Frequent Miler on the Air - Sapphire Reserve vs. Preferred. Which is better? | Ep173 | 10-22-22

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

With one card sporting a $95 annual fee versus a price tag of $550 per year for the other, you might think that the answer here is easy, but it turns out that there's a lot to discuss between these two top travel cards. 1:25 Giant Mailbag 3:59 What crazy thing...did Radisson Hotels do this week?6:07 Mattress running the numbers: Transfer your points from Radisson international to Radisson Americas https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-move-radisson-points-to-radisson-americas-now/ 9:22 Chase Sapphire Reserve vs Sapphire Preferred: Which is better? https://frequentmiler.com/chase-sapphire-reserve-vs-preferred/ https://frequentmiler.com/bwi-airport-now-has-a-priority-pass-restaurant-good-news-for-southwest-fliers/ 49:10 Question of the Week: Which cards have a Priority Pass that includes restaurant access?

let's get into the giant mailbag what crazy thing did city this week it's time for mattress running the numbers ready for the main event the main event frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event sapphire reserve verse sapphire preferred which is better i don't know sapphire reserve card is out with a new bigger than i can't say ever bonus but bigger than in a long time bonus so it's a big bonus it's a big it's a big bonus it's a big nice bonus so it's suddenly on our minds again to consider which is better because for a long time it's been the other way around that the Sapphire preferred has had a better bonus. And we've told people in the past, if you're interested in the Sapphire reserve, it was still better to start with the preferred to get the bigger bonus and then later upgrade to the reserve right now. That's not true. So it's, it's worth considering

which do you want? And the bigger, better bonus that's not from Bonvoy bountiful bevy brilliant whatever they mean we can't get away from these bees right no bigger better bonus on this affair is her let's do an entire episode without the letter b okay that would be nice it's just that it's going to be tough transitioning into the next segment, the giant mail slot. I was going to say mailbox, and then I stopped myself. I was like, no, that doesn't work either. All right.

Forget eliminating bees. We're going to do the giant mail bag now. Today's giant mail comes from Mary. She had a much longer mail, but the basics are about her arriving in Florence, Italy. The plan was to stay in a VRBO property. Turned out it wasn't so good. They left it early. And so last minute Googled hyatt in florence and uh turned up um the search resulted in finding the new il tornabuoni talk about butchering that uh whatever the name is of that but it's a hyatt unbound hotel and she she said it was amazing it cost her 29k points per night so it was in peak season i think probably probably 25k normally uh which she transferred from chase and so it's relevant for

our conversation today and she says it's a fantastic five-star hotel they gave us a three level upgrade to a junior suite. Totally saved our trip. I wanted to call this out because anytime there's a new Hyatt that is of interest, especially in a great city. I don't know if you've ever been to Florence, but I love Florence. And so having a good Hyatt option there is exciting to me. And so I did Google it before the show. And the overall rating actually wasn't so good on Google. Like the reviews like averaged something like 4.2, which normally I would be like, I'm not going to look at that.

But if you look at the actual reviews, the most recent ones are all five. So it looks like maybe they had some troubles maybe over COVID or, you know, maybe before it became a Hyatt Unbound collection. I don't know. Anyway, there you go. A nice. The Hyatt Unbound is not to be confused with Marriott Boundless. Oh, come on. Because Unbound and Boundless are two totally different brands.

Okay. Totally different things. They are. They are. Okay. Just wanted Totally different things. They are. They are. Okay. Just wanted to establish that. All right. You got to hand it to Hyatt to get Unbound away from the Bonvoy Bound.

Right. Right. It's out of bounds. We're out of bounds here. So we're going to move on to what crazy thing did Radisson Hotels do this week? I had to go slow there. Make sure I didn't say Radisson Rewards or Radisson Hotels do this week? I had to go slow there. Make sure I didn't say Radisson Rewards or Radisson Americas.

But what crazy thing did Radisson Hotels do this week? Yeah, Radisson Hotels. So Radisson Hotels is different from Radisson Americas. You remember they split up. They're two separate programs. And so Radisson, rest of the world, had a sudden overnight devaluation. They eliminated their award charts. They pegged the value of their points to around 0.2 cents per point.

Now, that's not a huge devaluation from how we previously had benchmarked the value of points around 0.3, but before, because they had award charts, it was possible to sometimes get extreme value from your points. For example, you could book, before, you could book like the Radisson Blue Maldives for a set fixed price. And so no matter how expensive it was in cash, you wouldn't be paying more in points. No longer true. Now you're going to just pay an exorbitant amount in points. And there's no good way to get outsized value from those points. So that was their nice overnight surprise for us.

Yeah. Thanks for that, Radisson International. We often call it Radisson International to make it simple. Radisson International and Radisson Americas, right? So thanks for that, Radisson International, ruining what used to be an intriguing program. And it's too bad. I'm disappointed because there were some places in Europe that I was like, I'd really like to try that out one of these days.

