How to Choose Between Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve
Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve are two of the best travel credit cards on the market, but before you decide to apply for a Chase Sapphire card, it’s worth taking a close look at your spending habits.
Why? Since the Chase Sapphire Reserve card has a more valuable reward structure than the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, it also has a significantly higher annual fee, at $ 450 per year compared to $ 95 per year for the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Here’s a summary of the rewards and benefits each card offers:
Chase Sapphire Preference
- 2x points for travel and meals
- 1x points on all other purchases
- Points are increased by 25% when redeemed for travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards.
- 60,000 bonus points after spending $ 4,000 in the first three months, which is $ 750 when redeemed for a Chase Ultimate Rewards trip.
- Points can be transferred to selected travel loyalty programs in a 1: 1 ratio.
Chase Sapphire Sanctuary
- 3x travel and food points
- 1x points on all other purchases
- Points are increased by 50% when redeemed for travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards.
- 50,000 bonus points after spending $ 4,000 in the first three months, or $ 750 if redeemed for a Chase Ultimate Rewards trip.
- Points can be transferred to selected travel loyalty programs in a 1: 1 ratio.
- US $ 300 Annual Travel Credit
- Global Entry or TSA Pre ✓ credit
- Priority Pass Select Membership
If you want the extra points and perks that come with the Reserve, you need to make sure you spend enough money to make the card, its rewards, and annual fee worthwhile.
This means you have to do the math.
Luckily, The Points Guy did a lot of math for us in a detailed post comparing both Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve . Here’s one of the many examples in the post:
If you plan on redeeming your Chase Ultimate Rewards through the Chase travel portal for flights, hotels, car rentals and cruises, Sapphire Reserve is your top choice if you spend at least $ 3,425 a year on travel and food – that’s just $ 286 a month. …
If you want to do the math yourself, try counting how much money you’ve spent on travel and food in the last year. (If you’re using a personal finance program like Mint or YNAB, they’ll give you a report – and if your bank or credit card issuer tracks your spending by category, you can upload your transactions, load them into a spreadsheet program and do a quick sort of the columns.)
Then multiply your travel / meal expenses by 2 to see how many points you could have earned with Chase Sapphire Preferred, or 3 to see how much you would have earned with Chase Sapphire Reserve.
Here’s an example of how it works: This year I spent $ 4,449.44 on personal travel and dining (including vacation trips and everyday ground transportation like Lyft, Uber, and buses), which earned me 8,899 points from Preferred and 13 358 points with Reserve.
If I redeemed these points for travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards, my 8,899 points on the Preferred card would increase 25%, giving me a total of 11,124 points and covering $ 111.24 in travel expenses. With the reserve, my 13,358 points would increase by 50%, which would give me 20,037 points and cover $ 200.04 in travel expenses.
However, I would also get an annual $ 300 fellow traveler loan with a margin, which means that I would like to get about $ 500.04 of my travel expenses covered with a minimum of no math on any of the point bonuses I could earn either card , or how many points will I earn for my non-travel and lunch expenses.
But if we follow that math to the end, $ 500.04 in reserve reward minus $ 450 in reserve fees equals $ 50.04 (“net profit”), and $ 111.24 in preferred reward minus $ 95 in preferred commission. is $ 16.24.
In fact, Chase Sapphire Reserve is the best card for me and this is before I add my first year bonuses, all the points I earn for my non-travel and lunch expenses, Global Entry or TSA Pre ✓ commission fees, Priority Pass Select membership fees, and more. Yes, my math is perfectly in line with The Points Guy’s recommendations – which is to be expected – but it was worth the time to figure out the numbers myself.
So before you assume that Chase Sapphire Reserve’s hefty annual fee is not for you, take a look at your spending habits and do a quick calculation. (Remember, if you keep your credit card balances on a regular basis, you will have to factor in the interest, which eats up any “bottom line” you can earn.)
And then, if you really want to be careful, do the same with all the other bonus credit cards.