For a cardholder
Which card earns the most after its fee, for a household like mine?
[ Analytics case · independent project · 2026 ]
Which travel card actually pays?
Premium cards now cost up to $895 a year and promise “$3,000+ in value”. I put 6,666 real U.S. households’ spending on eight cards for a year to see who actually comes out ahead — and why.
- Question
- For a real household, which travel card earns the most after its annual fee — and what decides it?
- What I did
- Turned BLS survey microdata into a year of spending in 8 card categories, encoded 8 cards’ current terms, and simulated every household under two ways of using points, then stress-tested coupon habits.
- Answer
- Cash out your points and a no-fee 2% card wins for 95.5% of households. Transfer them well and the $95–$395 cards win. The $795–$895 cards win for about 3% — unless you use 70%+ of their coupons.
- Skills
- Survey microdata · weighting · imputation · scenario & sensitivity analysis · unit economics · Python / pandas · interactive tool
- real households simulated
- 6,666
- best off with 2% cash back, cashing out
- 95.5%
- best off with the $895 Platinum
- 0.7%
- would pick Platinum if they used every coupon
- 69%
01
The question
Premium cards sell “value”. I wanted to know how much of it real households can actually use.
Card reviews compare earn rates and list every credit at face value. But a $300 Resy credit is worth $0 to someone who never books Resy. I looked at it from both sides: the cardholder (which card pays the most after the fee?) and the issuer (how much of a premium card’s economics rests on value customers never claim — the industry calls it breakage).
For an issuer
How much does the premium proposition depend on coupons people don’t use?
For a product
A calculator that answers the first question in 30 seconds, with honest assumptions.
02
Data & model
Real spending, current card terms, and every assumption out in the open.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics interviews thousands of households every quarter about what they spend. I kept households interviewed at least twice in 2024, scaled their quarters to a year (so lumpy spend like flights reflects several real quarters), mapped 17 survey variables into 8 card categories, and weighted them to represent U.S. households. Then I encoded each card’s fee, earn rates, caps and credits as of October 2026.
- 016,666HouseholdsBLS CE Interview 2024, ≥2 quarterly interviews, annualised and population-weighted
- 028Card categoriesGroceries, dining, gas, airfare, hotels, transit, streaming, everything else
- 038CardsFees, earn rates, caps and credits as of Oct 2026 — from $0 to $895
- 042Redemption stylesCash out (simple floor) vs. transfer to partners (The Points Guy values)
net value = points × value per point + credits you would really use − annual fee
The average householdCard-payable spend · per year
How credits are countedAssumptions
| Any-travel creditup to your own travel spend | 100% |
| Portal-only creditmust book through the issuer | 80% |
| Luxury-hotel creditonly if you book hotels | 50% |
| Merchant couponsUber, Resy, Saks, streaming… | 35% |
What a point is worthCents per point
| Currency | Cash out | Transfer |
|---|---|---|
| Chase Ultimate Rewards | 1.00 | 2.05 |
| Amex Membership Rewards | 0.60 | 2.00 |
| Capital One Miles | 1.00 | 1.85 |
| Citi ThankYou | 0.75 | 1.90 |
One honest patch: the Interview survey doesn’t collect groceries (they live in the separate Diary survey). I imputed them per income quintile from USDA totals minus each quintile’s measured dining, scaled by family size. The result ($5,575 average) sits a little under BLS’s published $6,224 — conservative for grocery-heavy cards.
03
What the simulation says
How you use points matters more than which card you hold — and premium cards are a coupon decision.
Best card, by household shareWeighted · 6,666 households
A
If you cash points out, a no-fee 2% card is the best choice for 95.5% of households. Transfer points to airlines and hotels and the answer flips: Amex Gold 37.8%, Venture X 23.3%, Strata Premier 19.0%, Venture 12.5%.
Median net value per yearTransfer scenario
B
At realistic coupon use, the $795 Sapphire Reserve nets a median $214 and the $895 Platinum $296 — versus $811–$891 for the $95–$395 cards. Premium cards rarely win on spending alone.
If people used more of the couponsTransfer scenario
C
At 35% coupon use, Platinum is best for 0.7% of households. At 70%, 24.6%; at 100%, 69%. The premium card’s value proposition is built on breakage — value most customers leave on the table. For an issuer that is the business model; for a customer it is the question to ask before paying $895.
Travel decides the tier
- No travel54.6%of households Amex Gold
- < $1k14.8%of households Venture X
- $1–3k12.7%of households Venture X
- $3–8k10.6%of households Venture X
- $8k +7.2%of households Sapphire Reserve
Card with the highest total value for each travel tier (transfer scenario).
When does a premium card win?Average household · transfer
- Venture X
- Amex Gold
- Sapphire Reserve
- Amex Platinum
- Citi Double Cash
D
55% of households report no airfare or hotel spend at all — for them Amex Gold wins on groceries and dining. $1–8k travellers land on Venture X. Only around $10k of travel a year does the Sapphire Reserve pull ahead — that’s about 7% of households.
04
Try it with your own spending
Same formula as the simulation, now with your numbers.
Set your monthly spend per category, choose how you use points, and say honestly how many merchant coupons you would actually use. The ranking updates live.
Card labOct 2026 terms
$ / month
Points
Net value per yearYearly card spend $30,240
- 1Venture X$1,119 points + $425 credits − $395 fee$1,149
- 2Strata Premier$1,154 points + $50 credits − $95 fee$1,109
- 3Amex Gold$1,271 points + $148 credits − $325 fee$1,094
- 4Sapphire Preferred$1,071 points + $80 credits − $95 fee$1,056
- 5Venture$1,119 points + $0 credits − $95 fee$1,024
- 6Amex Platinum$677 points + $1,028 credits − $895 fee$810
- 7Sapphire Reserve$946 points + $655 credits − $795 fee$806
- 8Citi Double Cash$605 points + $0 credits − $0 fee$605
Best: Venture X · vs. 2% cash back +$544 / yr
Excludes welcome bonuses, lounges and status. Not financial advice — a way to see which assumptions matter.
05
Recommendation
Start from how you redeem and how you travel — not from the advertised value.
- Won’t bother with transfers? A no-fee 2% card beats every travel card for almost everyone.
- Will transfer, travel little? A $95–$325 card that matches your biggest category (groceries and dining → Amex Gold).
- $8k+ of travel a year, or you already use most of the coupons? That is when a $795–$895 card pays.
- Premium value rests on coupon breakage: model it explicitly, because a cohort that learns to use every credit flips the economics.
- The natural premium audience is the ~7% of households with $8k+ travel — target them, not average spenders.
- A transparent calculator like this one builds trust: show the net value at the customer’s real usage, not face value.
06
Limits & next steps
Imputed groceries
Part of Amex Gold’s lead comes from 4x groceries. Next: link the Diary survey to measure groceries directly.
Self-reported spend
Survey spending under-counts some categories, and the card-payable share is approximated.
Steady state only
Welcome bonuses, lounges, status and authorised-user fees are excluded — this is year-two value.
Point values vary
Transfer values are third-party estimates. The calculator lets you switch to the cash floor.
Data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey, Interview PUMD 2024; USDA ERS food spending 2024; card terms from issuer sites (Oct 2026); point values from The Points Guy (Aug 2026). Computed by my own code; available on request. Not financial advice.
SAY HI.
Want the notebook, or to talk about how I would turn this into a product feature?