And one of these days never came. And now it's never going to come because I'm not going to take the two tenths of a cent per point. I'm going to take my chances and hope I can get more value out of either Radisson Americas or maybe if and when Choice Privileges ever folds it entirely into Choice Privileges, because, of course, Choice bought Radisson Americas, then I'm hoping that Radisson Americas points will become more valuable. And so that brings us into Mattress Running the Numbers. If you've got points stock

in Radisson International, the Radisson Hotels group that is not the United States, the rest of the world, not the Americas, the rest of the world, Radisson, if you have points over there on that side, what can you do? Are you stuck with two p counts of a cent? So I think the right play is to transfer those points to Radisson Americas. And it's not because I think Radisson Americas is a great program. There is some value to be had if you stay at certain Radisson hotels. They do have an award chart still. And so if you think you can make use of that and get good value, then obviously it's worth doing. But I think the bigger play here is the potential. Choice Hotels bought Radisson Americas not so long ago. And so the thought is at some point, Choice will roll Radisson Americas into the Choice Privileges

Rewards Program. When that happens, the question is, what will they do with those Radisson points you have in your account? Will they adopt them one for one, convert them to Choice points? Will they do something less like make every two Radisson points worth one Choice point? Either way, actually, I think that's actually a win because radisson points are so devalued from from where they used to be that um choice has some has some sweet spots that you can often get more than a penny per point value radisson you're probably looking at more like

a third of a point value if you're lucky so I think that's the right play is to move it over to, if you have any points in Radisson everywhere else, move them over to Radisson Americas. Hope that choice does the right thing and one-to-one converts them. Yeah. I mean, right. If they one-to-one convert them,

then it's going to be a huge win. And if it's even, like you said, two to one, even if it's three to one, it's not going to be a huge win. And if it's even like you said, two to one, even if it's three to one, it's not going to be a massive win, but you'll still probably come out ahead if you put any effort into maximizing your choice points. So the only way you lose on that one is if Radisson never pulls, I'm sorry, if choice never pulls Radisson into choice privileges, seems unlikely that they never will. Or if they give you something like,

you know, every four Radisson points for one choice point, and that doesn't seem realistic at all. So I agree. So I think you're, you stand to win almost no matter what. I mean, unless you really have your heart set on those international properties and you're like, I don't care how many Radisson points I got to light on fire. I really want to stay at the Radisson and Crete. I mean, it looks pretty, so enjoy. But unless that's you, then I would move them out. And you still can at this point, but I'm going to guess that that's not going to be available forever. So I would jump on that sooner rather than later. The post that tells you how to do that is linked in the show notes here. So take a look for that down in the notes below or on

YouTube or wherever you're watching. Right. So just like Radisson devalued overnight, I would fully expect them to pull this ability to transfer points just overnight as well. So do it sooner than later, as Nick said. Hopefully they didn't do it last night. So the night before, whenever you're listening to this, hopefully it didn't happen. All right.

So get those points out of there. That's Mattress running the numbers. I think then that brings us to the main event, right? The main event. Main event. Sapphire Reserve versus the Preferred, which is better. So both of those cards are part of Chase's Ultimate Rewards ecosystem. So Ultimate Rewards are the points you earn with a whole lot of different chase cards. And with ultimate rewards points, if you have a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card or another one, a Chase Inc. Business Preferred, any of those three, then that unlocks the ability to transfer points one-to-one to a number of airline and hotel partners. And so that's where in this

game, you get really outsized value from your points. There's the ability, like we were talking about Hyatt before, you could transfer your points one-to-one to Hyatt and book, you know, maybe a thousand dollar a night hotel for, let's just make the math easier, 30,000 points. And so if you had cashed out those same 30,000 points, you would have gotten $300, but now you're getting $1,000 per night hotel because you booked a valuable awards day. So that's the kind of thing we like to do with the points. And we know if you're a frequent listener of Frequent Miler on the air, that's what you like to do with the points too. So the Sapphire Preferred and Sapphire Reserve cards and the Ink Business Preferred, which we'll talk a little bit about at the end. Having at least one of them in your household is key to making the Taste Ultimate Awards as valuable as it can be.

Okay. All right. Well, so before we get into the comparison, should we explain why having one in your household, your wording there was important, I think. Yeah. Should we explain why that is the way you said it? So you only need one of those cards in your household because Chase will allow you to combine your points

with one other member of the same household or a co-owner of your business if you have a business, but we'll leave that aside for now. So let's say you're playing in two-player mode, you've got a spouse, and so we'll just call them player two, they're gonna have to be married, right? So your player two can have some chase cards, and you can have some chase cards, and you can put those points together. So if either one of you has a card that is allowed to transfer to partners, then you can combine your points in that one single account. So for instance, in my household,

my wife has the Sapphire Reserve and I have the Freedom Unlimited. So I can take all the points I earn on my Freedom Unlimited and move them over to my wife's Sapphire Reserve and then she can move them on to partners from there. And she can move them to her loyalty accounts or to the loyalty accounts of an authorized user on the account.

Is that right, Craig? I didn't just make that up. Oh, that's right. Okay. So, which I had to ask only because I have a card that enables transfers also, but that's not the way you're going to want to play it in your household. You'll probably just want one of these cards. So then my wife could transfer to her Hyatt account or to my Hyatt account or to her United Mileage Plus account or to my United Mileage Plus account as long as she keeps me as an authorized user on the Sapphire Reserve.

