3 ms·

Restaurants/travel are 3x points and transfer easily to airline partners. The travel bonus is $300 dollars and incredibly easy to get (uber/toll/planes/whatever

by mter 9y ago

Restaurants/travel are 3x points and transfer easily to airline partners. The travel bonus is $300 dollars and incredibly easy to get (uber/toll/planes/whatever all count) making the card effectively 150 dollars a month if you do any sort of travel. Add in free priority pass and it's easily the best restaurant/travel card around. With a few thousand in spend for restaurants/travel, it's trivial to exceed the 150 annual fee.

mehrdadn 9y ago
> Restaurants/travel are 3x points and transfer easily to airline partners. Have you actually done the math? 3 points/$1 and each point at an airline is generally worth around 1.5 cents, so it's equivalent to getting maybe 5% cash back at restaurants. Compare this to the Uber card where you get 4% cash back on dining. For the 1% to break even with the $450 annual fee - $150 credit = $300 net, you need to average at least ~$40 on dining/travel on your credit card per day. And then you have to make sure you only use the points for trips that you would have already gone on anyway on cold hard cash, otherwise you're just spending far more money on food/hotel/rides/etc. I don't know about you but it's an understatement to say that I'm skeptical this comes out to the benefit of the majority of the card's users.
- atupem 9y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong... $450 renewal fee, $300 annual travel credit, so the card costs $150 per year. With points valued at $0.015, you need to earn 10,000 points to break even (150/0.015). You get 3 points for every $1 spent on food/travel, so you need to spend $3,333/year on those categories to break even. Personally I spend way more, so the card is definitely worth it to me.
  - mehrdadn 9y ago
    It seems you did not read the comments? You are comparing against cash. Nobody claimed cash was better. The entire discussion was in response to the comment [1] that "Chase Sapphire Reserve is easily the best card I own and I have an Amex Platinum", hence we were comparing against other credit cards (not against cash/debit/etc.), and as an example I explicitly compared CSR to the Uber card for you. Read the above discussion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057816
    - mrep 9y ago
      I think his math is right but that still equates to 9.5$ a day on food and travel just to break even which is a lot. I got the uber credit card which i think is a lot better since there is no fee and it is straight cash back (point value can change any time they want).

by mter 9y ago

mehrdadn 9y ago

> Restaurants/travel are 3x points and transfer easily to airline partners. Have you actually done the math? 3 points/$1 and each point at an airline is generally worth around 1.5 cents, so it's equivalent to getting maybe 5% cash back at restaurants. Compare this to the Uber card where you get 4% cash back on dining. For the 1% to break even with the $450 annual fee - $150 credit = $300 net, you need to average at least ~$40 on dining/travel on your credit card per day. And then you have to make sure you only use the points for trips that you would have already gone on anyway on cold hard cash, otherwise you're just spending far more money on food/hotel/rides/etc. I don't know about you but it's an understatement to say that I'm skeptical this comes out to the benefit of the majority of the card's users.

atupem 9y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong... $450 renewal fee, $300 annual travel credit, so the card costs $150 per year. With points valued at $0.015, you need to earn 10,000 points to break even (150/0.015). You get 3 points for every $1 spent on food/travel, so you need to spend $3,333/year on those categories to break even. Personally I spend way more, so the card is definitely worth it to me.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  It seems you did not read the comments? You are comparing against cash. Nobody claimed cash was better. The entire discussion was in response to the comment [1] that "Chase Sapphire Reserve is easily the best card I own and I have an Amex Platinum", hence we were comparing against other credit cards (not against cash/debit/etc.), and as an example I explicitly compared CSR to the Uber card for you. Read the above discussion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057816
  - mrep 9y ago
    I think his math is right but that still equates to 9.5$ a day on food and travel just to break even which is a lot. I got the uber credit card which i think is a lot better since there is no fee and it is straight cash back (point value can change any time they want).