Frequent Miler on the Air - Chase Ink Business Preferred | Card Talk Ep4 | 8-29-24

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Chase Ultimate Rewards points are a valuable transferable points currency, and the Chase Ink Business Preferred card is a great card for earning this valuable currency. In this episode, we discuss what makes this a great card, and if it's a good card to keep year after year. (00:30) - Learn more about the Chase Ink Business Preferred card here. (00:34) - The Chase Ink Business Preferred card earns Ultimate Rewards points (00:48) - Usually has great welcome bonus (01:30) - Earning rate: 3X travel, shipping, internet, cable, phone, and advertising with social media sites (up to $150K spend per year) (02:44) - Other noteworthy perks of the Chase Ink Business Preferred card (04:34)- What are the approval rules for this card? (For example, what is the 5/24 rule and how does it apply here?) (07:19) - Is this a keeper card?  

Welcome to Card Talk, the show where we help you decide if this credit card belongs in your collection. The Chase Inc. Business Preferred Card. Let's get into the details about this one in today's Card Talk. And don't forget, you can always check through the show notes for more information. Find a link to more information about this particular card. And don't forget to sign up for our emails at frequentmiler.com slash subscribe and like this video wherever you're watching. So let's talk about the Chase Inc. business preferred. $95 annual fee, no foreign transaction fee. It earns valuable Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which is Chase's transferable currency.

So a number of different ways to use Ultimate Rewards points. But the reason we get most excited is the ability to transfer to all of their various airline and hotel partners. Usually has a great welcome bonus, sometimes really fantastic. But even when it's not at its elevated point, it's still high. So this is one that's almost always a pretty good deal. And not only is it a good deal on its own, but it's possible to get more than once, right? You can have more than one of this card.

Yeah. So, you know, let's say you have multiple businesses, you could apply under each business, maybe a one business, but you have multiple reasons to sort of separate your, your spend. You can, you can apply for multiple under one business even. And of course that doesn't, you know, guarantee that you get approved for multiple, but there's no rules against it, which is the point we're making here. The card also has a pretty good earning rate. So you get three points per dollar for travel. And that's like all travel.

It's a very wide definition of travel, which is really nice. And that matches what the much more expensive Chase Sapphire Reserve card gives you, 3X for travel. So that's really nice. It also gives you 3X for shipping, internet, cable phone, and advertising with social media sites. So if your business does that kind of thing, earning three points per dollar for all that can be really good. Those three X categories are up to $150,000 in total spend per year. Of course, if you have multiple needs, if you need multiple cards, you could do up to $150,000 with each card. That was not well said. You get the point.

But you could have one for shipping. You could have one for advertising on social media, et cetera, if you had more than one of these cards. And so your capacity could be whatever it is you need, provided you can get it approved for multiple cards, which we should talk probably a little bit about approval rules in a minute here. But at any rate, it's possible to have more than one and have one for each of those.

But that's not it. There's some other perks, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to just use your points to buy travel through Chase, you get 25% more value. So you get 1.25 cents per point value when booking travel through Chase's travel portal. And as Nick already mentioned, you can transfer to airline and hotel partners. Now, this is notable because Chase has a number of Inc. business cards. There's also the Inc.

Business Cash and the Inc. Business Unlimited, which also earn ultimate rewards points. But on their own, those points are not transferable to partners if you just have one of those two cards. If you have one of those cards, though, you can move the points to a card like this one, like the Ink Business Preferred or the Sapphire Preferred, and then transfer the points to airline and hotel partners. So this one has that capability itself. It also offers cell phone protection up to $600 per claim and $100 deductible and primary car rental coverage. Now, the terms say that you have to be renting for business purposes to be covered. I believe, though, it's primary outside of the united states either way so uh so decent perks i mean not not amazing but um pretty decent so i think the question here is like it's obvious this is a

good bet for the welcome bonus i mean me you everybody i know who's in this game applies for these cards because they have these great welcome bonuses. But is this a good card? Is this worth keeping? Is it worth paying the $95 annual fee year after year and keeping this card? What do you think? That's a great question, but I think there's one more piece we need to discuss first,

and that is I mentioned approval rules, and I think we should mention that because, of course, very important to this discussion is the Chase 524 rule. And so Chase won't typically approve you for a card. And I say typically, and that's almost guaranteed won't approve you almost because there are some exceptions, but almost guaranteed they won't approve you for a new card. If you've opened five or more credit cards from all issuers over the past 24 months that appear in your credit report. So it doesn't matter which other cards you open. If you open five or more in the last 24 months, they generally will not approve you for one of these cards.