Now, there are different ways to play that because the Sapphire Reserve has an authorized user fee. So we'll talk about some more of that detail later. But the fact of the matter is you don't both need one of these cards. You just need at least one in your household to be able to enable the transfers to all of the various loyalty programs. Right, right. And the other thing I want to say about that is it's really valuable, the ability to combine points because other cards like the Freedom cards and some of the fee-free Chase Inc cards have better earning power than these cards that have annual fees. So with the fee-free Freedom Unlimited or the Freedom Flex, you can earn three points per dollar at drugstores. With the Freedom Flex, you can earn five points per dollar in rotating

categories each quarter. Freedom Unlimited, you earn one and a half points per dollar everywhere. So that's better than, you know, for unbonus spend, that's better than what the Sapphire Preferred or Reserve will give you. With the Inc. Business Cash Card, the fee-free Inc. Business Cash Card, you can get five points per dollar at office supply stores, which is awesome because office supply stores often sell gift cards. So you can earn 5X buying gift cards and they often have sales where the Visa or MasterCard gift cards have no like extra fees on top. So you could buy, for example, a $200 Visa gift card for $200. You're earning five points per dollar doing that. Those points then become more valuable by moving them from

your Chase and Cash account to your or your significant other's Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve or Inc. Business Preferred account. And because that way it unlocks the ability to transfer those points. And also it means that when one of you earns a welcome bonus on one of these cards, you open up a new card. Again, you can take that big windfall of points and move it to your Sapphire Reserve or Sapphire Preferred and then transfer that on to partners from there. So that really, it unlocks a lot of value because like we said, the best uses of points or the most valuable uses of points, if you like to travel anyway, are going to be transferring to partners.

So having one of these cards in your household is pretty much a requirement. If you're going to be in the Chase ecosystem, you're going to need one of these. It's just a matter of which one you need to have. Right, right. All right. So let's talk first about what the two Sapphires have in common. Neither one has foreign transaction fees. They both allow transferring points, as we've talked about. They both earn three points per dollar for all dining. That's worldwide when you spend at

restaurants or you order through Uber Eats and things like that, three points per dollar. They both have primary rental car coverage. They both have trip cancellation coverage. They both have baggage delay coverage, and they both offer extended warranties. And they both offer free dash pass until December 31st of 2024, or up to a year after that, if you don't sign up until the end of that year. So that's a summary of what they have in common. And it sounds like a lot. So when we now talk about the annual fees, Sapphire Reserve costs $550. Sapphire Preferred only costs $95 a year. It seems like a big difference. It's a big difference. Why the heck would you get the Sapphire Reserve? But first of all, Sapphire Reserve has $300 travel credit, which is crazy easy to use. Yeah. I mean, it just automatically triggers. So you don't have to do anything. You just have to spend some money on travel and travels pretty broad. I mean,

it's not only hotels and flights, but Ubers will trigger that credit. Right. And I mean, also train tickets, trains, cruises. Yeah. It'd be kind of hard not to trigger it unless you're just not using the card. So, so that's $300 back of the 550 and then um the safari preferred also has a travel-ish credit but much much harder to collect on you get 50 for a hotel book through chase ultimate awards and um you know that means you have to deal with the fact that they don't always have the best prices. When you book a chain hotel through there, you're not going to earn rewards points with that hotel chain. You're not going to, you know, there's a lot of reasons that you may or may not collect on that, but it's still there. It's definitely better than a hole in the head.

Okay. But it's not, to be clear, we don't value it the same way we value the $300 travel credit on the Sapphire Reserve because the $300 travel credit on the Sapphire Reserve, you can use anywhere you book travel. Whereas the $50 credit on the Sapphire Preferred can only be used when you're booking through Chase Travels. So-

Exactly, exactly. And it's only for hotels, right? So you gotta book a hotel through them. Right. And before you value the $300 of that Sapphire Reserve at full face value, though, let me say that you don't earn points on, because of that issue. So, you know, so, so a lot of people don't value the full face value, but still it's very close. And so, um, because it's so easy to earn, you can think just to make the math easy, just think of the card as being about two 50, uh, compared to the Sapphire preferred $95.

Right. Right. About 250. So pretty close. Something less than. There's a guy I know who's made lots of arguments about how you should not value a rebate at the full face value. There's some guy I've read a lot of studies who often said that you wouldn't prepay 100% to maybe use something. But anyway, it's around $250.

Around $250. Right. Something less than $250 because that guy sounds pretty smart, the guy you're talking about. So, all right. So, for like about $155, you know, $100 and something like that dollars more for the Sapphire Reserve. I mean, what do you get? Do you get $150, $160, $170 worth of stuff or what? You get a lot of stuff.

So let's talk about what that stuff is. First of all, if you want to pay for travel through Chase, so if you're going to buy, use your points to just book travel, then points are worth one and a half cents each instead of 1.25 cents each with the Sapphire preferred. So to be clear, this is not, we're not, I'm not talking about transferring points to Hyatt. Now I'm talking about going through the chase portal and just, you know, searching for hotels or airfare and just saying, I want to pay with points, you get an extra quarter of a cent value from each point with the Sapphire Reserve card.

You also earn three points per dollar for travel versus two points per dollar for travel with the Sapphire Preferred. So you're earning an extra point per dollar. So if you spend a lot on travel, that can be very valuable to you. You get Priority Pass with, I think, two guests when you use it. So for Priority Pass, whether your local airport has a Priority Pass restaurant. You recently, Nick, stumbled upon a Priority Pass restaurant somewhere. you weren't expecting one, right?

Yeah, I did at Baltimore, Washington airport, BWI, which is a big Southwest hub, really big Southwest hub. And forever they've had the club at BWI that you reviewed a while back and it looked great, but in order to get to the club, you'd have to leave this. If you're flying Southwest and connecting, you'd have to leave the secure area. You have to go through security, go to the club, then leave the security again, go through security again to get back to Southwest. So for all intents and purposes, there has not been a lounge. There's been minute suites at BWI forever. And including when I went through, I always check, I don't know why, but I always pull up the app and look at whichever airport I'm at, I guess, because things get added all the

time. And thank goodness I do that because I was at BWI just last weekend and I was very surprised to find that there is now a Priority Pass restaurant, the Harbor Grill, that you can access if you're flying Southwest or American Airlines without having to leave the secure areas. So it's between gates C6 and C8 and it's very easy to get to.

