Could the Chase Sapphire Preferred Be the Best Way to Start Earning Travel Points Right Now?

Disclosure: This post contains referral links. If you choose to apply through one of my links, I may receive points at no additional cost to you.

Up until about a month ago, I was seriously considering closing my Chase Sapphire Preferred.

It wasn’t because I thought it was a bad card. My spending habits had simply changed, I was reaching for other cards more frequently, and despite its relatively modest $95 annual fee, I wasn’t convinced I was getting enough value to justify keeping it.

Then Chase refreshed the card without increasing the annual fee, and suddenly it had my attention again.

Much of the excitement at the time centered around a 100,000-point welcome offer, one of the strongest I’d seen on the card. But welcome offers change. You might be reading this when the offer is 100,000 points, 75,000 points, or something entirely different. A higher offer can certainly make the timing more attractive, but I’ve learned that the headline number isn’t the only thing worth considering.

Interested in the current offer? You can view the details here.

The welcome bonus wasn’t even what had me reconsidering the card. I’d already received one, so I was looking at the Sapphire Preferred from a completely different perspective.

If a friend or family member came to me today and said, “I want to start earning travel points. Where should I begin?” would this be the card I’d recommend?

For the first time in a while, I think the answer might actually be yes.

And that’s the question I want to answer here, not whether the Chase Sapphire Preferred is the “best” travel card, but whether it’s a good place to start, who I think it makes sense for, and what I’d want someone to understand before applying.

Before You Get Excited About the Welcome Bonus

Before focusing on the size of a welcome offer, there’s a more important question to ask: Can you meet the spending requirement with money you were already planning to spend?

If a card requires $5,000 in purchases during the first few months, the goal isn’t to find an extra $5,000 to spend. It’s to redirect expenses that were already coming.

When I earned one of my earliest welcome bonuses, I had just moved into a new home and needed to buy furniture. After years of post-college IKEA furniture, I was ready for a “real” couch and dining table—and unfortunately, real furniture costs real money. The spending was happening either way; the credit card simply changed what I received in return.

The same strategy can work when you have a larger expense on the horizon, a family vacation, new appliances, home renovations, wedding expenses, or even several smaller purchases that add up. That’s why I often think the best time to open a new card has less to do with the card itself and more to do with what’s already coming up in your life.

And don’t assume you’ve completely missed out just because you see a 75,000-point offer after hearing about a previous 100,000-point promotion. The welcome bonus isn’t the only points you’ll earn.

Say you already have $5,000 in airfare or hotel spending coming up for a trip. If booking that travel through Chase Travel makes sense and the card is earning 5x on those purchases, that’s potentially another 25,000 points from spending you were already going to do.

A 75,000-point welcome offer plus 25,000 points earned from planned travel? You’re at 100,000 points anyway.

That’s where points and miles start becoming interesting. You’re not spending more money just to earn rewards. You’re being more intentional about what you earn from money you were already going to spend.

Can I Actually Justify the Annual Fee?

Before I recommend a travel card to someone, I want to know whether they’ll get enough value from it to justify keeping it after the excitement of the welcome bonus is gone.

For the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the annual fee is $95, so my starting point is pretty simple: Can I reasonably recover that $95 each year from benefits I would actually use?

That last part matters. Credit card companies can give me a long list of benefits and assign a dollar value to every one of them, but I don’t count a perk at full value just because it exists. If I wouldn’t have spent that money without the card, I’m not going to pretend the card saved me that amount.

Start With the Easiest $95 to Recover

One of the benefits that makes the math easier for me is the annual Chase Travel hotel credit. Cardmembers can receive up to $100 back each year on eligible hotel bookings made through Chase Travel.

If you’re already going to stay in a hotel and booking through Chase Travel makes sense for that particular stay, that one benefit can potentially offset the entire $95 annual fee.

That’s where my math stops.

I don’t need to add up every DoorDash credit or streaming benefit and convince myself I’m getting hundreds of dollars in theoretical value. If I can reasonably recover the annual fee from something I was going to buy anyway, everything else can be treated as an extra.

And if you’re reading a travel blog while considering a travel credit card, I’m going to take a wild guess that you’ll spend at least $100 on a hotel sometime this year.

The Other Perks Are Extras—If You’ll Use Them

The Chase Sapphire Preferred also comes with benefits like Apple TV+, DoorDash DashPass and credits, and a Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fee credit.

