With the recent changes to the Chase Sapphire Reserve which includes a fee increase of $550 for new card holders effective January 12, 2020 and for existing card holders as of April 1, 2020 and moving forward. One positive is if your annual renewal is prior to April 1, 2020 you will be able to get one more year at the $450 annual fee and still receive all the benefits they added. In this post we will look at 7 reasons to have the Chase Sapphire Reserve in 2020. We won’t be focusing in on the $300 travel credit, of the 3x multiplier on travel purchases. We will be looking at 7 ways to justify this card for 2020. For a detailed post of all the changes click here. These 5 reasons are listed in no particular order.
Do you like Airports?
If so this card comes with complimentary airport lounge access. You’ll receive a Priority Pass Select membership. Which is valued at $99. You can bring two guests with you free of charge. Each additional guest will cost $27. This Priority Pass Select Membership also allows you to use it at select restaurants inside airports towards $28 worth of food at most of the 28 or so participating restaurants, not to mention the 20 or so bars that you can use that credit. Some restaurants allow you to bring one guest and get another $28 worth of food credits, totaling $56. Which is a sweet deal. These credits can’t be applied towards a tip however, so be sure to bring a few bucks for that.
Personally I do not have this benefit as I generally don’t spend much time in airports. I usually get there in time for my flight and once I land I’m headed on to my destination. There are examples of people using this benefit at multiple participating restaurants in the same airport allowing them to use that $28 credit two or even three times. If you’re someone who travels often for work or takes international trips with layovers, this benefit could be very beneficial.
Hate Waiting in line
Are you someone who is always running late or rushing through the airport to catch your flight? Or maybe you just hate waiting in lines. Well, then this is one reason to consider the Chase Sapphire Reserve. I am talking about the Global Entry or TSA PreCheck credit that you get with this card. If you only travel domestically than all you really need is TSA Precheck. But if there is even a chance you might travel internationally within 4 years of getting this, I always recommend going for Global Entry since TSA-Precheck is included in that. If you pay the $85 for TSA PreCheck or the $100 for Global Entry with the Chase Sapphire Reserve you will receive that credited back to your account. You can use this credit once every four years. Which is about how long each membership lasts before it’s time to renew.
Who needs a car?
Do you live in a densely populated area like New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles? Or maybe you travel for work and instead of renting a car you take a rideshare option. If so you may find yourself taking either Uber or Lyft. Now with the Chase Sapphire Reserve it might make more sense to use Lyft with these new perks.
- 10x points per dollar spent with Lyft
- Complimentary Lyft Pink Membership
With these added perks, not only will you save 15% off your rides, you will earn a higher bonus rate. Plus a few other perks that you can read about here. The 10x benefit is currently being advertised only through March 2022. It will be interesting to see if they extend it or go with a different perk. Although I suspect since American Express has a deal with Uber, Chase will stay with Lyft.
Transfer Partners
Chase has some of the best transfer partners of any of the major credit card players. If your focus is on travel, this card is hard to beat. Points are worth 1.5 cents each when redeemed towards travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal. But many times, you can extract more value by using transfer partners. Points transfer at a 1:1 ratio and sometimes chase even offers bonuses when you transfer to one of their partners.
Here are the Ultimate Rewards transfer partners:
No matter if you only need to rent a car once a year or with every monthly excursion. This benefit is hard to beat. The Sapphire Reserve offers primary collision damage waiver coverage. This basically means that you are covered for any damages that happen to your rental car, regardless of whether you carry other insurance or not. You do have to pay for the rental with this card and decline the collision insurance, for the policy to kick in. Check your cardmember agreement for full details of what type of rentals may not be covered. While thankfully I have never had to use a benefit like this. Knowing that if you use this card to pay for your car rental gives a bit of relief.
Do you eat?
One of the new changes to this card involves DoorDash. The Sapphire Reserve offers a 1-year DashPass membership. With this service you pay $0 delivery fees when ordering at least $12 from participating restaurants.
You also get $120 of DoorDash credit. This is broken up over two years. You will receive $60 of credit in 2020 and another $60 of credit in 2021. Not a bad benefit overall and one that just about every card holder should be able to take advantage of.
We don’t need no stinking fees!
This card is advertised as a travel card. As such you wouldn’t expect a travel card to have any foreign transaction fees. The Sapphire Reserve doesn’t disappoint. This is an excellent card for purchases made internationally while traveling or even from merchants who may be based in other countries. Say goodbye to those 3% fees.
Those are just 7 reasons why the Chase Sapphire Reserve is still a great option to have in your wallet. Is there a reason that I didn’t include that is a reason you keep this card? We’d love to know. Drop us a comment below, on YouTube, or one of our social media accounts.