Which Chase Card Is Best When You’re Starting With Points?

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Which Chase Card Is Best When You’re Starting With Points?

In general, I tell most peeps to start with the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It’s the quintessential points card, even after all these years. And you can transfer the points you earn directly to airline and hotel partners at a 1:1 ratio – most of them instantly.

If you spend a lot in travel & dining, or if you want lounge access, spring for the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Here’s how to find the break even point with the annual fees ($95 for the Preferred and $450 for the Reserve, but you get a $300 annual travel credit).

I transferred Chase points to Hyatt to stay 3 free nights at the Hyatt Ziva Puerto Vallarta

Already have one or the other? Then get the Freedom or Freedom Unlimited. The only difference is the bonus categories. Freedom has 5% rotating quarterly categories. Freedom Unlimited earns 1.5 points per $1 spent – and you can combine the points with your Sapphire card points. So they’re an easy way to boost your Ultimate Rewards points balance fast. And both cards have a $0 annual fee!

If you’re looking for a small business card, get the Ink Business Preferred or Ink Business Cash. The former earns points that transfer directly to travel partners and has a $95 annual fee; the latter requires you to have a premium Chase card to access travel partners, but a $0 annual fee.

If you just want to earn cashback, spring for any of the cards with a $0 annual fee (Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, or Ink Business Cash).

But to get awesome travel (think international Business Class flights, upscale hotels, and cheap flights to Hawaii), you want one of the annual fee cards (Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or Ink Business Preferred). The annual fees are worth it for the huge travel savings you can get. It’s how I got a $2,000+ Mexican vacation for $90!

Which Chase card? Here’s a flowchart

All the information summarized in a flowchart (click to enlarge):

How to decide which Chase card to get

*AF = annual fee

“Transfer” in the chart means if the card earns points you can transfer directly to travel partners. Here’s how that works and which partners you can access:

Pair Chase cards to earn even more points

Of course, ALL of these cards are subject to Chase’s 5/24 rule. That means if you’ve opened 5+ cards from any bank in the past 24 months, you will likely NOT be approved (although some small business credit cards don’t count).

And because Chase has the best travel rewards cards on the market, you want to get as many as you can before you hit that limit. Because after that… you’re basically locked out from getting most Chase cards (with a few exceptions for some co-branded cards).

Sapphire Preferred or Reserve?

Link: What’s the Break Even Point for Chase Sapphire Cards?
Click here to compare the Sapphire Preferred
Click here to compare the Sapphire Reserve

The Sapphire Reserve has a $450 annual fee. Woof, right?

But consider you get:

$300 annual travel credit per cardmember year
Unlimited visits to Priority Pass airport lounges
3X points on travel & dining

The $300 travel credit alone brings the annual fee down to $150, assuming you’re going to spend on travel anyway.

I visited the Wingtips Lounge at JFK Terminal 4 before a Virgin Atlantic flight for free with my Priority Pass

In that light, $150 isn’t much more than the $95 annual fee on the Sapphire Preferred – plus you earn 3X on travel & dining (as opposed to 2X) and get a Priority Pass Select membership, which is incredibly useful if you don’t already have one.

But if you don’t want to commit to the bigger annual fee, the Sapphire Preferred is still the best card for beginners.

Do you prefer cashback?

Click here to compare the Freedom to other cashback cards
Click here to compare the Freedom Unlimited to other cashback cards

The Freedom and Freedom Unlimited are both excellent supplements to either Sapphire card. Because you can combine all your points and send them to travel partners.

But, if you really just want to earn cashback, I’d go with the Freedom over the Freedom Unlimited. Only reason being there are 2% cashback cards out there, so you can do better than Freedom Unlimited’s 1.5% cashback rate.