Some of those may be genuinely valuable to you. Others may be worth absolutely nothing. And that’s okay.

Was I excited to discover that I could watch the new season of Ted Lasso thanks to my card? I sure was. Would I have paid for Apple TV+ every month on my own? Probably not.

That’s the distinction I make when I’m calculating what a card is actually worth to me. A benefit I enjoy isn’t necessarily money the card saved me.

I would never tell someone a $10 monthly credit is worth $120 a year if they have to change their spending habits every month just to use it. That’s how a card that looks incredible on paper can become much less impressive in real life.

Then I Look at How I’ll Actually Earn Points

Once I know I can reasonably justify keeping the card, then I care about how easily I can earn points from the spending I’m already doing.

That’s another reason the refreshed Chase Sapphire Preferred has my attention. It currently earns 5x on travel booked through Chase Travel and 3x on dining, gas and EV charging, online groceries, select streaming services, and eligible vacation home rentals through brands like Airbnb and Vrbo. Travel booked outside the portal generally earns 2x.

Those aren’t obscure categories I have to work particularly hard to use. I eat at restaurants. I buy gas. I travel. Chances are, if you’re considering this card, you do at least some of those things too.

The new vacation rental category is especially interesting to me. Hotels get a lot of attention in the points world because of hotel loyalty programs and transfer partners, but sometimes an Airbnb or Vrbo simply makes more sense, especially when I’m traveling with family and we want more space. Being able to book directly with eligible vacation-rental platforms and still earn 3x gives me another way to earn a meaningful number of transferable points from travel I was already planning.

And remember the welcome-bonus example from earlier: the points you earn don’t stop when the bonus posts. A card becomes much more useful long term when its earning categories overlap with expenses that are already part of your life.

But earning rates still aren’t enough for me to recommend a travel card.

The real reason I think the Chase Sapphire Preferred can be such a good starting point is what happens after you’ve earned those points.

Why Transferable Points Matter

The real strength of the Chase Sapphire Preferred is that the points you earn aren’t tied to a single airline or hotel program.

Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred to a variety of airline and hotel partners, giving you flexibility while you figure out where you actually want to go and how you want to get there.

You don’t have to earn Virgin Atlantic points hoping you’ll eventually fly Virgin Atlantic, or Flying Blue miles before you know whether Air France or KLM will make sense for your trip. You can leave your points with Chase until you have a specific redemption in mind, then transfer them to the program that works best.

That’s an important distinction for someone just getting started. You don’t need to predict your travel plans years in advance or commit yourself to learning a dozen loyalty programs on day one. You can earn first and figure out the best use later.

That’s exactly how the following examples came together.

Example #1: Virgin Atlantic and Realistic Redemptions

JFK>LHR September 2026 Reward Seat Calendar

Virgin Atlantic is one of my favorite examples of what transferable points can actually do.

Looking at the award calendar for a September trip from New York to London, I’ve seen Economy awards as low as 6,000 points one-way and Premium Economy around 10,500 points, plus taxes and fees.

We’re not talking Upper Class here. Those redemptions can require significantly more points—and much higher fees. For someone just learning how to use points, Economy and Premium Economy are often the much more interesting part of the calendar.

At those rates, a family of four could theoretically fly roundtrip in Economy for around 48,000 Virgin Atlantic points, while a solo traveler could fly roundtrip in Premium Economy for around 21,000 points, before taxes and fees.

And sometimes you can stretch your Chase points even further. Chase periodically offers transfer bonuses to partners like Virgin Atlantic, meaning fewer Chase points may be needed for the same award.

I wouldn’t transfer points just because a bonus exists, though. I wait until I have a trip and an award I’m actually ready to book.

That’s the part of points and miles I find much more useful than chasing a perfect redemption. You’re probably still going to pay something in taxes and fees, and that’s okay. The better question is: What would this trip have cost me without the points?

For many travelers, points don’t need to create an entirely new trip. They can simply help you spend less out of pocket—or travel a little more comfortably.

But I’ve Already Been To London

That’s fair. The point isn’t necessarily London. The point is getting yourself to Europe.

One of the most useful things I’ve learned with points is to be flexible about where I cross the Atlantic. If London has great award availability but Paris doesn’t, I can fly to London and continue from there by train or a short flight.

That doesn’t mean letting points choose your entire vacation. I still decide where I want to go. I’m just willing to be flexible about how I get there.

