This Credit Card Perk Has Saved Me $500 This Year

Alright, so it's no secret I love credit card rewards. (I can wax poetic about them even when I'm not being paid to do so.) But I have to admit, some of my absolute favorite credit cards aren't actually that great in the rewards department.

You know what they do have? Perks. And I like perks almost as much as I like rewards -- especially when they can save me a lot of money.

The backstory

This year I decided to buy a house. And in my infinite wisdom, I bought a house in a state on the other side of the country (worth it in the end, but whoa has it been a time!).

Particulars aside, let's just say that I spent an irrational amount of time flying back and forth during the home-buying process and the move itself. As a result, a lot of valuable work time was spent not in my cozy home office, but in the cacophonous halls of some of the country's busiest airports.

If you can manage to get work done sitting at an airline gate, you are made of sterner stuff than I. It simply wasn't going to happen. And luckily, it didn't have to; that's exactly why we have airport lounges!

The credit card perk

Airport lounges are absolutely excellent places to not just get work done, but also find decent food and even free drinks. But they are also very expensive. On average, we're talking about $50 (or more) per person, per visit. This adds up quickly when you're doing a lot of traveling.

That's why airport lounge access is one of my favorite card perks. A lot of the best travel rewards cards offer some kind of lounge access. That said, it's hard to dispute that The Platinum Card® from American Express has fantastic lounge access. (Terms apply; enrollment may be required.)

I used my card to get into all sorts of lounges. While flying Delta through Atlanta, I was able to visit several different Sky Club locations (I recommend the egg bites). My layover in Florida included a trip to a Plaza Premium lounge. And the Centurion lounge in Charlotte was busy, but made for a nice place to get some work done.

The value

I gave you the backstory earlier to explain that I absolutely would have been paying cash for this perk either way. (In fact, there was one occasion when my only option was a lounge outside my card's network, and I did actually pay cash to enter the lounge for my three-hour layover. I do not regret this purchase.)

Why is this important? Because perks you wouldn't otherwise pay for shouldn't be valued at full cost. Credit card perks are only truly worth what you would reasonably pay for the privilege.

In my case, since I would have (and did) pay for lounge access anyway, I value the complimentary lounge access at the full cost of what I would have paid in cash. Since I visited no fewer than 10 different lounges over the course of the year, that easily amounts to at least $500 in savings from this one perk.

However, I wouldn't value airport lounge access as a $500 perk in general. Chances are good I won't travel nearly as much next year (buying a house kind of hurts your vacation budget!), so I won't get the same use out of my lounge pass.

This is why it's important to reevaluate all of your cards each year to make sure you're still getting value from them. An annual audit can help you avoid paying annual fees for cards you simply aren't using to their full potential.