No worries.
I figured there would be a premium to pay somewhere along the line and you have confirmed it. As always it is up to the consumer to weigh up pro's and cons of any offer and see if the value of the points to them outweigh the cost.
Completely agree - the only thing that annoys me, as I mentioned in my earlier post, is that I think Amex/Macquarie are doing their customers a big disservice by not properly disclosing this extra cost. I'm all for free choice and associated personal responsibility, but it needs to be
informed free choice.
Personally I was surprised that you even had an option to pay a lease by AMEX without it being treated as a cash advance.
As was I when I found out about it. Knowing Macquarie, I'd guess they reached out to Amex to try and do some sort of deal to help them reach Amex's premium customer base, and this was where they landed.
Very interesting. My question is this.
You say in point 1 that the point value is 1 per $1.00 spend. Is the plat card not 1.5 per $1.00 spend?
Or are you allowing for a point ceiling?
I used 1 point per $1 as it's a good midpoint, considering:
1) This offer is open to all Amex cardholders, and for many of them 1 point per $1 would already be the correct point-earn rate under this deal.
2) While you're right that Plat Plat Reserve, Plat and Cent
could earn 1.5 points per $1 under this deal right now, I would imagine this will reduce to 1 point per $1 on this deal come October (as per
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....enhancements-mr-earn-platinum-card-40631.html). At least I assume this will be 1 point per $1 spent spend for them going forward - definitely won't be 2 or 3 points per $1 based on the descriptions of these bonus points, and I'd like to hope Amex wouldn't make it 0.5 points per $1.
Typing out point #2 actually made me consider an additional "risk" here as well - if you sign up for this deal on the basis that the points are worth the extra cost, you are taking it on faith that Amex won't devalue the points earn on your card over the course of the next 3-5 years, and that you will want to maintain an Amex card for that period of time too.
Anyway, reasons for using 1 point per $1 aside, it should be easy enough to re-do my sums based on the specific card / points earn you have if you want to. For my example $50k/5 year/30% residual lease at a fairly typical current interest rate the monthly repayments over 5 years are around about $50k (quite coincidentally). On top of that there's the 30% residual to pay after 5 years, but no points on paying that. So just multiply $50k by whatever points-earn rate is appropriate for you to apply it to my example.
Figuring out the points cost for a different loan scenario is a little harder, but very doable - just Google "car finance calculator" or similar and use it to figure out what the indicative life-of-loan repayments (monthly repayment amount multiplied by months of loan) are you for your loan scenario, which will tell you how many points are on offer. Then run the same calculation with a 1% lower interest rate and compare the life-of-loan repayments with the lower interest rate against what you initially calculated to figure out how much the higher interest rate / points are costing you. And finally, don't forgot that you're making assumptions here that you will keep the car full-term - e.g. if you calculate everything on a 5 year lease and end up selling the car after 3 years then you're not going to earn the full potential points.
If the above paragraph is confusing and you want assistance calculating the points earned and associated cost for a specific loan scenario then send me a PM - happy to help.