Sometimes the best redemption isn’t a flight directly to your final destination. It’s the flight that gets you close enough to make the rest of the trip work.

Example #2: Flying Blue and the Reality of Changed Plans

One of my favorite Chase transfer partners is Flying Blue, the loyalty program of Air France and KLM. But rather than show you another perfect redemption, this example is about what happens when the trip you transferred your points for doesn’t happen.

I had booked Business Class flights to Munich for Christmas Market season. Then life happened, and the trip was off.

I canceled the award tickets, paid Flying Blue’s redeposit fee for each ticket, and got the miles back along with most of the taxes and fees I’d paid.

There was just one problem: I now had nearly 250,000 Flying Blue miles.

That’s because transferring Chase points is a one-way street. You can leave your points in Chase while you’re deciding how to use them, but once you transfer them to Flying Blue or another airline or hotel partner, they can’t be transferred back to Chase.

It’s one of the biggest reasons I recommend waiting until you’ve found the award you actually want to book before transferring your points.

Fortunately, those miles didn’t go to waste. When my family later started planning a trip to Spain, Flying Blue was one of the first places I looked.

Why would I look at Air France for a trip to Spain?

Because while my Chase points aren’t going anywhere, Flying Blue miles can expire. If I already have a large balance sitting in an airline program with an expiration policy, I’m going to look for opportunities to use those miles before transferring more points somewhere else.

And Paris is an easy gateway to the rest of Europe. My first thought was that we could use the Flying Blue miles to get to Paris and then figure out a separate flight to Spain from there.

Even better, when I searched the award options, I realized we didn’t have to piece anything together. We could book the entire outbound journey to Madrid on one itinerary and do the same from Barcelona on the way home:

  • JFK → Paris → Madrid
  • Barcelona → Paris → JFK
  • 80,000 Flying Blue miles roundtrip per person
  • About $400 in taxes and fees per person

Done.

Would I have paid cash for four Premium Economy tickets to Spain? Probably not.

But the points gave us the option to travel more comfortably without paying the cash price for those seats.

And there’s an important distinction here. The Chase points gave me flexibility before I transferred them. Once they became Flying Blue miles, my strategy had to change. Instead of asking, What’s the best program for getting my family to Spain? I started by asking, Can the Flying Blue miles I already have get us where we want to go?

In this case, they could.

So, Who Is the Chase Sapphire Preferred Actually For?

A month ago, I was preparing to cancel this card. Today, I’m writing an article about why I think it can be a genuinely strong place to start with travel points, and why it can continue to make sense even after you’ve learned the basics.

Not because it’s the best card for everyone, and not because a big welcome offer automatically makes a card worth opening.

I’d recommend it because the $95 annual fee can be relatively easy to justify, the everyday earning categories are useful, and—most importantly—you earn transferable points that give you options when you’re ready to travel.

But I’d still want you to ask a few questions first:

  • Can you meet the welcome bonus spending requirement with purchases you were already going to make?
  • Can you realistically recover the annual fee from benefits you’ll actually use?
  • Are you interested in learning how to transfer points rather than simply treating them like cash back?

If the answer to those questions is yes, I think the Chase Sapphire Preferred can be a very good first travel card, and for some travelers, a card that continues to make sense long after they’re beginners.

That’s ultimately why mine is staying in my wallet.

And if after reading this article you think the Chase Sapphire Preferred might be a good fit for your situation, you can view the current offer here.

Where Do You Go From Here?

Opening a travel card is the easy part. Figuring out how it fits into a bigger points strategy is where things get more interesting.

If you’re still figuring out what that strategy looks like, I’d go here next:

And if you’re curious what all of this looks like on an actual trip, Using Points for Hotels Instead of Flights: My Egypt and Jordan Strategy walks through how I decided when to use points, when to pay cash, and why I started thinking about the points I would need months before we actually made the bookings.

Want Help Building Your Own Points Strategy?

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably realized that choosing a travel card involves a little more than comparing welcome bonuses.

I’m thinking about upcoming expenses, annual fees, transfer partners, existing point balances, expiration dates, award availability and—most importantly—the trips I actually want to take.

You don’t have to carry that entire mental load yourself.

If you have a trip in mind but aren’t sure what points to earn, which cards make sense for your upcoming spending, or where points could make the biggest difference, I can help you build a strategy around the travel you’re already planning.

Work with me to build your travel points strategy →

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