An Expensive Credit Card Without a Sign-up Bonus

I've written many times about the credit card game (aka What's In Your Wallet?) and how it's played. Open an account with an offer for a significant sign-up bonus (SUB), meet the spending requirement to earn the SUB, then consider closing the account after 12 months if the projected value without the SUB doesn't significantly out-earn the annual fee. Well, last night I got a credit card without following that game plan. I signed up for a card with a whopping $550 annual fee and no SUB.

WTAF? you might wonder. Isn't that against everything I write about on this topic? Well, yes, but also no. It's a calculated risk I've taken.

The card is the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire. And it's not technically a card I've opened; it's a card I upgraded to from my present card. Plus, it's a level of card I have experience with. I canceled one last June after owning it for 4 years.

Embedded within my rationale for canceling it last year is my reason for reopening it now. I canceled because I thought I could finagle another offer to this card, or the mid-tier card below it. Alas, in the past year Amex tightened up its policies to block card game-players like me from scooping up repeated SUBs. I looked carefully at the other benefits the card offers and decided that even without a big SUB, I could make the card worthwhile. Maybe.

The "maybe" is because not all of the card's benefits are guaranteed. A big one is the value of Diamond status with Hilton Hotels. Yes, having status is guaranteed, but what I'll get for that status is not. For example, will I get an appreciable upgrade at a snazzy hotel? I'm not sure. But I've got two stays at snazzy hotels planned for next month— on our trip to Italy— and my spouse and I decided to take the risk.

There's more to the calculation than "Pay $550 in hopes of some upgrades," of course. A $550/year premium card comes with premium benefits. There are a few cash-back-for-specific-travel-spend offers I expect to hit in the next year. Plus there's an annual free night certificate. Recall that last year we used two of those certs at the phenomenal Waldorf Astoria Pedregal in Los Cabos.

Another piece of the calculation is that with no SUB there's also no required spending target. I don't have to spend $3000, $5000, or more on this card to earn anything. That frees me up to sign up for another card, a net-new card, and put my spending toward earning a big SUB there!

How will all this work out? I'll check back in ~12 months on how this card does— plus how whatever other card with a big SUB I sign up for does!

Outlasting the Rain to Hike Desoto Falls

Georgia Travelog #16
Turner's Corner - Friday, 11 Apr 2025, 6:45pm

It was a long, strange trip to get to our last hike of the day today, Desoto Falls. The trip didn't need to be long; it just was. It was long because there was a lot of rain this afternoon, and we drove around trying to find different places we could visit in the rain. We even drove past the trailhead for Desoto Falls once. It was foggy and still drizzling, so we tried something else first and came back. I'm glad we did that because when we came back around 5pm the rain had abated and the sky had cleared just enough to make the hiking pleasurable again.

The trail at Desoto Falls is an out-and-back-twice affair. The trail forks at a T-junction just across the creek from the trailhead. Half a mile to the right is Upper Desoto Falls; a quarter mile to the left is Lower Desoto Falls. We hiked to the upper falls first.



Owing most likely to the hours of rain earlier today we had the trail and the falls to ourselves. We almost had the whole area to ourselves. The trail starts at a campground, and it was seemingly deserted except for the campground host when we started hiking. It reminds me of a trip years ago when I friend and I were arriving at a campground just as rain was starting. Everyone else was leaving. By the time we set up our tent we had the whole place to ourselves. Then it poured for two hours, which was no fun. But after that the sky cleared and we enjoyed a great nighttime view of the stars from the vista point on the ridge.



Next we doubled back and hiked the left fork of the trail, to Lower Desoto Falls. The lower falls were smaller but also more intimate. And there are two drops on the lower falls.



The lower drop on the lower falls is kind of off the trail. I say kind of because the trail has wooden railings that guide hikers away from this spot. But we saw the falls below us and saw a faint trail beyond the railing leading down to it.

As we explored further we found this was not just a "social trail" created by people climbing around the fence but was actually the old trail up to both sets of falls. The nice, wide trail we hiked in was a new route, likely built to avoid a narrow section near the creek that's slippery when wet. We could tell it used to be the official trail because there's still a bench on the trail down here.

The old trail got even fainter as we explored it further. We weren't worried about getting lost because we're skilled enough with wilderness to handle it. Plus, it's not like we were remote; we knew the maintained trail was at worst 50 meters away. Indeed the now almost-invisible footpath led back to it, and we followed the wide path the rest of the way back to the trailhead.

Now we're ready to drive home— where "home" is our home base in Dawsonville— and OMG, how far is it? Because we're really hungry. ...Oh, only 45 minutes? Whew, that's way better than the hour and a half I was afraid it might be. We can be having dinner by 7:30 tonight.