4 Easy-to-Miss Reasons the Chase Sapphire Reserve is a Great Deal

To earn most welcome offers, you need to hit a spending threshold within a certain amount of time. The new Sapphire Reserve bonus requires $6,000 in spending within three months of account opening. That’s a small total spending commitment and a reasonable average of $2,000 per month for a bonus of this size.

For comparison, the American Express Platinum Card®’s welcome bonus can be as high as 175,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $12,000 in eligible purchases on your new card in your first six months of card membership. While the monthly average spending requirement is also $2,000, you’ll have to maintain that for longer. Also, you aren’t guaranteed to qualify for the maximum welcome bonus.

The spending requirements can be even higher with business cards, such as the Capital One Venture Business. It has a comparable intro bonus, but a dramatically higher spending requirement. With the Venture Business, you can earn up to 150,000 bonus miles. You’ll earn 75,000 bonus miles after spending $7,500 on purchases within the first three months of account opening and an additional 75,000 bonus miles after spending $30,000 in the first six months from account opening. That’s an average of $5,000 in spending per month to earn the full welcome bonus.

Luxury credit cards are notorious for offering valuable benefits that are often less than straightforward. While that maximum applies to the Sapphire Reserve, it also has an incredibly simple annual $300 travel credit that easily reduces your net cost to $495 a year.

The Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit is so easy to use (no enrollment required) that you’ll likely maximize it without trying. The first $300 in travel purchases you make on the card are reimbursed as a statement credit, and you can earn the credit across multiple purchases. That includes airfare, hotels, rental cars, cruises, travel agencies, campgrounds, trains, buses, taxis, tolls, parking and more. My advice: If you can’t max out this credit every year, the Sapphire Reserve likely isn’t the right card for you.

If you can extract at least $495 in value from the card’s other benefits, paying the annual fee upfront will be a less painful endeavor. While the card’s other credits aren’t as straightforward, it offers over $2,000 in annual value through an array of credits for hotels, dining, delivery, rideshares and more, so there are plenty of ways to justify this card’s cost.

This card doesn’t just check the boxes by offering the insurance perk you want; it offers enhanced versions of the best protections. When you dig into the fine print, you’ll see that it often has more generous terms than the coverage you get with other cards.

I love having trip delay reimbursement coverage and have used it a handful of times to get hundreds of dollars in expenses reimbursed. Travel credit cards with lower annual fees typically offer trip delay insurance that only applies to delays exceeding 12 hours or requiring an overnight stay (if they have it at all).

Premium cards’ trip delay perks usually only require a delay of six hours or more (or an overnight stay), which is when the Sapphire Reserve trip delay coverage kicks in. What makes the Reserve’s trip delay benefits stand out is that you can be reimbursed up to $500 per ticket, whereas other coverage may limit you to $300 to $500 total per trip, regardless of how many people you’re traveling with.

And it’s not just that benefit that I appreciate. It has top-tier primary rental car collision coverage, emergency medical and dental coverage (up to $2,500 with a $50 deductible), roadside assistance (up to $50 four times per year) and more.

Those may not seem like eye-popping numbers, but the roadside benefit provided by most other cards is simply a dispatch service; in other words, they’ll call someone for you, but you pay the entire bill.

With the Reserve’s roadside assistance perk, I’ll consider downgrading or canceling my AAA membership. The emergency medical and dental benefit is a rare perk, and with it, I’ll likely be comfortable with cheaper medical insurance for overseas trips — or I might avoid that cost altogether.

Instead of spending hours researching every angle for making the most of your points, keep it simple and focus on getting more than 1 cent per point in value with any partner redemption. You can redeem Chase points for 1 cent each toward statement credits or Chase Travel℠ bookings. If an award isn’t getting you at least that much value, then you’re better off cashing out the points and paying for the booking that way.

Keep in mind, Points Boost bookings through Chase Travel℠ can be worth up to 2 cents per point for Sapphire Reserve cardholders. If you can find those deals, that’s an easy way to secure increased value.

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