And so if you have a card like the Sapphire Reserve that has a Priority Pass and includes restaurant access, you get $28 per person and you can have two guests with the Sapphire Reserve's priority pass. So, I mean, you could get yourself, what, like an $80 check, basically, just about anyway with three people if you got a couple of guests with you and you can eat for that. So yeah, just a few years ago, the conventional wisdom with priority pass was that it can be valuable for international travel, but not so much within the United States. Things have changed a lot just in those few years, you know, with them opening more and more, not opening the restaurants, but becoming usable at certain restaurants in airports so that you can actually get your meals for free. Huge change. A number of lounges also have converted to accepting priority pass that didn't used to. And they also have these

be relaxed spots where you could actually get a short massage for free if you have priority pass. And the Detroit airport, which is the one I fly out of most is a classic example. Again, just a few years ago, party pass was, there was nothing, absolutely nothing you could do with it at Detroit airport. But now in the Delta terminal, the McNamara terminal, you have the B relax spas and in the Evans terminal, which is the everything else everyone who's not a partner with delta terminal you have a restaurant you have a lounge and you have a be relaxed spa so you've got quite a lot going on there yeah a lot of value to be had with a priority pass membership so that's yeah that's pretty cool so that's what the sapphire reserve has that the uh sapphire

preferred does not and um but we're not even close to done yet of the things that the other one doesn't. Global entry or pre-check credit. So you get the fee returned to you every four years, up to every four years for signing up for and renewing global entry or pre-check TSA pre-check. There's some, there's some cool brand things. Lyft you get 10 points per dollar by using your card Sapphire reserve card with Lyft versus five points per dollar with the Sapphire preferred. Those are through March, 2025. You know, I totally forgot about that. I'm glad you mentioned that because I totally forgotten.

And I took a couple of Ubers this last weekend that weren't cheap. And I look back and I say, oh man, I should have booked through Lyft. Yeah, I always forget about it too. All these little like co-brand things I forget about. And it does, it bugs me that they're all like through a certain date. So I can't think of them as permanent features. And so that tends to be, I kind of discount them all together in a way. Instacart is another partnership. So you get 12 months free Instacart plus with the SEPHR reserve versus six months with the preferred. You get $15 per month, up to $15 per month credit with the reserve versus $5 a month, up to $15 per quarter with the preferred. That's for Instacart. That $15 credit per month versus per quarter is Instacart.

Right, right. And then DoorDash, there's still a DoorDash benefit there. I forgot about that as well. With DoorDash, you're getting $5 per month credit with the Sapphire Reserve versus I think it's like the Instacart of $15. I'm not actually sure what the Sapphire Reserve is. My notes are actually messed up here, unfortunately. Well, that one excites me less because most MasterCards also offer, I think, the same benefits.

Oh, that's right. Yep. Yep. Yep. I forgot about that. Basically, most credit cards these days offer some sort of a DoorDash benefit. But then you can't always. Well, I'm not sure I'd say most, but yeah. Anyway.

All right. Many. MasterCards anyway. Most of those do. And I think you can't stack a coupon. So it's like, eh. Ah. Eh.

Eh. All right. Never mind the DoorDash stuff. Okay. Sapphire Reserve also gives you roadside assistance for free four times per year. So that's like if you don't have AAA, you can get someone out to tow your car or to help fix a flat. It gives you six-hour trip delay protection versus 12 hour with the Sapphire preferred.

So that means if your trip is delayed by six hours, you can, you know, get some compensation for what you need. Have you done that? Have you, have you ever not with chase trip, trip delay protection?

I haven't either. Yeah. My only, my only claim with that had been with Citi years ago. And I believe now I should have looked this up. I didn't think about it until right now when you were saying it. I believe there's something if you ever end up in this situation where you're like, oh, man, I got delayed by a lot, but it wasn't quite enough. I believe the wording of the policy is by six hours for the Sapphire Reserve or 12 hours for the Sapphire Preferred or overnight. And I believe it says or overnight.

And I'm not sure how they define what overnight means. So if you're ever in that situation where you're like, oh, man, I got the Sapphire Preferred and I only got delayed 10 hours. If it was overnight, you may still be able to make a claim. I say may. Who knows? And I don't know how that works with less than six hours. Where do they define it overnight? But, but it's just worth knowing that, that type of little nuance and always reading for those nuances so that if you

don't quite meet the requirements, you can still take a swing at it. That's kind of fun. You know, we need to look that up. Like, so if it, if the flight was supposed to take off at 1155 and took off after midnight, is that over? I mean, I don't know. Went from a PM time to an AM time. I mean, I'd at least try. Then there's some things that you, that Sapphire Reserve offers that you hope you never need. I guess what we were just talking about is one of them, but what you really hope you never need, it gives you emergency evacuation and transportation up to a hundred thousand dollars worth. It gives you emergency medical and dental up to $2,500. Now that may sound like not much, but I find that very interesting because I can't think of any

other cards other than the Ritz card, which has the same coverage that offer medical and dental at all as a credit card perk. So that's pretty cool. For purchase protections, the Sapphire Reserve has damage or theft purchase protection up to $10,000 per claim versus up to $500 with the Sapphire Preferred. That's a big difference. It really is a big difference. If you're going to buy a big ticket item, you'd certainly want the higher amount there. Right, right. Especially with so many phones costing well over $500 these days.

