Advice on Chase CC's
 

Giving my circumstances and priorities and need some advise here..
Recently moved to US, credit around 705, have the chase IHG cc (taken within last 3 months)

Looking to get some miles / reward points accumulated for a planned trip next summer to Europe.. Want to avoid paying AF wherever possible..

CSP - This seems to be a top recommendation among many forums with the nice bonus post $4k spends and 1st year AF fee waived. Thing is my spending pattern's are not such that would justify paying the AF as even with some MS, I can use this not more than $2k a month.

CF / CFU - These seem to be good value cards with no AF and apparently these + CSP make the most bang for the buck. As no AF, can possibly keep these for longer..

Looking at my needs, any other Chase card which is worth looking at ?

Thoughts and recos appreciated..

Thanks, A

Are you restricting yourself to Chase cards? I'd figure out the airline you're planning on flying first and then focus on cards that earn miles on that airline. Will you be starting from PDX? DL has a couple good cards that have a 60K to 70K miles bonus right now.

An looking at couple of amex cards too..the DL gold and Hilton gold..

You could get a Chase Sapphire Preferred, use it for a year, and when the fee kicks in next year downgrade to a Chase Freedom Unlimited. You will get to keep your UR points from the CSP and earn 1.5x on all purchases going forward.

Read through the wiki at the top of this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase...17-onward.html It's a good source of info.

Read thru that earlier..
I guess trying to get CSP & CF maybe worthwhile. Chase does not show any pre-qualified offers for me in their site though I have a banking relationship with them ..
Maybe I will have better luck if I try inbranch ? Is it worth trying in branch pre-approval or should I just try online ?

I was in a similar scenario a few weeks back. I've always HATED paying annual fees.

With that said, I would recommend the Chase Sapphire Reserve over the Preferred if you plan at least one big trip a year. $450 can be a tough mental block. However, if you add up the value of all of the benefits, the "cost difference" is negligible, if at all.

I saw those benefits, but frankly for now - not sure I need or can utilize those.. but yeah those are really good for folks able to use them.

you likely already are aware of this, but if you wish to transfer any of your UR points to a partner airline or hotel, you will need to have one of the three top tier Chase UR cards: CSR, CSP or Chase Ink.

That's only needed if you are looking to transfer? If you just book off the Chase portal though you wouldn't need those cards? Is it the same for Hotels?

For just points, the CSR and CSP both give 50k so you might as well go with the CSP on that one as you've already stated that the CSR benefits aren't useful to you.

That said... if you're planning to make any 4+ night stays in any one city, I would highly recommend getting the Citi Prestige before you start booking hotels. The 4th night free benefit is simply fantastic for saving money. I even used it for an 8 night stay in Boracay last summer by booking two 4 night reservations at 2 different properties. This was even better since it allowed me to sample two very different resorts. There's a 75K point bonus on that one right now, which is pretty darn good. Don't know if that one is ever going away, but Chase and Citi both transfer to Flying Blue I believe, so that gives you a single target for your airfare.

You should be considering total cost versus benefit instead of AF versus no AF. Otherwise you’re likely to overlook cards suited to you.

The first thing you need to do is sort out which rewards program you can leverage better and then start looking at cards in those programs instead of selecting a creditor first and then trying to justify cards from that creditor. UR may or may not be the best fit for you.

Again, you need to consider what suits you best, not what’s popular. If you determine that you can get good value out of UR then you’re probably going to need one of the cards mentioned above so you can transfer to travel partners for redemptions as better value is generally attained by transferring.

However, even if you only redeem for cash with the CSP you can get 1 cent per point. At that redemption rate you only need $4,750 in annual spend on travel & dining (these categories earn at 2x) to break even on the $95 AF or $395.83 per month. As I said, though, that’s at a poor redemption rate and if you’re going with UR then you should be able to attain much better (at least $0.02 per UR) so your break even point should be lower.

If you can maximize the CF’s 5x categories and place noncategory spend on a CFU that can also help.