Originally Posted by
jd1006
The Chase Freedom card loses value if you don't have a Sapphire Preferred (or a friend or spouse that has a Sapphire Preferred) due to the fact that you can't use the point transfer option. The Sapphire Preferred is easily worth the $95 annual fee because of the ability to do this. You get much more for your UR points if you can redeem for airline miles, hyatt points, or even Amtrack Guest Rewards.
Yes, but unless you need to transfer every year, you may be able to get as much bang for less buck by slowly growing your Ultimate Rewards balance using Freedom rotating categories, and
then when you have a bunch saved up apply for the Sapphire Preferred. $95 one year (but not every year) is less than $95 every year, if you don't really need to those tansfers every single year.
I don't see how $95 is worth it if your spend means that it takes several years for you to get another 25k on your Freedom. Is it really worth $95 to transfer 10k a year instead of waiting until a year when you've got a useful amount accumulated?
(Obviously, this may depend on whether these cards are going to your primary cards which get most / all of your purchases, if they're only one subset of a big stable. It's harder to justifuy annual fees on a recurring basis on many different cards at once, but you may want to collect in several airlines and many hotel programs, and if so that can require some strategies to get the most bang for the least annual fees per year.)