They're easy to break. Return protection is also something that the Sapphire Reserve has that the preferred does not. So if you're not allowed to return, if the store you bought from won't accept a return, you can get up to $500 per item and up to $1,000 per year with the Sapphire Reserve. All right. So that sort of sums up. We're going to talk a little bit about the business preferred in a moment, but that kind of sums up the differences. So what do you think, Nick? dang, that extra 150 plus to get the Sapphire Reserve for that collection of miscellaneous things that it gives you?

You know, I don't get super excited about collections of miscellaneous things, or at least not as excited as I did back when I collected bottle caps. You know, I don't have as much tolerance for the bottle cap collection anymore. So I'm not super excited, but on the flip side, I can definitely see the person that this would appeal to. And when I say that, I mean, several different people, because different situations, this would really work out. I mean, if you spend a lot on travel and you really don't have to spend a ton to be a lot, I mean, a lot of means different things to different people, but you don't need to be a lot. I mean, a lot means different things to different people, but you don't need to be like wildly wealthy to have spent enough that you would come out ahead by earning that extra

point per dollar. Do you remember where the break even is on that? I can't recall off the top of my head. I think you did a post about it. So I'll link to it in the notes where you figured out how much you have to spend on travel to make it worth earning that extra point per dollar spend and where it would be worth more than $160 difference. So I mean, if you spend a fair amount on travel, and you'll use priority pass a time or two per year, then I think it certainly can be worth it. I mean, I keep the the Ritz card, which has similar travel protections. And one of the reasons I keep that card is for the travel protections. If I wasn't going to have the Ritz card, then I think I probably would want the Sapphire

Reserve. And it's not because you're going to get enough value every single year, but it's because the one time you do use that, it's going to be worth enough to cover quite a few years of the annual fee, whether it's the travel protection or the purchase protection. And I have had to use purchase protections before. And I haven't used it with Chase. I had one failed claim actually with Chase, but that's another story for another day. But I had a successful claim with Amex not that long ago

where I dropped a phone a week after I bought it and I was able to get the money back thanks to purchase protection. So having that type of benefit up to $10,000 per claim would cause me to consider putting large ticket items on this card. So if I was going to buy a number of bigger items, I would probably consider this. I like the emergency medical and dental.

I don't usually buy travel insurance when I travel. I have before, but I don't usually. And having this in order to get some emergency medical, which again, $2,500 isn't very much, but on the flip side, in a lot of countries, medicine is not as expensive. Emergency medical visits are not nearly as expensive as they are here. So that may cover at least some things that could happen on your trip. So I see enough opportunities to make it worthwhile, but you really have to ask yourself, am I going to use those?

Do I value those? Am I going to use those? Do I value those? Am I going to book all my travel on this card? It's tough. It's not a slam dunk for me. I mostly I've said before, I mostly keep this card because I write about it. And so it's useful to be able to say, oh, well, yeah, here's how the DoorDash benefit works. Because I mean, I just told you, I think you can't stack a coupon. But now I'm second guessing that and questioning myself. And while it's good that I have the card, because then I can test that out this weekend and see. So it's helpful for me in that regard, but I don't think we spend enough on travel in my household to really justify it otherwise. But I think your situation would be different for you, right? It is. It is. I spend a lot on travel, which is ironic given what our whole thing is about, our blog, our podcast, all about really

how to earn the points so you could travel for free. But there's a lot of things in travel that still classify as travel that aren't usually covered by points like rental cars. I tend to, these days, I've been traveling a lot more. So not only have rental car prices gone up, but I'm renting more often than usual lately. And so those all go on the Sapphire Reserve, earn three points per dollar. And trains, and there's just a lot of miscellaneous things, as you said, Ubers and whatnot. So I do value the three points per dollar for travel. The other big things that it offers kind of depends a lot on how you're going to use them. So for example, one of the other big things it offers over the SAF Preferred is the 1.5 cents towards travel book through the Chase Ultimate

Rewards portal. And so it gets a little more value for your points if you use your points that way. I used to a bit because I had so many points I didn't know what to do with, but I have not done that in a long time. I find that I've been transferring points to Hyatt at such great numbers that I wouldn't want to waste any, and I feel like it'd be a waste to use my points at 1.5 cents value now because I've been getting so much better value through Hyatt. The other things that it offers, the other big things that it offers are Priority Pass, we talked about, and better travel protections and purchase protections. Both of those are things that you could get from other cards, so it really depends on what your situation is there. If you have a Amex Platinum card, you're going to get much better purchase protections and you're going to have better emergency evacuation coverage with that

card, but not as good priority pass. But there are other cards that have equal priority pass or maybe even better. So it really just depends what else is in your portfolio as to how much you should value those things. But I think if, if for someone who doesn't have like, you know, good versions of those things, those really should be considered into whether the Sapphire reserve is better. And I think a lot of people will do math and say, yeah, actually, yeah, it is, it is the right one for me. And, you know, I've said that it wasn't I haven't found it to be worth it to me in the past. But we talked just a little while ago about that new priority pass restaurant at BWI. And that's huge for me because we fly Southwest a lot.

