This publication is sponsored by Amex Bank of Canada. However, the opinions and views expressed on this blog are only mines. American Express is not responsible for maintaining or controlling the accuracy of the information published on this website.

The American Express Cobalt^® Card is one of my favorite credit cards in my wallet.

Discover our family’s strategy for this special winter ahead, during which we’ll be collecting points to use on future trips!

With the American Express Cobalt^® Card you get:

• 5x the points on eligible food & drinks
• 2 times eligible transport points
• 1x the points on everything else

The food and drink category is extensive as this includes:

• Grocery stores
• Delivery of food and groceries
• Take-out Restaurants
• Restaurants, bars and coffee shops

At COVID-19, spending on groceries, take-away and home-delivered food was the highest in our household compared to previous years, when we tended to eat out more.

This winter, you’ll have to use your essential expenses to earn points. That’s what we do in our home.

Here’s my strategy for leveraging your spending during your first year as a new cardholder American Express Cobalt^® Card.

Since you’ll earn 2,500 bonus Membership Rewards points every month you charge $500 in eligible purchases to your card, that means you’ ll earn the equivalent of 10 points per dollar on groceries or food delivery for those first $500 in purchases. And this, during the twelve months of your welcome bonus period.

Here’s a table to explain this:

So, for the first year, if you spend $500 every month on your American Express Cobalt^® Card in the 5-times points categories, you’ll earn 5,000 points per month.

So you’ll have earned 60,000 points by the first-year end or the equivalent of $600 as a statement credit for your future travels. And of course, you’ll earn 5x the points for these categories even after the welcome bonus period.

My advice: charge all your monthly expenses to your Card to reach $500 in Card purchases monthly, such as subscriptions (cell phone plan, streaming services, etc.) or transportation (gas, train, etc.).

You’ll earn between 1 and 5 points depending on the category, you will secure your 2,500 Welcome Bonus Points every month!

To give you some examples, in our family, we use our Card to:

• Grocery store like Metro or Super C (elsewhere in Canada you can also use it at Safeway or Whole Foods Market, for example)
• Food deliveries (Uber Eats or Skip The Dishes, to name a few)
• home-delivery restaurants to continue encouraging them during the COVID-19

With all these merchants, we earn 5 points per dollar.

This is unprecedented for a credit card in Canada that offers such flexible points as the American Express Cobalt^® Card!

Now that you know how to earn points on your new American Express Cobalt^® Card with your everyday purchases, let’s see how you can use them for future travel.

The Membership Rewards program is the most flexible loyalty program in Canada. You can redeem your points in many ways:

• Statement credit for any eligible travel purchase
• Transfer Points to hotel partners like Marriott Bonvoy or Hilton Honors
• Statement credit for all other eligible purchases charged to the Card
• And more.

For example, we usually redeem our points against car rental charges to our Card. Here, 10,000 points have a $100 value.

And we benefit from the Car Rental Theft and Damage Insurance included with the Card. That’s enough to save between $15 and $25 a day compared to the agency’s insurance.

We also regularly use points from our American Express Cobalt^® Card points for Card vacation rentals, such as a chalet rental made via Airbnb. Here, 10,000 points have a $100 value.

Or we use our American Express Cobalt^® Card for airline tickets purchased with our Card, such as this Air Transat ticket from Montreal to Paris. Here, 10,000 points have a $100 value.

Or, you can transfer points from your American Express Cobalt^® Card to the Marriott Bonvoy program. So you could book a hotel stay at one of the many Marriott Bonvoy hotels in Canada or anywhere in the world.

10,000 points can be transferred into 12,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.

If you apply our strategy explained above, the 60,000 points earned during the first year will earn you 72,000 Marriott Bonvoy points!

We regularly transfer points from our American Express Cobalt^® Card to Marriott Bonvoy. That gets us some family holidays like at the Delta Hotels Trois Rivieres Conference Centre:

As you can see, the American Express Cobalt^® Card is a valuable part of our portfolio. It’s straightforward to earn a lot of points with everyday purchases. And when it’s time to redeem them, we can use them in many ways, which helps relieve our “holiday budget”!

The situation we are all experiencing is unusual: let us take advantage of this challenging time to earn points for our future travels, whether they take place abroad or here in Canada!