Chase Sapphire Preferred sign up bonus

They've had that going for a little while now. I got the card earlier in the year, booked my vacation on it and turned the 40,000 into a $400 statement credit.

Yea I did the same last summer.

quote:

---

LSU6262 Chase Sapphire Preferred sign up bonus I think it's been $400 for a little while. If it were me though, I would go with the Ink Bold, it has a 50K point bonus. plus the 5% cash back on cell phone, cable and internet is nice.

---

I got one of these when the bonus was 60,000. I'll use it for a year and cancel it to go back to my Ink Business., with no annual fee

quote:

---

I got one of these when the bonus was 60,000. I'll use it for a year and cancel it to go back to my Ink Business., with no annual fee

---

You could just downgrade to Sapphire and keep the account open, unless you are canceling to churn it later.

Also, Ink Bold is a charge card, so let's use Ink Plus which does the same thing and gets the same bonus and is a credit card.

Now, ink plus and ink classic provide the SAME benefits, however ink classic has a smaller sign up bonus and the amount of spend per year that qualifies for the bonus categories is 20k instead of 50k in spending per year.

So, for the average user, the ink classic is fine on a year to year basis. What one should do then is sign up for ink plus for the bigger bonus then downgrade to ink classic. That user should keep Sapphire at preferred level, since that level is required to transfer points to eligible partners.

Unless you own a business with lots of charges, there is no reason anyone should hold an ink bold or plus card for more than a year.

ETA: to get real fancy, you could apply for a bold and then later on the plus at some other time, netting you 100k points between them. Of course again, you wouldn't hold on to either one for more than a year.

It will credit you 40k points. You can choose to use them whenever, 50k if in travel

quote:

---

With the Sapphire, don't you have to spend so much money in the first couple months to get the points? So if I'm going on a vacation in March of next year should I wait to put the costs on there so I can redeem the points or cash back?

---

First, NEVER, EVER get cash back with a travel credit card. You will lose so much value you'll cry when you find out how much you lost.

Chase Sapphire is 40,000 points if you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months you have the card if you apply online. Apparently, you may be able to score the deal with a $2,000 requirement by walking into a Chase branch and applying there.

Your strategy depends on where you are going in March, since that changes the points needed to get to certain destinations. Also, you need to determine if you will fly economy, business, or first class, as those seats have different values, etc.

quote:

---

What??

---

When you redeem for cash back on a travel credit card, you don't get full value.

For example, Capital One is 2x points for travel. You can do a statement credit with them on travel that will net you 2x points, but if you were to do general cash back you would only get half of that.

This is true for every travel card I've encountered.

ETA: And it gets worse when you can redeem points for first class travel, where your points can be worth 3 or 4 cents per point. Whereas cash back value would be 1 cent per point at best.

quote:

---

When you redeem the 40000 points for cash you get 400 dollar credit. If you redeem it on travel you get 500 statement credit. Not a huge difference but I see what you mean

---

That's really over simplifying it. Chase points have way more value than that.

That's if you redeem through Chase. If you transfer the points to airline partners, they are worth far more.

When you redeem through Chase for travel, you get 1.25 cents per point, hence the difference between $400 cash back credit and $500 travel credit. .25 X $400 = $100 + $400 = $500.

If you transfer to an airline, the value shoots up to at least 2 cents per point, and if you redeem for first class international tickets, the points could be worth even more, touching 4, or 5 cents per point. It all depends on the monetary value of the ticket you are redeeming points for.

I'm just looking out for you. People should really research their credit card rewards options or you might waste a lot of value.

You can get even more if you fly southwest. 1:1 point transfer and 40,000 = about $750 worth of southwest flights.

No problem. You are right; there are always better options than cash back on cc rewards.