So usually once I’m recommending a rewards bank card to family and friends, I instantly get the query: “However is that a kind 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 normally 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 stable incomes charges that embody:
- 5 factors per greenback spent on journey booked by way of Chase Journey℠
- 5 factors per greenback spent on Lyft rides (by way of Sept. 30, 2027)
- 3 factors per greenback spent on eating
- 3 factors per greenback spent on choose streaming companies
- 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 by way of Chase Journey
- 1 level per greenback spent on every part else
I exploit this card to cowl all the net grocery, eating and streaming service bills for my family and my father’s, which value about $1,200 per thirty days. That earned me roughly 3,600 Chase Ultimate Rewards factors per thirty days 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 will put apart the truth that you possibly can presently 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 provide on this card and arguably one of the best card offers ever.
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Let’s deal with the worth of this card past the welcome provide.
To start out, it comes with advantages like a $50 annual credit for lodges booked by way of Chase Travel and quite a lot of travel protections that save me lots of of {dollars} every year by not having to pay for issues like automotive rental insurance coverage and journey cancellation insurance coverage. These mechanically neutralize that annual charge for somebody who travels even simply a few instances a yr.
However past these advantages, the factors I earned by utilizing this card for my on a regular basis spending in 2024 lined greater than $2,000 value of resort stays.
Associated: Is the Chase Sapphire Preferred worth the annual fee? I say yes
Over a dozen free nights value over $2,000
World of Hyatt could also be the most valuable transfer partner within the Final Rewards program, and it was the proper place to maneuver my factors.
That is as a result of, final yr, my spouse and I welcomed our first baby, and in a twin effort to protect our sanity as first-year mother and father and preserve 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 per thirty days.
We would then alternate which of us obtained to take the evening off from parental duties and luxuriate in a quiet night downtown on the resort. That is what I name worth you possibly can’t even put a worth on.
The Hyatt Regency Rochester in New York is a Category 1 Hyatt property (and a fairly good one, at that). A normal 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 less than 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 resort 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 useful you possibly can earn, value 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 manner, I obtained 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 proper card in your normal spending.
Associated: 23 best Hyatt hotels in the world
Backside line
For anybody trying to capitalize on this card’s incomes potential, you possibly can 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 value $2,050, per our valuations — and that does not even embody 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? Actually, however is it really costing me cash or saving me cash? With all the worth I get from this card, the maths is a no brainer.
To study extra, learn our full review of the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Apply now: Chase Sapphire Preferred