We've long had a companion pass in our household. And so, you know, we we tend to choose Southwest domestically. And if you fly Southwest out of the eastern half of the United States, you're going to connect to BWI, you know, from almost everywhere. So I, we connect to BWI all the time. And so now having a restaurant there, that is a huge value to me. Now, like Greg said, I have other cards that offer that benefit. So that won't be a game changer for me on the Sapphire reserve. But if I didn't have other cards that offered that and I flew southwest a lot from anywhere in the east or I know I'm going to be connecting through BWI all the time. Well, I mean, that restaurant benefit alone could be huge because you enjoy a meal every

time you go through the airport. And that's, to me, almost better than lounge access from the standpoint that you're going to get an actual full meal rather than trying to pick off of a buffet and find what it is that you like. So I find that pretty valuable. And then, of course, BWI also has a minute suite. So you can get that quiet, relaxing room where you're all by yourself and kind of get that end of the lounge experience also in one shot. And don't forget, if you're going to do that, you can book your minute suites right online on their website. So you don't have to wait when you get there. Just quick tip there. Anyway, so I think that I could see again, where that could be really valuable

for a lot of people. So for you, I know you said you spend enough on travel, or at least this last year, you've spent enough on travel to keep it. In a future year, if you weren't spending as much on travel, would you still keep the Sapphire Reserve or would you downgrade it or go after a Sapphire Preferred instead? Yeah. I think if I knew I wasn't going to be spending much on travel, luckily Chase makes it very easy. You can just call up and downgrade the card to the Sapphire Preferred or even to a fee-free Freedom card if you prefer. So there's a lot of options there that are easy. And then if you later decide, oh, wait a minute,

I've got some big travel purchases coming up, call them up and upgrade back to it. And your annual fee will be prorated each time so that you'll get, when you downgrade, you'll get a certain amount back depending on where you are in the year. And when you upgrade,

you'll pay the sort of the prorated amount to get it back. Yeah. And I think that's a really solid point. So if you are eligible and we didn't mention this, so maybe we should, you're eligible for a Sapphire bonus, A, if you don't currently have a Sapphire card and B, if you have not earned the bonus on a Sapphire card in the past 48 months, it doesn't matter when you open the card, when you close the card, what matters is when you earned the bonus. It's got to be 48 months since you earned the welcome bonus on the card. You could have closed it two weeks ago, but earned the welcome bonus five years ago, then you would still be eligible on the flip side. If you earned the welcome bonus, you know,

three years and nine months ago, then you're not going to be eligible. So let me make sure you look back through your records and figure it out. But if you're eligible for the bonus, probably at any given time, I'd say the right play is, well, the right, unless you're going to spend a ton on travel, the right play is just to pick whichever one has the better bonus. And right now the Sapphire reserve has the better bonus. And so even if you don't value all of the things we just talked about, or you're not going to spend a ton on travel right now, it probably makes sense to get the Sapphire reserve because of the elevated bonus. Yeah, I think so. I think that makes sense. And if you currently have a Sapphire reserve or preferred, and it's been more than 48 months since you got the bonus for that card, you can call and downgrade that card to a free freedom card.

And then a few days later, apply for the Sapphire Reserve and you should be able to get approved then. You just can't have an active Sapphire preferred or reserve card at the time you apply. So that's the key. Yep, that's the key. And the product changing is a great tip because it is very easy. I mean, I have never run into pushback with Chase in terms of product changing.

So don't be afraid to call and make that product change and keep that in mind a year from now when renewal comes up. If you decide you're not getting enough value to justify the $550, it's one easy phone call to call and say, hey, you know what? I'm not getting enough value. I'd like to downgrade to the Sapphire Preferred and only pay $95 a year or a fee-free card and save yourself the money. But set a reminder so you don't forget. Set a reminder on your phone and say, okay, I applied today, a year from today.

I want to make sure that I evaluate the situation and downgrade if necessary. That's a really great point. So for anyone who really loves the idea of 3x rewards for travel, we have to talk about yet another card that earns Chase Ultimate Rewards points, unlocks ability to transfer points to partners, and only costs $95. And that's the Chase Inc. Business Preferred card. So the Business Preferred card has the same annual fee as the Sapphire Preferred card. It has a lot of features in common. It's a very similar card, but on the business side. The main difference between the two preferred cards is their earning rate. So where the Sapphire Preferred earns three points per dollar for

dining, the Ink Business Preferred earns three points per dollar for travel. So that's the main thing. It also earns three points per dollar for shipping, internet, phone and and certain types of advertising. But yeah. So then why would you pay for the Sapphire Reserve if you can get 3x travel on the the only thing driving your decision, then yeah, it doesn't make sense to pay so much more for the Sapphire Reserve. Even if you say, well, wait a minute, I don't have a business. How can I get a business card? I don't think it makes sense to get the Sapphire Reserve instead of the Inc. Business Preferred because, do you want to talk about this neck well i mean but i mean because you can easily create a business is that we're talking about most people have an entrepreneur yeah most people have businesses without realizing it whether you

have some rental property that's a valid business. Whether you ever sell things on eBay or garage sales, that's a business. Or maybe you're writing the great American novel and financing that. Banks are very open. And so it's worth saying that if you're interested at all in being entrepreneurial, and like Greg said, it can be pretty small. I mean, my wife buys and sells things on Facebook Marketplace from time to time or on eBay, she used to now and then. Really, it's more so Facebook Marketplace from time to time now. That's enough.