However, if you're under 524, that is if you've opened fewer than five new cards over the past 24 months and you are approved for a Chase Inc. Business Preferred, for instance, Chase Business Cards will not add to your account. So let's say you are at 424. You've opened four new cards in the last 24 months. You apply for the Chase Inc. Business Preferred. You get approved. You're still at 424. This one won't add to your account. It's subject to the rule, but it won't add to your account. So that's important to understand for people that aren't familiar with that. But that out of the way, then I think that does probably get us to, is it worth it? So

before we do that, let me just back up. Cause I think there's a couple more things I want to say about what you just said about the five 24 rule. Uh, first of all, um, Nick mentioned that the cards are not, do not add to your five 24 account. That's because their business cards that, and chase business cards do not get reported to your personal credit report as new accounts. You will get a credit inquiry on your report, but that's different. What we're talking about are when it says there's a new account on your credit report, and these will not be reported. That's also true, by the way, of several other banks' business cards, like Amex business cards, for example, do not get reported. So you could sign up for, you know, I mean, theoretically, you know, all of the Amex business

cards and then still potentially get approved for one of these because they wouldn't show up on your credit report. The other thing I want to say is that while the 524 rule is usually applied, we've frequently seen Chase let the application slide through, even if you're over the 524 limit, when they promote better than usual offers. They're promoting better than usual offers because they're eager to get more people signing up for the card. So maybe they're making the rules less stringent at that time. We don't know what's happening behind the covers, but we have seen that repeatedly. I got approved last year for one when I was over 524.

So it definitely happens. All right. So, all right. Now that we've discussed that, because I think that's important for people to understand whether or not you can possibly be approved. But now if you figured out, okay, yeah, great, I can get approved for this potentially if I apply for it, then I get it. Okay, great. Get a great new welcome bonus. Almost always a fantastic return on spend.

But then the next year when that $95 annual fee hits, should I keep it? So, Greg, what do you think? Should I keep an ink business preferred? So yeah, I mean, if you're spending a lot naturally in those categories, especially like the, you know, I can imagine a lot of business owners spending a lot on social media advertising, for example, I think then it's pretty easy to justify this. Although you might want to also look at things like the Amex business gold card, which earns 4X in certain categories to see if you would do even better with that. But if you're doing that, then yeah, it's easy. Another, for the rest of us who don't spend a lot in those categories, this is, I think, an important card to consider uh for the it's 3x earnings and travel um so as i mentioned

before the sapphire reserve card earns 3x travel it also earns 3x dining um this one does not but um you could not earn on the dining side you mean it does not earn 3x dining, right? So just 3x travel. So if you were only concerned about 3x travel, I mean, this card's $95 a Chase Freedom, Chase Freedom Unlimited or Chase Freedom Flex card, which earns 3X dining. Both of those cards do. And then move your points to the ink business preferred in order to make them transferable. Or you could get a Sapphire Preferred card, a $95 card, which also earns 3X in dining, among other things. And the reason to consider that, even though it has a $95 annual fee, is that that has no foreign transaction fees, whereas the Freedom cards do have foreign transaction fees. So if you want 3X dining dining worldwide you'd want one of those so anyway so my point is

um if you're if you're really into the chase ultimate rewards kind of ecosystem then i think it's it's necessary to consider do you want this card in combination with some others to keep your annual fees down versus for example the sapp Reserve, where the annual fee is very high, but has a lot of great perks all on one card. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the nail in the coffin. You need one of the, generally speaking, if you're starting out anyway now, you need one of those three cards, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, or the Inc. Business Preferred in order to be able to transfer to partners. So the question becomes, is this going to be your card that keeps the ability to transfer to partners? If you're

