I see. But this is first year only, yes?

Yes, only the first year. But that's done without even including any value for the $300 travel portal credit in that first year.

If you have JPM Reserve, what value does Sapphire Reserve add?

Only if you purchase travel though Chase's portal or use the Pay Yourself Back feature with changing categories. If you transfer points to hotel or airline programs, Sapphire Preferred or INK Preferred is just as good as Reserve.

Take us through the arithmetic of this valuation.

Not really. It's 8% on the first $10,000 spend. If you do that in a single transaction the "year" is over.

My primary premium card is the US Bank Altitude Reserve. $400 AF ($75 net AF after the very flexible travel/dinning credit.)


At $75 Net AF, it gives 4.5% cash back on anything Travel and ApplePay - which is practically all my in person spend since COVID has greatly enhanced adoption of contactless payments. It even gets better rewards at Costco than the Costco credit card. Completely worth it.

The AR's weakness is the Priority Pass being limited to 4 times/year. I can justify adding a 2nd Premium card with unlimited lounge visit especially if I rotate the sign-up bonus of other premium cards. Year 1 USB AR + Chase CSR ; Year 2 USB AR + CAP 1 VentureX ; Year 3 USB AR + Citi AA Exec etc etc; and this can be further stretched out if I only apply for the 2nd Premium card after I exhausted the 4 PP visits of the USB AR.

This is pretty much my exact strategy. I rotate between premium cards, going back to the CSR every 4 years, as that's how often they allow you to earn a bonus on it.

The USB AR priority pass is also useful if your other premium card is an Amex Platinum, as you can use the AR priority pass just for restaurant access.

Yeah, I've found the PYB categories to be pretty wide ranging and never have trouble redeeming. I used to use it for travel but that definitely took more work.

Between P2 and myself, we have a CSR and an AMEX Plat... and if you want to count the Hilton Aspire at $450 AF, that too.

To be honest, based in SEA and thus having a centurion lounge, I like the Platinum better from a benefits perspective. We make use of the Uber credit for eats, the FHR credits, the Saks credits, the airline incidental credits, and heck, I even put my folks' NYT subscription on the card to capture the digital entertainment credit for them. The CSR's value story with the changes to DoorDash credits and the fact that the Lyft benefits are set to expire soon just make it a weaker card for me. It's a pity because I like the 3x on travel, but 2x via the CSP is good enough, and the PP is virtually worthless given we get it on the two AMEX cards. I plan to downgrade to CSP to keep transfer partners open.

That said, we really like Hyatt transfers and so aside from SUBs, I tend prefer earning URs to MRs, otherwise we'd be running an AMEX Gold/BBP setup. I have scored incredible value through the Chase/Hyatt partnership.

The Aspire is just a no-brainer that allows us to easily recoup the annual fee. The FNC, plus the airline reimbursement, plus the resort credit and diamond status are worth more than $450. If the Chase WoH card was this good, I'd have signed up for that one too.

Once my CSR's AF hits in June and we drop to the CSP, I think I'll be running:

CSP for travel-related expenses, except airfare
AMEX Plat for airfare
CFU for everything else

I use the this as my go to card -> USB Altitude Reserve. The 4.5% apple pay when redeemed on travel makes this my go to card ($75 AF real cost)

Everything else Barly Priceline 2% cash back but 3.33% when redeeming travel with priceline

penfed for Gas

Citi Shop Your Way for random bonuses

Then 2 more premium cards that I just added.

Got Amex Platinum Morgan Stanley (just have to pay taxes on the AF which MS covers) - Use the uber, saks, $200 travel for Southwest funds, audible credits, cell phone but other than that no other use.

Go the Capital One Venture X for really -$5 AF since $300 Annual Travel Credit plus yearly 10,000 miles ($100)

Actually considering adding to our CSR/Plat combo with the Venture X. I renewed the CSR only because they gave me a retention - next year, will probably drop that (or this new Venture).

thing is, the bonus is worth it, and may have a pretty hefty AirBnB stay coming up, so will help with that. Don’t love the travel portals, and wouldn’t use it without incentive, but would use the $300 credit on either flight/hotel. Wouldn’t use it regularly, even for the 10x miles. Just not sure…certainly Am well covered with PP access already, clearly, and don’t generally fly to/through DFW, so Cap1 lounge access isn’t going to help (though maybe when their own lounges expand).

10k annual bonus (after first anniversary) would help too, though haven’t really analyzed details of Cap1 redemptions vs UR or MR, so not sure where that makes most sense for me (except for the advantage UR has right now as the only one that will transfer to UA, which has pretty much always been and always will be my primary airline (now that I’m in SFO, and typically a few trips to Canada each year, so that partnership with AC helps)).

Decisions, decisions….

Yeah, this has been the most worthless "perk" I've ever had on a card. There are just no places to use it from what I've found. And even if I could I just hear horror stories of people actually pulling it off. I do like the other things with CSR though. The 10X is a perfect example of a company bragging about something that is of VERY minimal value.

also why I am unhappy about the CSRs recent ‘refresh’. Actually virtually nothing about that that impressed me - in fact, if anything, made me more likely to downgrade to CSP, as that refresh actually sounded more valuable to me.

Yeah, the CSR doesn't have much going for it over the CSP unless you redeem A LOT of points and can benefit from the 1.5X v. 1.25X for things like PYB or using the travel portal. I'm likely going to be selling my biz that I have 10K+/mo spend so I'll undoubtedly downgrade to CSP.