And of course, it's up to the bank as to whether or not that's enough. Ultimately, I'm telling you that's enough. It's enough to get approved potentially. Obviously, they're still going to have to make their decision as to whether or not they want to. But the fact of the matter is people with very, very, very small businesses get approved routinely all the time. So it's not, not all businesses are big businesses. I mean, that should be intuitive. You look around you, most businesses are small and some are very, very small and not

all businesses make money. Many of them lose money and you'd still potentially be getting approved for a card. So you're going to need to enter some amount of revenue. But with some issuers, even putting zero dollars in there or your expected revenue in year one can be enough. So, again, it's very simple to become an entrepreneur. You don't need to go and register an LLC necessarily. Or as a sole proprietor, you use your social security number and apply with just your social security number as a sole proprietor. If it's only you doing the business and you're just operating with your own name, like if you're selling things on eBay or on Amazon or you're, I don't know, mowing lawns or doing phone

consultations or whatever the case might be, then you could just apply as a sole proprietor. And it's a very simple process. Just enter your own social security number and go. Right, right, right. Now, let me say, you know, even if you don't value things that the SEPA Reserve has like priority pass or the miscellaneous Instacart and all that stuff we talked about. There is a reason you might still prefer the reserve over the or even the preferred over the ink business preferred, which is the dining bonus. You'll only earn one point per dollar with the ink business preferred, but three points per dollar with either of the Sapphire cards. Now it is true. You could get a fee free freedom card and earn three points per dollar for dining, but those charge foreign transaction fees. So if you're, if you're spending a lot in travel

and a lot of that is international, you're not, you're not going to want to take your freedom card internationally to earn three points per dollar. So what are you going to do for dining? That's when people tend to spend a lot more for dining than normal, I'd say, when they're traveling internationally. And so it's good to have a card that has good restaurant bonus that has no foreign transaction fee, I think. So that's a reason to consider one of the Sapphires over the business preferred, even if you get over that hump of like, well, wait a minute, I don't have a business. Yes, you do. Even if that's true, you might still want one of the others. But if you can spend big, I think business preferred is good for its welcome

bonus regardless. For sure. I mean, a hundred thousand points usually. So it's the standard bonus for that card, but it requires, what is it? $15,000 in spend. Yeah. So you need to be able to spend quite a bit in a short amount of time in order to trigger that though.

It's worth considering the new annual fee chase business cards. Also, you know, if you realize that you have a business, the ink cash and the ink business unlimited are great cards. I mean, I think probably, you know, if you talk around or ask around in this game,

most people that have any business cards at all have the ink cash card because that's certainly a popular one for its five X. Greg mentioned, you know, five X at office supply stores. And certainly it's popular for those Visa gift card deals, but it can be useful

even for other types of gift cards. In fact, just this week, we needed to buy tickets for Disney World and we didn't have time to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to try to figure out ways to get discounted gift cards.

So we bought some gift cards at an office supply store because it was 5X. So, you know, might as well at least earn 5X on the tickets. If I got to spend an arm and a leg to go visit Mickey Mouse, then I might as well at least earn 5X on it. So that ink cash card is such a sort of unsung hero. Not only that, I mean, even if you don't want to do any work at all, put your internet and phone charges on the Inc. Cash card.

It's just automatic payments. And you're going to get five points per dollar for those. And then every now and then, move those points from your Inc. Cash card where they're only worth a penny each. If you leave them there, move them to your Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or Inc. Business Preferred accounts so that they become more valuable. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And the Visa gift card sales that we talk about all the time, now the current one, the one that ends the day where this is publishing at Staples, you can buy up to $1,600 at a time. And if you're earning 5X on that, I mean, you're talking like

8,000 points. And so I took that, I have an insurance bill that's about that much every month and I can pay multiple payments with $200 cards. So why not earn the 5X if you can, right? And of course, there's limits on that. That card only earns 5X and up to $25,000 in purchases per year at office supply stores. So phone and internet is in the same category there too, I think capped at the 25K per year, but totally worthwhile. And so we could talk about that all day long but today's show is about sapphire reserve versus sapphire preferred believe it or not uh so the ink business preferred gets an honorable mention in that because again if you only are interested in travel and being able to transfer to partners paying for travel and being able to transfer to partners

then the ink business preferred might be the best uh bet for you also worth mentioning that card has cell phone insurance and it only earns 3X at cell phone and internet versus the 5X on the Incash we were talking about. But the Incash, of course, can't transfer to partners without one of these other premium cards we've been discussing. So that's another reason you might want

the Inc business preferred for its cell phone insurance and 3X on the cell phone bill, though it's got $100 deductible. So that excites me a little bit less than the cell phone insurance on some other credit cards. Yeah, because some other ones have what $50 deductible, $50 deductible, and there's even a couple that have a $25 deductible. But yeah, 50 is getting to be more standard on a lot of other cards, or at least certainly on the Amex cards that have cell phone insurance. So so that's all things to evaluate, but, but pretty good, I think.

So I think our, our, what was our verdict here? The Sapphire Reserve probably worth it for a lot of people, at least in first year. Yeah. For a lot of people, it's the right, it's the right card, but definitely, you know, do the math and see, because if you don't need to be paying $550, the $95 is a good, very good alternative. So either way, you're not going to be, you know, losing out because they're both good cards and both do the job that they need to do, which is unlock the power to move your chase points to partners like Hyatt. Absolutely. All right. Very good. So I think that brings us to this week's question of the week.