going to have a Sapphire preferred or a Sapphire reserve, then I think we're both in agreement that the only reason to have this card would be if you're spending a lot in the three X categories. And if you're not spending a lot in them, then there's probably other strategies that would make more sense than paying the $95 annual fee. But if you like Greg said, you don't want to pay a lot in annual fees, but you like the 3x travel because you spend enough in the travel category in particular, then yeah, this card could make sense. Personally, I wouldn't keep it for like its cell phone protection, for instance. I don't like the cell phone protection very much on this one. High deductible, $100 versus there are no annual fee Wells Fargo cards with a $25 deductible.

So I wouldn't keep this card for that. You know, the primary rental card coverage, it's too restrictive. There's so many personal cards out there that offer that, that you don't have to be renting for business purposes to get the coverage. So most of those things, I probably wouldn't keep this card specifically for those purposes. Really, it's whether or not this is going to be your card that makes your ultimate rewards points transferable. And my wife had this for a long time as that.

And then eventually she decided that she didn't really need it anymore for that. She had a Sapphire Reserve and she wasn't spending much in the 3X categories. And so if you find yourself in her shoes and you say, OK, well, I'm not spending much in the three X. I have a different card that helps me transfer to, to the ultimate rewards partners. Should you cancel your ink business preferred? What do you do then? So in general, I don't recommend canceling. Um, I mean, but let me first say, if you do want to cancel it, despite what I'm about to say, make sure you move your points, any points you've earned on this card over to your other card first. Otherwise you'll lose them. But the reason I'm saying not to cancel is because the other Chase Inc cards, at least the two others that have no annual fee, you can product change to them. And the Inc Business Cash in particular is a useful one to product change to because that card has no annual fee and it earns 5X in some valuable categories.

And so you can actually earn more points potentially with the Chase Inc. Business Cash card and pay no annual fee. And now its 5X categories are limited to $25,000 spend per year. So if that's a limitation for you by signing up for the Inc. Business Preferred and eventually product changing to the Inc. Business Cash, you get multiple $25,000 increments of spend allowed in the 5X categories. that that's my preferred direction with that how about you exactly yes that's exactly what my wife did she decided i'm not spending much on the 3x categories i don't need this transfer partners because i have a different card to do that and so she downgraded to the ink cache i knew i knew crike would uh would say that that's that's

the right move that's the right play the other thing to know if you're not familiar with it is that within a household you can move your ultimate rewards points. You can combine points with one household member, or I think one co-owner of your business. Is that right, Craig? Yeah, that's right. And so if your spouse has, for instance, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, then you don't need this card to transfer partners. You could just combine your points to your spouse's points, and then they could transfer on to partners from their Sapphire Preferred card. So you only need really within a household, you need one card that allows transfers to partners, though then your limitation will become whose account you're moving your points

to. So you may need to consider some overall strategy in terms of whose accounts should have the transferable points. But my point anyway here is that this could be your one card, but keep in mind that you need to consider all of your household cards and how they play nicely together. And we have posts about strategy in terms of how that works. So we'll try and have a link about strategizing around your Chase Ultimate Rewards points in the show notes. All right. One more thing.

I forgot to mention a reason to keep this card is why I just kept mine. My annual fee just hit recently. I decided to keep it because I'm an actual business owner with actual employees who sometimes need to pay for travel for business purposes.

I got cards for each of my employees for when that when that comes up. And I think it's a you know, it's a decent card because it's I'll earn the three X points when they use these business ink business preferred cards to book travel for frequent miler purposes. So it's it I decided it was the right card for us for that very good all right if you enjoyed this episode please check out all of our other full-length episodes our frequent miler on the airs drop every friday we will see you guys next time bye everyone if you want more information about this card don't forget you can find a direct link to our site in the show notes just expand the description box to find a link to our site that's

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