Overhauling my credit card strategy

Bank of America giving this card the bougie Out Of Box Experience

My credit card strategy for the past few years has been: 

• Churn a new card sign up bonus once or twice a year
• Use the Amex Platinum for 5x points on airfare and access to their lounges
• Use the Amex Gold for 4x on dining and groceries
• Use the Chase Sapphire for all non-airline travel and for dining abroad (Amex isn't as widely accepted and they have a nasty habit of not counting foreign charges in the right bonus category)
• Use the Business Amex for the 35% points rebate (the Dell and wireless credits largely cover the annual fee)
• Use the United card to top up Kelly's PQPs so he'll stay Star Alliance Gold

I always told myself if my life became more complicated (like say for example I got a JOB), I'd probably just ditch most of my cards and get the BofA Premium Rewards Elite and charge nearly everything on there. Welp, that time has apparently come. No, don't be insane, I haven't gotten a job, but we are going to move to the BofA card and close a bunch of our other cards. 

There's no big impending life changes, honestly. I just want to devote less of my time to this hobby. I'm good enough at it now that we're almost always on a comfortable/direct flight for cheap/free and yet we're still collecting points faster than we can spend them. (Yes, I've given lots of them away to people in need.) My strategy might change once Kelly retires or Tim's green card comes through, but for now, this is where we're at. 

So here's the deal with Premium Rewards Elite:

• Have $100k+ with BofA or Merrill Lynch (their investment arm) and you get 2.65 points per dollar on all spend, 3.5 points per dollar on "travel and dining"
• Each point is worth 1.2¢ towards buying cash airfare through BofA's travel portal, with no restrictions on fare class or airline like Amex does. 
• The effective value of each point is actually higher than 1.2¢ because your ticket will earn airline miles and status as a cash fare¹. Even a conservative valuation of airline miles puts this well above 2¢ per point.
• Ergo for travel and dining, each dollar spent will earn more than 7¢ back
• $550 annual fee (There's also a lower fee version that doesn't get the 20% travel bonus)

Simpler definitely has its advantages: my dear husband will no longer have to text me "Wait, which card am I supposed to use for the group dinner?" It will mean way less fussing with Amex's coupon book-style benefits like the Annual Airline Fee Credit, the Dell Credit, the Saks Credit, etc. It means fewer things to keep track of every month when it's time to pay the bills. It also means less worrying about trying to find a great points deal on an airline that I can transfer my points to.

Obviously there are some concerns: 

• What if I want to fly an airline that doesn't show up in BofA's travel portal? 
• What do they actually count as Travel and Dining? Will those categories apply abroad? 
• What if their IT is crappy like the Expedia backend that Amex uses? (BofA doesn't use Expedia, they use BAKKT.) 
• What if I can find a fare on Google Flights that just isn't showing up in their portal for some reason? 

Well, I'm about to find all of that out. I'll post an update with any lessons I've learned. 

<Queue the British Bakeoff music> That means I also have the difficult decision of deciding which cards to get rid of. 

• Kelly's Amex Gold for sure getting the chop
• Kelly's Amex Business Platinum: chop
• My United business card getting the chop once I milk all of those newly updated benefits from it.
• Maybe get rid of Kelly's Sapphire Reserve and add him as an AU on my account?
• Maybe get rid of the Spark 2% cash back card?

Shantay, you stay:

• Apple Card (stacks with Kelly's employee discount)
• BILT earns me 24,000 transferrable points a year on my HOA dues. As long as it has no annual fee, it can stay.
• My Amex Plat (and Kelly and Tim's Plat AUs) if for nothing else than the lounges and a holder for all of my Amex points.
• My Amex Business card (for now), because I'll probably spend down the Amex points by doing points-for-cash fare purchases and I want that 35% rebate
• Kelly's United Quest card because he really likes being Star Alliance Gold but hates doing mileage runs 

Wish me luck!

***

¹ Someone pointed out to me that while I will earn airline points, I need to subtract from this math the 5 Amex points per dollar I would have earned if I'd paid for the ticket with my Platinum card… For example, for a United ticket I'll earn 8 United points per dollar while forgoing 5 Amex ones, so it's more like 3 points.