My family uses credit cards for all purchases and we pay them off in full each month. Although sometimes we’ll use a 0% APR promotion for bigger purchases.

Which cards do you use for maximizing your rewards?

  • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    I am planning to drop my Chase Sapphire Reserve because the service has suffered while the price increased (started at $250 and now it’s $500/yr).

    About how much do you spend on hotels and flights to make the Amex worth it? They charge $750 a year!

    Edit: I’m also bitter that Amex bought all of the airport lounges that I used to get into for free with my Chase card.

    • momtheregoesthatman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yep, I agree about Chase. And the same could be said about Amex with the changes in perks + the Centurion lounges always being full. I have been an Amex customer for a long long time and regularly call to get my fee partially waived (it’s hit or miss). I stay for their customer service. It’s second to none. To answer your question, I travel a lot. I do gov consulting work so it’s all reimbursed :)

    • Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m glad I’m reading your comment. I had just called Chase this morning and the Chase Sapphire Reserve is now $550/annual fee and the bonus is now 60k points (i think.ot used to be 100k, which is what I got when I signed up.for the Chade Sapphire Preferred card). I was interested in order.to get the bonus points but also for the Chase airport lounges - if I can’t access those.lounges there.might not be any point (no pun intended). ETA: Can you use all of the Priority One lounges?

      What other benefits do you get for that $550? Is the fee waived the first year?

      • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        They shuffled the rewards around a few years ago due to covid.

        • Free instacart. We used the crap out of it for the first year during covid. Then the terms eroded and it got really expensive.
        • Free Uber priority or Lyft Pink or whatever. That saved us… maybe $10.
        • Free TSA PreCheck. It’s worth $75 every 3 years or so. Maybe prices have gone up.
        • Priority Pass - yeah that thing that gives you access to like 0 lounges now. It was great when I got my card nearly 10 years ago.
        • Rewards points. They dropped Travelocity (thank god) as an intermediary. But now their booking costs are about 10-20% higher than booking directly with the airline/hotel/etc. So we try to bank up our points and use them to purchase whole tickets and we never spend cash through their portal anymore.
        • $300 of travel cash. We’re careful to not book travel with that reimbursement through their portal. The 10-20% markup translates to $30-60 in rewards which, at a 5% cash back rate costs $1200 in travel to recoup.

        Oh and when I signed up they gave me almost $750 in travel credit as a premium. I think I’m going to start churning again because that was the best freakin’ reward.