpshreyas]

Just out of curiosity, what is pattern for insurance payment? I was hoping, return will be higher with Tata neu.

All my premiums are paid annually and hence are all above 50k, one being as high as 1.5L. That means I hit the daily cap of 2k Neu coins for each of those transactions, hence limiting me to a max return of 8k