The Chase Sapphire Preferred card took the skies in the nomination round of this week’s Co-Op, while every other card was stuck on the tarmac. The Sapphire Preferred card is notable for offering a 50,000 point sign up bonus if you spend $4,000 in the first three months, as well as the ability to transfer those points directly to partner hotel and airline programs, or spend them directly on travel with a 25% bonus.




Here’s what you had to say:

The Chase Sapphire Card is by far the best rewards credit card I’ve used. You get 1-to-1 dollars to points [editor’s note: you also get two points per dollar on travel and dining purchases]. This isn’t the best deal out there, but the points can be used anywhere. You can transfer points to any airline, hotel, rental car rewards account and then seamless use those to book free stuff. Or you can use the points on the Chase Rewards shop to buy anything from electronics, furniture to gift cards and many different retailers (I actually end up buying pretty much all X-mas giftcards with points...). Also, if its of value to you, there is no foreign transaction fees (which was my main purpose for getting the card). Bottom line, the card doesn’t give the best ROI in terms of points or cash back, but is easily the most versatile if you don’t want to get locked in to one company’s rewards. - drtarp

To add to this, don’t forget that the sign up bonus is nuts. Spend $4k in 3 months and you get 50,000 points ($625 in travel value since they are 1.25 to 1 vs. 1 to 1 on cash back) and it is super well complimented by the Chase Freedom and Freedom Unlimited (both fee-free cards). Those two let you earn points towards the same pot and both have very easy $500 spends for 15,000 points bonuses. Get all three, hit the bonunes and you are looking at 80K bonus points (so not counting the points from the actual spend). So $800 cash back or, for travel, since this is what we are talking about, $1000. Honestly, I’d argue that the ROI is nuts when you look at the bonuses. The Sapphire alone is over 10% back for that first $4K. - adam-mpls

The one good thing about Chase that is really awesome is the rental car insurance. Used mine to rent a car in Germany. After two weeks and 2,000 miles, when I returned it, there was a scratch. Chase reimbursed me the cost for the repair charge from the rental car company within five weeks (I needed to wait for that month’s statement to close, so I could prove I paid for the damage with my Chase card). It was a pretty painless process. And the bonus was I got 2x points for paying for a car rental with the card. Since the reimbursement was handled through a third party insurer, I got to keep the Chase points. - ThedefenstratorofPrague


As adam-mpls pointed out, you can also pair the Sapphire card with the Chase Freedom (5% cash back on quarterly bonus categories) and the new Chase Freedom Unlimited (1.5% cash back on all purchases) cards to maximize your sign up bonus and point earning potential, since all of the points feed into the same rewards program.