And this week's question of the week kind of goes back to something we've just been talking about there because we were talking all about the priority pass and restaurants. And this question came in several times this week in different forums. But Brett asked on my post about that BWI restaurant that's now on Priority Pass, asked the question several people had, which cards have the restaurant Priority Pass? It's hard since I think they're all called Priority Pass Select Benefit. So which cards have a Priority Pass that includes access to restaurants like the one we just talked about? Yeah. If you have your Priority pass from any issuer other than american express

then you have the ability to get the the restaurant benefit i mean the restaurant benefit is included it's just amex that disallows the restaurant benefits so if you have if you have a amex card that offers priority pass and any other card that offers priority pass don't even ask for the priority pass from amex because you're going to get confused about which is which just request the one from the other issuer and you'll be good yeah if you get a priority pass from like the i don't know like the hilton card or something like that i think they might auto send that one just throw it away auto send that one. Just throw it away. Seriously, I agree. Just throw it away. I mean, as long as you have an alternative.

Right, right, right. That's what I'm saying. As long as you have an alternative, just throw it away. There's no sense in keeping it because it's not going to do you any good. Now, the second part of the question that Brett didn't ask, but I'll ask you is, what's the guest policy or how does the guest policy vary? Which I know you mentioned two guests on the Sapphire Reserve. Are there any cards that vary from that? Are there any cards that vary from two guests policy? Right. So is it two guests on all of the ones that aren't Amex issued priority pass?

Because it starts to get murky there. If you've got a bigger family. It does get murky. The Ritz card, which is pretty hard to... So the Ritz card you can't sign up for directly, but you can get another Bonvoy card from Chase. And later, after you've had that other card for a year, you could request to upgrade to the Ritz card. That comes with priority pass,

supposedly with unlimited guests. And some people recently, the reason I kind of hesitated here is some people recently have said, I don't think that's true anymore. They've tried to look up the details. It's not well documented what the features are. So I think it still has unlimited guests

or maybe we're grandfathered in if we got it a while ago. I don't know. I would love to have a recent data point to prove it one way or another. Have you ever, I've never guessed it in more than one or two people. So yeah, I've guessed it in four or five, but only once or twice. So, and it was years ago now. So I, whether or not that's still applicable today, I don't know, but I did do it on a couple of family trips a long time ago now and it was no problem. So another one that's unusual, the city prestige card, which is another one that that one's no longer available. I don't think you could even

product change to it if you don't have it, but that one says two free guests like, or immediate family. So you can, you can bring in all of your immediate family but um only two like unrelated guests so that's kind of interesting yeah yeah i mean so with most of them it's going to be two guests and we think maybe the ritz one is still unlimited but we don't know for sure uh because it's not even listed as a benefit necessarily anymore it's kind of hard to find and i actually i always kept the ritz priority pass in my wallet for a long, long time. And then for some reason I switched out and took the VentureX one and now I can't find my Ritz one. So I got to find that again, or I'm gonna have to call Chase and request it again. If I request it again, maybe the literature will say

what the deal is on guests. But it certainly was unlimited at one point in the past at the very least on the Ritz card and most other ones. I think the venture acts, the Sapphire reserve, those are both two guests. Uh, what about there's a priority pass with the altitude reserve. Is there not really, it's, it's, it gives you, it gives you like two visits or something. It's something weird. So there's another one to throw away. Exactly. So those are, I mean, those are basically the cards that are going to come with priority pass that's useful for you.

If you've got a venture card, I guess you get two priority pass visits a year, I think. So those could be restaurants, I think. But again, that's very limited. So the cards that you really want with a priority pass, I think, are the Sapphire Reserve, the Reditz, or the VentureX.

And out of those, the best we think is the Ritz. Otherwise, they're basically the same. That's right. Although the VentureX has the other advantage of that they don't charge for authorized users. So you can get everyone in your family. I mean, that's the same with the Ritz, but different from Sapphire Reserve. You could get everyone in your family an authorized user card

and each person then could get their own priority pass if they're traveling alone. They're good to go as well. And guesting people too. Right. And actually that reminds me of a point that I meant to make a long time ago when we were talking about the Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Preferred. And that is that the Sapphire

Reserve does charge a fee for an authorized user. And I meant to come back to that because I said, you know, if you have somebody as an authorized user, then you can transfer their loyalty accounts, but it's not free to do it. It'll cost you 75 bucks. So, and I hate to back way up like this, but I feel like I have to. So if you're in a two player household, does it make more sense to spend $75 to add somebody as an authorized user on the Sapphire reserve, or should you just pay 95 bucks and get a Sapphire preferred with your $50 annual travel credit or whatever. So, yeah. $50 hotel credit or the Inc. Business Preferred and have three acts on.

Right, right. I don't do either of those with, in my situation, it's just like I have the CEPHA reserve in my account. And so we pay for all travel, you know, through my account if we can. And so it's just not something we deal with. Yeah, it's not something I deal with either because I don't need to transfer to my loyalty accounts.

I mean, so my wife's, well, let me take it back. My wife has the Sapphire Reserve in our household. So that gives us the ability to transfer to her loyalty accounts. And I also have an old ink card that's no longer available, so I can transfer to my accounts. So I don't need to transfer from her Sapphire Reserve to my accounts. But if I did and I had to pay 75 bucks for it, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'd have to run another set of numbers there because it does cost something if you want to be able to

transfer to the loyalty accounts of both players. Yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense if you don't need any of the other features of the card. The question of getting a Sapphire Preferred instead and that $50 hotel credit, if you remember to use it, might make sense. Might make sense. Maybe. Okay. All right. So that's another show for another day.

Another question for another day. It's a very small question. $20 for $50. You can do the math on that yourself. All right. Another show for another day. Another question for another, a very small question, $20 for 50. I, you can do the math on that yourself. All right. So if you enjoyed today's show and you'd like to get our posts in your inbox each day, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again.

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