The Best Credit Cards for Travel Rewards

A question that we get asked often is which credit card is the best for points, cash back, etc. We’re going to take a deep dive into our favorite EwA. Again, a lot of cards have a lot of pros, cons depending on your spending, what you’re trying to do. But in general, we really like the Chase Sapphire reserve card. And so the Chase Sapphire fire Reserve is very good on just points back. It’s really good travel card, which is personally what I use a lot of my points on because the point transfer from chase to travel partners is pretty good compared to the other cards. But just a couple of characteristics of the Chase Sapphire reserve. Big question we always get is this is expensive. There is a $550 a year annual fee.

However, we believe that the benefits, and I can tell you personally just from using the card, benefits outweigh that, like probably ten x and definitely depends on your spending. But some of the characteristics and perks of the chase Sapphire card. So number first thing, you get a $300 travel credit per year. So you go on and book a flight, they credit you back $300. So that almost makes up for the fee. Second thing, obviously there’s a sign on bonus and that depends on the time of year. It’s usually between 60 and 80,000 points. Can be pretty significant. Third thing is it is five times points on flights and ten times points on hotels and car rentals if you do it through the chase travel portal. So very easy to accumulate points for travel.

If you’re using for travel, just buying any travel with this is very valuable and can help offset a lot of travel costs. Another thing, it gives you free TSA precheck. I believe this is once every three years. You have to get this. When I did it with mine, this is a while back, but it was about $80. So again, not an every year thing, but can help offset the fee as well. You get access to airport lounges. I know that’s important, especially if you’re traveling with children on top of the airport lounges. One of the big things is security. I have a couple real world examples of just fraudulent transactions and then chase has fixed it for me very easily. But it’s much different if someone hacks your credit or debit card. Sorry.

If someone hacks your debit card or bank account, a lot of times the money’s gone. But if it’s done on a credit card, chase has security mechanisms and most transactions are covered. And so those are just some of the characteristics of the Chase Sapphire card. We love this card for day to day spending. But why we like chase in general, they have very good point transfer. A lot of times it’s a one to one point transfer to their travel partners. So for flights, hotels, et cetera. And one of the very good, this is a little travel hack, the Hyatt chase to Hyatt point transfer is very good. You can stay in some very nice Hyatt hotels for like under 20,000 points a night, which is very inexpensive. But Chase has, they have travel partners that you can transfer to and it’s pretty robust list.

You can book right in the chase portal or transfer to the travel partners. And it’s not every airline or hotel out there, but a lot of large majority of them. And compared to most of the other, like the capital one, American Express, chase from my experience is pretty flexible. So that’s a general overview of the Chase Sapphire reserve. There’s also a Chase sapphire preferred. It’s a lower annual fee. The benefits are a little bit different. This has a few more perks. But if you were to ask me what the best card for just day to day spending, I would hands down say the chase Sapphire. It’s the card that’s always in my wallet and my first recommendation to clients.

On top of that, obviously there are some other cards we max out to max out the points, not max out the card balance, but other cards that we use to maximize sign on bonuses. And that’s client situational specific. So there is going to be some other recommendations based on what trips you’re taking, what airlines you fly, what hotels, et cetera. But again, just general overview of the best day to day card. That would be my opinion and our favorite at EWA. Here is the Chase Sapphire reserve. Any credit card questions? We have a full course on our EW website as well as a lot of content through podcasts and videos where we go into deep dive on this. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

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