So typically once I’m recommending a rewards bank card to family and friends, I instantly get the query: “However is that a kind of playing cards with an annual charge?”
It is true that many rewards playing cards price having include an annual charge. However, in my view, it’s normally a really minor funding that delivers outsize worth 12 months after 12 months.
Take my Chase Sapphire Most popular® Card (see charges and costs) for example. This card has a (fairly modest) $95 annual charge, and I can not see myself ever eliminating it.
This is why.
Incomes factors on on a regular basis spending
The Sapphire Most popular has some strong incomes charges that embody:
- 5 factors per greenback spent on journey booked by way of Chase Journey℠
- 5 factors per greenback spent on Lyft rides (by way of Sept. 30, 2027)
- 3 factors per greenback spent on eating
- 3 factors per greenback spent on choose streaming providers
- 3 factors per greenback spent on on-line grocery retailer purchases (excludes Goal, Walmart and wholesale golf equipment)
- 2 factors per greenback spent on all journey not booked by way of Chase Journey
- 1 level per greenback spent on the whole lot else
I take advantage of this card to cowl all the web grocery, eating and streaming service bills for my family and my father’s, which price about $1,200 monthly. That earned me roughly 3,600 Chase Final Rewards factors monthly all through a lot of 2024 that I then transferred proper into my World of Hyatt account.
Associated: 7 Chase Sapphire Most popular advantages you may not find out about
Does the worth offset the annual charge?
For the second, I will put apart the truth that you possibly can presently get a whopping 100,000 Final Rewards factors after spending $5,000 on purchases within the first three months of account opening — the highest-ever welcome provide on this card and arguably among the finest card gives ever.
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Let’s deal with the worth of this card past the welcome provide.
To start out, it comes with advantages like a $50 annual credit score for inns booked by way of Chase Journey and quite a lot of journey protections that save me a whole bunch of {dollars} every year by not having to pay for issues like automobile rental insurance coverage and journey cancellation insurance coverage. These robotically neutralize that annual charge for somebody who travels even simply a few instances a 12 months.
However past these advantages, the factors I earned by utilizing this card for my on a regular basis spending in 2024 coated greater than $2,000 price of resort stays.
Associated: Is the Chase Sapphire Most popular definitely worth the annual charge? I say sure
Over a dozen free nights price over $2,000
World of Hyatt could also be essentially the most precious switch associate within the Final Rewards program, and it was the right place to maneuver my factors.
That is as a result of, final 12 months, my spouse and I welcomed our first baby, and in a twin effort to protect our sanity as first-year dad and mom and preserve my elite standing with World of Hyatt throughout a lighter journey 12 months, we used these factors to cowl a room at our native Hyatt Regency about as soon as monthly.
We would then alternate which of us acquired to take the evening off from parental duties and luxuriate in a quiet night downtown on the resort. That is what I name worth you possibly can’t even put a value on.
The Hyatt Regency Rochester in New York is a Class 1 Hyatt property (and a fairly good one, at that). A normal room prices about $175 or 5,000 factors per evening on common, however we had been capable of rating most of our stays for less than 3,500 factors per evening by checking World of Hyatt’s award chart and cherry-picking off-peak nights.
By the tip of the 12 months, we had stayed greater than a dozen nights in that resort on factors, and virtually all of these redemptions had been earned in actual time every month simply from utilizing the Sapphire Most popular for these on a regular basis spending classes.
Final Rewards factors are among the many most precious you possibly can earn, price about 2.05 cents apiece on common, based on our April 2025 valuations. However by transferring them to World of Hyatt and utilizing them on this means, I acquired about 250% extra worth than that from them. Had we paid money for these stays, it could have price us about $2,100.
That is an enormous chunk of worth to earn from simply utilizing the correct card in your ordinary spending.
Associated: 23 finest Hyatt inns on the planet
Backside line
For anybody seeking to capitalize on this card’s incomes potential, you possibly can happily nonetheless get the 100,000-point welcome provide on the Sapphire Most popular for a restricted time.
Do not forget that these 100,000 bonus factors alone are price $2,050, per our valuations — and that does not even embody the opposite $2,000-plus in worth I’ve demonstrated right here just by utilizing the cardboard over the course of a 12 months.
Will I’ve to pay that annual charge every year to make use of this card? Definitely, however is it really costing me cash or saving me cash? With all the worth I get from this card, the maths is a no brainer.
To study extra, learn our full evaluation of the Chase Sapphire Most popular.
Apply now: Chase Sapphire Most popular
