Chase Ultimate Rewards Earnings with Average Family Spend – Sapphire Preferred Vs Sapphire Reserve

First and foremost, the three Chase Ultimate Reward cards that are must to have

Chase Freedom® (One or More Card, due to its $1500 limit on quarterly 5% bonus spend category)
Chase Freedom Unlimited® (One Card and add AU for Family members)
Chase Sapphire Reserve℠ or Chase Sapphire Preferred (Read this post – Best Combination of Chase Ultimate Rewards Credit Cards to Own and Chase Rules) You will also see which one would benefit with average spend shortly.

Chase Freedom – Assume you are spending $1500 on the bonus category every quarter, that’s 30,000 UR points a year. Its massive amount of points, no brainer if you don’t have Chase Freedom.

Travel and Dinning – If you are spending $250 per month on dinning outside and travel or short vacation twice a year, with roughly $2000.

Chase Sapphire Reserve would give 15,000 UR points or

Chase Sapphire Preferred would give 10,000 UR points

Chase Freedom Unlimited – Let’s say all other purchases are charged to Unlimited and with an average of $500 per month. This would give 9,000 UR points.

Total points that you would earn is 54,000 UR points with Reserve or 49,000 UR points with Preferred. So, to maximize the UR points for travel redemption, you should transfer it to Sapphire Reserve or Preferred.

If you want to play around with your own math, please do so here

Sapphire Preferred would give $612.50 worth of travel redemption

Sapphire Reserve would give $810 worth of travel redemption.

Conclusion – Reserve though has $450 annual fee, the $300 travel credit and 1.5X travel redemption would earn you $142.50 more. Considering preferred has $95 annual fee, you are paying effectively $55 more for Reserve and getting close to $100 in return.

If you don’t travel at all and you find Chase Sapphire is not the right card for you. You should own Chase Freedom, Discover and Amex Blue Cash Preferred.