Groceries, Netflix, takeaways: The best everyday purchases to rack up points

You don’t need to be a frequent flyer or a big spender to earn points on your reward credit card. In fact, just using your card for everyday purchases like your weekly food shop or cheeky mid-week takeaway can seriously boost your points total over time.

Here’s how to supercharge your points through everyday spending – plus a few ways to redeem them with the American Express® Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card.

Stack your basket, stack your points

After your mortgage or rent, food is probably your next biggest expenditure. So why not turn this into a points-earning opportunity? Who doesn’t want to get something back while they’re buying their broccoli? Here are a few ways to supercharge points at the supermarket.

1. Use an Amex® Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card to do your food shopping. You can earn 1 Membership Rewards® point for every £1 you spend anywhere, including all major UK supermarkets. So if your average weekly food shop comes to £100, that’s 100 Membership Rewards points. Over a month, you’ll have racked up around 400 points just from buying groceries.
2. Make sure to use your Amex online and in-store. If you do your main food shop online, remember to get your Amex out for the little in-store top-up shops. All of it counts!
3. Stack with loyalty cards. Remember to use your Clubcard or Nectar card alongside your Amex Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card, and not only will you earn Membership Rewards points, but also your supermarket’s loyalty points.

Press play on points

Hands up if you’re a serial streaming services subscriber? Guilty as charged!

But have you thought about how you can turn your Netflix addiction into a points-earning opportunity? TV streaming subscriptions are an ideal way to build up points because they’re recurring and predictable.

You can look to put all your direct debits for digital services onto your Amex Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card.

“If you have multiple streaming services on the go (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Spotify etc.), you’ll find that this is an easy way to build base points on your card.”

Order in, cash out

Your mid-week or weekend takeaway treat can also earn you points, and cashback.

With the Amex Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card, you can get £5 back on your Deliveroo orders, twice a month – up to £120 a year. That’s alongside earning 1 Membership Rewards point for every £1 you spend.

An extra little tip is to use your Membership Rewards points to purchase Gift Cards for takeaway services like Deliveroo. This can be a great way to budget, and also a handy way to redeem your points.

Maximum points, minimum effort

There are lots of ways to make sure you’re earning the maximum amount of points, with very little effort, especially with a rewards credit card like the Amex Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card:

1. Take advantage of bonus point offers. Currently, Amex® Cardmembers can get 5,000 bonus points every time they spend £10,000, up to a maximum of 10,000 points per Cardmembership year.
2. Add an additional Cardmember to your Account. You can add your partner or housemate to your account, and their spending can contribute to your points total. But just remember that you’ll be responsible for all spend on the card.
3. Invite friends. You can earn up to 90,000 Membership Rewards points a year by referring friends to Amex. Search “Amex Refer a Friend” to find out more, or find your link in the membership tab of your Amex app.
4. Add your Amex® Card to PayPal. Link your Amex to your PayPal account and select it as the payment method when checking out online. That way, you can make sure you’re earning your Membership Rewards points even when you can’t find your wallet.
5. Spend on travel with your Amex. You can get 2 points for every £1 spent directly with airlines or in a foreign currency, and 3 points for every £1 spent at American Express Travel.

From points to perks: What you can actually get

It’s all well and good racking up the points, but only if you can use them for something you want. It’s often a good idea to look for a rewards credit card that offers different ways of redeeming points.

For example, with the Amex Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card, you can use your points to shop online through platforms like Safekey, PayPal and Amazon. But you can also use your points to reduce your Card balance, purchase Gift Cards or transfer them to an Amex loyalty partner programme like British Airways Club.

As with any use of credit, always remember to spend responsibly and only use it for purchases you can comfortably afford, taking into account your overall financial situation.