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This post is super hard for me to stomach because I can’t even believe that I convinced myself to do this. It goes against everything that I believe, and honestly I’m still not sure if I made the right decision. (Deep breath…) I got the Chase Sapphire Reserve, even thought I’m ineligible to receive that 50,000 bonus.
So, a little background. The Chase Sapphire Reserve is one of, if not the best travel rewards credit card on the market. With it you’ll receive $300 annual travel credit, 3x points for every restaurant/food purchase, airport lounge access, and a bunch of other perks that you can read through here. Of course, nothing in life is free so it costs a whopping $450 a year. With the $300 travel credit it’s only $150 a year which is only $49 more the other travel reward credit cards on the market (which are $99 a year). In my opinion, the 1.5X redemption rate (more on this later) when you redeem your points for travel makes up for this $49 surplus.
It also comes with a 50,000 bonus after you spend $4,000 in the first three months. Since you’re receiving Chase Ultimate Rewards points, this is a really good deal. However, Chase has recently changed it’s rules to where you can only receive 1 bonus from the Sapphire cards (Preferred and Reserve) every 48 months. Since I received the Chase Sapphire Preferred card last May, I’m not eligible for another Sapphire bonus for another THREE years.
If you’re following me on Instagram, then you know that I’m currently planning my honeymoon to Greece and I couldn’t be more excited… mainly because I’ll get to use my credit card points!! And this is the perfect time to outline the different redemptions for the various Chase chards.
Taking away all the other perks of this card, the main reason I wanted to get a card is for the redemption. This calculation is also what makes the annual fee seem less daunting.
For Chase Sapphire Reserve all Chase points are worth 50% more when you book your travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards. Typically points are redeemed on a 1 to .01 basis, so if you have 100 points these equal to $1, if you were to redeem your points for cash back. However, if you book travel through Chase Ultimate Reward, you’ll see that these 100 points are worth $1.50, so you get 50% more for your points.
This redemption was a huge turning point for me as I was planning my honeymoon. I had a little more than 100,000 points so instead of these points being worth $1,000, now they are worth $1,500, so I’m essentially getting a free $500 worth of points. The best way for me to show this is in a chart.
With Chase, in order to redeem your points for travel, you have to have one of the Sapphire cards or the INK business preferred card. The preferred cards have an annual fee of $95 and your points are worth 25% more (1 to .0125). The Sapphire Reserve has a 50% more conversion. So I’ve used this as a comparison.
From this chart you can see that originally my Santorini hotel would have cost me 124,800 points, with the Sapphire Preferred card it would have cost me 99,840 points (20% cheaper), but with the Reserve it’s only costing me 83,200 (44% cheaper). Since it’s better to use less points vs more points, having the Reserve card has saved 16,640 points. Which translates to $166. Already this makes up for the annual fee ($450 fee – $300 annual travel credit – $166 redemption savings).
If you apply the same math to my Mykonos hotel, then I saved $567 worth of points just by having the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card.
This total savings of $870 is more than the potential bonus points that I would have earned if I purchased this card in the next 3 years (when I’m eligible for another bonus)… which is why it was 100% worth it.
