Is Chase UR for me? vs amex spg
 

Hi everyone, I'm coming from using an AmEx SPG card for everyday use. Since the program is moving to 2x Marriott points for every $ spent, we are thinking about moving to a different card.

I have seen lots of mention of one of the better combo's being CSR and Chase Freedom where you use CSR for travel and dining and Chase Freedom for everything else. Seems like a pretty easy way to go but I was concerned when I saw the partner list today:

https://www.valuepenguin.com/best-cr...rd-combination

• British Airways Executive Club
• Korean Air Skypass
• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
• Hyatt Gold Passport
• Marriott Rewards

• Flying Blue Air France KLM
• Singapore Airline KrisFlyer
• Virgin Atlantic FLying CLub
• IHG Rewards Club
• The Ritz-Carlton Rewards

We travel probably 2x per year domestically on family vacations. I don't think I'd use 90% of those programs above. I like SWA but they are always expensive now. The Ritz is great and we enjoy staying there, but most of the time will opt for something more cost effective. So that really leaves the Marriott program, which we love, but since we only travel a few times a year, I think most of my rewards will be at 1.5% on the Chase Freedom card, which is less than the 2 points per dollars that my SPG will give me.

Is it possible that I would be going backwards going to the Chase program in my case? Or am I looking at this all wrong?

That's not a complete list of partners. For example, I often move Ultimate Reward points to United Airlines. I tried to find a complete list of partners to which I could link, but found lists many bloggers had created and yet not one directly from Chase. I could only get to the Chase list by logging into my Ultimate Reward account. Hopefully someone else can be more helpful in this regard.

A creative use of British Airways avios is to redeem them on Alaska and AA flights. Avios are very different to redeem than most airline currency, so it would take some time to understand that program. Avios can be very useful for one segment coach awards. For example, if you live in an AS hub city, Avios offer the most affordable coach redemptions to Hawaii.

You've got your cards mixed up.

Chase Freedom earns 1.0x on everything except for 5.0x categories that change every calendar quarter (referred to as "rotating' categories).

It's Chase Freedom Unlimited (a different card from plain Freedom) which earns 1.5x on everything.

Meanwhile, Ritz-Carlton Rewads will cease to exist as a separate program come August in all but name (and the name will cease to exist in January 2019 presumably, ie, as soon as they decide on the new name for the merged program.) Ie, it's three program that are merging (Marriott, Ritz, and SPG), not just two, later this year.

But that partner list you just posted seems wrong! I don't see United Airlines anywhere on your list, yet United is definitely an airline partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards. So I suggest you find the correct list, and then re-start your evaluation.

But if a corrected list (adding United and maybe other corrections?) still doesn't excite you, then you might want to look at the American Express Membership Rewards program. It's got a mostly different (slightly overlapping) set of partner airlines and hotels. And there's a 2.0x on everything card (on up to $50k a year) over at American Express (the Blue Business Plus).

But keep in mind that the only reason SPG had so many partner airlines was because SPG was a hotel program, not a credit card program. But since it was a hotel program, it did not have competing hotel programs as partners, of course. By comparison, a credit card program (like Chase or Amex) is not tied to any one hotel, and so can offer transfers to multiple hotel programs (though not always at the best transfer ratio, compared to transferring to airline programs).

So there'a possibility, if a broad range of airline transfer partners is what you want, that no one credit card program will be able to match not only what the SPG card did before but even what an SPG/Marriott card will be able to do in the future.

Complete list is HERE in the Wikipost of one of the Sticky threads in this forum.

Note that British Airways and Iberia points can be redeemed for travel on flights operated by American Airlines. Flying Blue, Korean Air and Virgin Atlantic miles can be redeemed for travel on flights operated by Delta. This does NOT mean that the award flight availability, or number of miles/points required, is the same as if redeeming AA or DL miles. You need to do your homework to learn about partner redemptions.

I'll have to look into the partner redemptions. I despise United and avoid them at all cost so that leaves SWA and the partners I guess for flights.

Although really with SPG, I never used points for air travel. I didn't even know you could. I was happy just getting 40k points a year to use on SPG hotels and then of course enjoyed the automatic bump to Gold status with the 30k/year spend.

I was a little surprised, though, at the Chase points to value calculation. I was reading last nite about the Sapphire cards where if you book travel thru their portal, you get a bump, so the author mentioned that you could get $100 worth of hotel for only $8000 points. My jaw dropped when I saw that. Seems like a really horrible redepmtion. We regularly got $400-$500 SPG rooms for 16k points. I'm not sure what to think of 8000 points for $100 worth of hotel is good.

Yeah, but the SPG point earn rate is generally one point per dollar so you would need to charge $16,000 on your credit card.
By contrast, you can earn 1.5 or 3 or 5 points per dollar on chase, so your math is a little flawed.

Sorry for the off-topic digression. I would have just said that Hyatt Gold Passport is long dead, but if the OP's source and the wiki both list it, I wonder if I am wrong. Should that be changed to World of Hyatt?

SPG Amex's earning on everyday purchase for use at SPG hotels is amazing, but it will go away in August. And the airlines transfer partners are great, but you were not using it anyway. So if you switch to Chase UR, the best hotel transfer is Hyatt (IMHO). I could usually get $300+ room for 15000 UR points -> Hyatt points. Also you are not limited to 1.5X only with Chase UR. If you have a business, you could get 3X UR with a lot of the purchases like shipping, wireless, internet, ebay fee, etc with the Chase Ink Preferred.

How did you determine that?


A couple of things:

1) One can extract more than 1.25 cents per point ($100 for 8k points) and upwards of what you are redeeming SPG points at 16k for $400-$500 of hotel rooms.
2) 16k points requires $16k of everyday spend on the SPG card (until August). One can easily earn 24k UR points with $16k of everyday spend, and many earn much more than 24k UR.
3) I'm not sure what you were reading last night, but I suspect that the "acquisition spend" for the 8k points was less than $8k.

Exactly. I had a big month in April entertaining clients and a couple of very, very large dinners. Was over $15k in spend on that alone on my CSR so I got over 45,000 UR points and WAY more flexibility in how to use them

yeah, I think if you travel and eat out alot, the Sapphire cards can really get your points going it seems.

Knowing that we really only travel a few times a year on big family trips and eat out once or twice a week, I just thought that most of the everyday spending would be on the 1.5% card. I guess I just need to get away from how the SPG program work cause its no more after August so finding the next best thing is what I need to focus on.

what do you guys think is the average points per spending for a "normal" person who doesn't constantly travel. Would it be something like ~3 points per dollar spent if you can leverage some of the 5x bonus categories?

You can also get your points going with than just eating out and traveling. Earning points at 5x spend adds up fast.

The reason so many people are obsessed with the partners is because you can get some higher valuations. However, the average person isn't going to care about an international, first-class, ticket which gets you some of the highest valuations. In some instances, partner transfers are better. In some instances, the Chase portal is fine (plus you get the travel insurances).

Overall, I'm a BIG fan of the UR party. It is so easy to get a ton of them. Between the Reserve, Freedom, and Ink Cash, I am earning at levels almost like never before. (Reminiscent of the old Citi Dividend around 10 years ago was the last time it was this good for me) Dining is my biggest category. Then to have such a generous travel category that includes things such as Uber, not having to book direct, I love my CSR dearly.

With UA miles, you can book *A flights with no fuel surcharge using a very solid online booking tool. They are one of the better mileage currencies.

It sounds like you might want to do quite a bit more background research to understand how the major points programs actually work.

What's *A?