Chase Sapphire Reserve. Frankly, I am amazed at the range of Chase benefits, and for my style of travel no other card comes close. Do not cheap out and plunk for the Chase Sapphire Preferred. I earn 3 points for every dollar spent on roughly 90% of my purchases, and 1 on the rest. When redeeming the points earned, for travel related charges, the payback is a minimum of 3.75% for nearly every dollar I spend, with no effort on my part. I use this for all airfare, surface transportation, hotel, tour and restaurant charges (the 3 point earners). And now also mailbox rental, charity donations, professional fees, etc (for the 1 point earners). In the past, roughly twice a year, I gleefully redeemed points for travel expense statement credits on the well designed app. I now hoard those points for a higher return to buy or upgrade flights.
I keep a bank of about 200k points on hand as these are extraordinarily valuable for exchange to airline loyalty programs, as discussed on the Points page, or as a last choice hotel booking. No foreign transaction fees. Chip and contactless enabled; easy point transfers to many airlines. Rental car collision damage waiver primary coverage (used successfully on two claims so far). Complimentary PriorityPass membership (and nascent Sapphire Lounges network). Trip delay reimbursement (I failed to use that once and learned. Used recently for Vanuatu cyclones/earthquake silliness. It was a lot of documentation to track down, but they paid most of my expenses). Global Entry program fee reimbursement. Repeating small vendor rebates. All these are very valuable, quantifiable benefits.
In addition there are a slew of lost luggage, emergency medical, emergency evacuation benefits that I have never had to (nor hope to) use. Additionally most of these are covered by the World Nomads insurance that I now buy for every trip. I am happy that they are complimentary inclusions, but since I would not otherwise source coverage for these categories I value them at zero dollars.
Chase just rolled out My Chase Plan, which is a pay over time program for large expenses. It charges fees for that, but to incentivise customers the first Plan is free. I put some expensive river cruise trips on the plan, and the opportunity benefit of me using my money for an extra year came out at about $500.
The Chase travel booking site is not the cheapest place to book travel, but it is a useful source. It has saved my tail twice, in Bologna and Aswan, when I could not find any reasonably priced place to stay.
The annual fee is a hefty $550. But here are the quantifiable rewards that I earned in 2022:
Statement credits for points earned on travel and dining expenses (~$2,700); on other categories (~$60); Annual Travel credit ($300); Global Entry program fee reimbursement ($100 every 4 years ~$20); PriorityPass membership ($420); Flights purchased with points ($1,200); Rental car collision damage waiver (can safely decline the coverage offered by the agency ~$1,800!); repeating AirBnB and other vendors rebates (~$100). The card net paid me $5,500 – equivalent to two months of hotel nights – just to do exactly what I otherwise would have done.