Building Your Personal Credit Card Strategy
Our Favorite Starter Card
In the next few sections, we will delve into bigger picture strategy and teach you how to get great points redemptions. I know some of you are chomping at the bit to open a card and get started RIGHT NOW. So to make it easy, I will give a quick intro to my favorite starter card.
Sometimes it is overwhelming to think of all the possibilities up front. That's why I usually recommend people start with cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards®.
Best Starter Card: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
This is the card that starts our Three Year Plan.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the most popular card to start with. You can find my complete guide to this card on my website.
- Low annual fee
- Good welcome offer
- Earn flexible rewards
Low Fee
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card has an annual fee of $95. If you cringe at the idea of paying an annual fee, know that cards with annual fees have better benefits and perks than cards without annual fees. And better welcome offers too!
If you are really averse to a fee, hold the card for one year and then downgrade the card to a no annual fee card or close your account.
Solid Offer
Card welcome offers regularly change, but the standard offer for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is always good.
The simplest redemptions will get you 1 cent per 1 point, so for example, a 75,000-point bonus is worth a minimum of $750.
At the most, these rewards could be worth thousands of dollars when transferred to a hotel or airline partner.
We have seen elevated offers on occasion reaching up to 100,000 points. The reason it is a great card to start with is that the points are flexible enough that you can use them to book domestic flights, international flights, hotels, or rental cars.
It also allows you to refer a friend (or spouse) to the card after you have it. You get a bonus of 10,000+ points for referring them and they earn their own bonus (exact amount can vary).
You can then pool all the points from your household together. If you have this card and you have added your spouse as an authorized user, you can still refer them for their own card and they can earn their own bonus.
Flexible Rewards
Unlike a co-branded hotel or airline card's rewards, flexible rewards are just that, flexible. Because they are so flexible and easy to use, rewards from the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card can be put to use by anybody.
For example, you can use your rewards to book travel through Chase Travel, transfer them to hotel partners or airline partners, cash them out, or use them to cover travel purchases.
Some of My Favorite Redemptions
- Transfer points to Hyatt and redeem 5,000 points per night at a Category 1 Hyatt (sometimes as low as 3,500 for off-peak nights).
- Transfer to United or Southwest for domestic travel.
- Book flights or hotels directly through Chase TravelSM.
- See more redemption options on my website.
Approval Odds
We recommend opening this card early on because getting approved can get more difficult after you have opened other cards.
Chase cards are subject to something called the 5/24 rule, which means you won't be able to open Chase cards if you have opened 5 personal cards from any issuer in the past 24 months (more on that later).
Ready to apply? Here is my affiliate link for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card.
