Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: Earn 80K Bonus Points w/ $4,000 Spent on Purchases

Need some advice. I have a Chase Freedom opened in 2004 & Chase Sapphire opened in 2005. The Chase branch staff said I could not get the 80K points promotion as I already had a card from the Sapphire family.
They said I could close this card & apply for Chase Sapphire Preferred in one month. Would closing the card which is open since 2005 affect my credit history. Any advice?

Yes, only 1.8% and you earn 1 point per $ on your cc

is the annual fee waived if applied in branch?

However you can get up to $1600 of value by transferring to other travel partners.

I am planning a couple of international trips. Can you help pointing me to the best resource for determining how to get the most value from these points through travel partners.

Yes, only 1.8% and you earn 1 point per $ on your cc

Yes, only 1.8% and you earn 1 point per $ on your cc

OK so how much is 1 point worth? If less than 1.8 cents, then you're losing money. Plus, the fee for paying taxes via CC is higher than 1.8% in many places; typically more like 2-3%.

OK so how much is 1 point worth? If less than 1.8 cents, then you're losing money. Plus, the fee for paying taxes via CC is higher than 1.8% in many places; typically more like 2-3%.

For this specific deal if you owed 4k in taxes and used this card you'd be getting 84,000 chase points- worth $840 if taken as cash, or 25-50% more through the travel portal... or potentially several thousand dollars if transferred to an airline and used for business or first class plane tickets.

And you'd pay $95 annual fee for the card, and $72 in "fees" for the tax payment via CC.

So $167 paid to get anywhere from $840 to several thousand dollars in rewards.

Seems pretty slick to me.


For folks with larger tax bills we can knock out multiple card signup required spends every year doing this.... (that's on top of bonuses earned from normal through-the-year spending)




And honestly, even for folks who've exhausted every possible signup bonus (which is pretty hard to do) you can still easily beat the 1.8% fee to make it worth doing.


For example if you have one of the Chase Unlimited cards you get 1.5x chase points for all spend.

Using through PYB or through the travel portal with a CSR that's a minimum reward rate of 2.25%

So you're profitable over the 1.8% fee at the low end of redemption.


If you use those points for some of the better point transfer opportunities you're talking more like 3-7% cash-value-equivalent for travel by paying the 1.8% fee.


Similar stuff can be done in the Amex ecosystem (for example using a Blue for Biz plus earning 2x MR on everything, then using the MR for travel, or even cashing out via a Schwab card at 1.25 cents per point for 2.5%)

It's a very poor method generally to pay such a substantial fee when your points redemptions aren't really going to net that back

It's
. Even *generous* estimates of value put CSP @ ~ 1.7 cents/point

(probably transfer to travel, so that's not going to be that high a redemption for many people).

Also, 5/17 is just around the corner and you would have had to anticipate paying taxes long ago (or prepay which is just plain stupid, unless you're making progress payments).

TPG indicates 2% [thepointsguy.com] is pretty much the going rate.

TPG values Ultimate Rewards points at two cents each

So yeah you COULD pay 2% to net the 80k pts on $4k spent (eating $80 in fees), but there are better ways to meet the spend.

You can call and ask them to expedite shipping after your application is approved.

I did that months ago and mine was overnighted to me at no cost.

This is a weird reply to math showing you it's a small fee, and you net more than you paid back.

it's like you ignored all the actual math or something.




Not sure why you list CSP here....and some folks list them at 1.7, some at 2.0.... but sure let's use the value you list... and once again, show why math says you're wrong.

Let's say you ONLY get the CSP in this deal.

You pay 1.99% fee on $4000 in owed taxes to the IRS.

That's $79.60 in fees.

Plus the $95 annual fee.

That's $174.60 cost.

You get 84,079 points for the spend and signup bonus.

At your listed 1.7 cents per point of value, that's just over $1429 in rewards.


You understand that's more than $174.60 right?

Quite a bit more in fact.






For people who don't ever travel it'll still be either 1.25 or 1.5 cents per point via PYB (depending on if they have access to a CSR via player 2).

So that's either $1050.90 in rewards, or $1261.08 in rewards.


Again, if you need help with the math here- that's more than the $174.60 cost.





...what?

Unless you're bad at math (admitted that does seem an issue for you) you would always plan to owe taxes.

Because that means the government gave you an interest free loan all year for the underpayment.

We owe money every year. On purpose. And always turn a profit doing so.

Why don't you?






Right.

And you end up getting a much higher reward than the 2% fee.

Also it's weird you cite TPG as a source here- when TPG says UR points are worth 2 cents not 1.7

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/re...mum-value/









This only makes sense if you're getting ONE credit card all year.

Folks interested in getting as much free money as possible are signing up for LOTS of cards- pretty much constantly- and churning through signups.


Unless you have infinite organic spend available to you, which just about nobody does, this creates an extra source of spend, for a fee far lower than the value of the rewards earned.


You don't pay the 1.99% instead of doing an organic-spend-no-fee bonus signup.

You pay it in addition to still doing those with your normal no-fee spending- because it's profitable to do so

By quite a lot.