So typically after I’m recommending a rewards bank card to family and friends, I instantly get the query: “However is that a type of playing cards with an annual charge?”
It is true that many rewards cards worth having include an annual charge. However, in my view, it’s often a really minor funding that delivers outsize worth yr after yr.
Take my Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (see rates and fees) for example. This card has a (fairly modest) $95 annual charge, and I am unable to see myself ever eliminating it.
This is why.
Incomes factors on on a regular basis spending
The Sapphire Preferred has some strong incomes charges that embrace:
- 5 factors per greenback spent on journey booked via Chase Journey℠
- 5 factors per greenback spent on Lyft rides (via Sept. 30, 2027)
- 3 factors per greenback spent on eating
- 3 factors per greenback spent on choose streaming providers
- 3 factors per greenback spent on on-line grocery retailer purchases (excludes Goal, Walmart and wholesale golf equipment)
- 2 factors per greenback spent on all journey not booked via Chase Journey
- 1 level per greenback spent on every part else
I take advantage of this card to cowl all the web grocery, eating and streaming service bills for my family and my father’s, which value about $1,200 monthly. That earned me roughly 3,600 Chase Ultimate Rewards factors monthly all through a lot of 2024 that I then transferred proper into my World of Hyatt account.
Associated: 7 Chase Sapphire Preferred benefits you might not know about
Does the worth offset the annual charge?
For the second, I am going to put apart the truth that you’ll be able to at the moment get a whopping 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $5,000 on purchases within the first three months of account opening — the highest-ever welcome supply on this card and arguably one of the best card offers ever.
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Let’s concentrate on the worth of this card past the welcome supply.
To begin, it comes with advantages like a $50 annual credit for inns booked via Chase Travel and a wide range of travel protections that save me a whole lot of {dollars} every year by not having to pay for issues like automobile rental insurance coverage and journey cancellation insurance coverage. These routinely neutralize that annual charge for somebody who travels even simply a few instances a yr.
However past these advantages, the factors I earned through the use of this card for my on a regular basis spending in 2024 coated greater than $2,000 price of lodge stays.
Associated: Is the Chase Sapphire Preferred worth the annual fee? I say yes
Over a dozen free nights price over $2,000
World of Hyatt could also be the most valuable transfer partner within the Final Rewards program, and it was the right place to maneuver my factors.
That is as a result of, final yr, my spouse and I welcomed our first little one, and in a twin effort to protect our sanity as first-year dad and mom and keep my elite status with World of Hyatt throughout a lighter journey yr, we used these factors to cowl a room at our native Hyatt Regency about as soon as monthly.
We might then alternate which of us acquired to take the evening off from parental duties and revel in a quiet night downtown on the lodge. That is what I name worth you’ll be able to’t even put a value on.
The Hyatt Regency Rochester in New York is a Category 1 Hyatt property (and a fairly good one, at that). A typical room prices about $175 or 5,000 factors per evening on common, however we had been in a position to rating most of our stays for under 3,500 factors per evening by checking World of Hyatt’s award chart and cherry-picking off-peak nights.
By the top of the yr, we had stayed greater than a dozen nights in that lodge on factors, and virtually all of these redemptions had been earned in actual time every month simply from utilizing the Sapphire Most popular for these on a regular basis spending classes.
Final Rewards factors are among the many most respected you’ll be able to earn, price about 2.05 cents apiece on common, in keeping with our April 2025 valuations. However by transferring them to World of Hyatt and utilizing them on this means, I acquired about 250% extra worth than that from them. Had we paid money for these stays, it will have value us about $2,100.
That is an enormous chunk of worth to earn from simply utilizing the appropriate card in your regular spending.
Associated: 23 best Hyatt hotels in the world
Backside line
For anybody trying to capitalize on this card’s incomes potential, you’ll be able to happily nonetheless get the 100,000-point welcome offer on the Sapphire Preferred for a restricted time.
Keep in mind that these 100,000 bonus factors alone are price $2,050, per our valuations — and that does not even embrace the opposite $2,000-plus in worth I’ve demonstrated right here just by utilizing the cardboard over the course of a yr.
Will I’ve to pay that annual charge every year to make use of this card? Definitely, however is it truly costing me cash or saving me cash? With all the worth I get from this card, the mathematics is a no brainer.
To study extra, learn our full review of the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Apply now: Chase Sapphire Preferred
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