Is this Chase Sapphire Reserve® offer the best one yet?

Chase just came out with a new offer for the Chase Sapphire Reserve® and it's quite intriguing. Might be the biggest offer yet.

The previous, most recent welcome offer on the card was 100,000 Chase points along with $500 in Chase Travel℠ (this offer has expired). Depending on how you use your points, this brand new offer could be the better.

What is the new offer for the Chase Sapphire Reserve®?

The welcome bonus for the Chase Sapphire Reserve® is 125,000 Chase points after you spend $6,000 in 3 months from the account opening. As far as I know, this is the largest welcome bonus that Chase has offered on a personal card.

How do you hit the spend required to receive the 125,000 points?

It goes without saying—if you can spend $6,000 on everyday spending in 3 months then you have no worries. If you’re concerned that your monthly spend wouldn’t come out to $6,000 in 3 months, there’s a couple of ways to figure this out.

Let’s say you go out to dinner with a bunch of friends and everyone puts their card down. Instead of doing this, pay for the dinner on your card and have everyone venmo you.

Let’s say you live with other people and someone else usually gets the groceries. You could instead get the groceries yourself and use your Chase Sapphire Reserve®. And you could even get groceries for an extended period of time so that you are fronting the cost within the 3 month spend period for the welcome bonus.

Another excellent way to hit the spend amount is to use your card for work reimbursements. Let’s say you are booking a flight or rental car for a business expense—put it on the Chase Sapphire Reserve®! There’s no reason why you couldn’t do this if the company is expecting you to pay for business expenditures and then get reimbursed on the back end.

I could go through more ways to help you achieve the $6,000 spend in 3 months for the Chase Sapphire Reserve® but I don’t want to bore you. The main thing I would say is that if you can’t think of creative, plausible ways to hit the $6,000 spend in 3 months, then this card isn’t for you.

How does the new offer for the Chase Sapphire Reserve® stack up to the previous welcome offer?

The previous welcome bonus for the Chase Sapphire Reserve® was 100,000 points and $500 in Chase Travel spending after spending $5,000 in 3 months from the account opening (expired offer).

The current welcome offer today offers 25,000 more points but does not offer the $500 in Chase Travel. Also, it requires you to spend $1,000 extra to get the bonus of 125,000 points ($6,000 total in 3 months).

For me, it's definitely close. The $500 in Chase Travel is an interesting benefit to offer. Oftentimes, the price you pay with a Chase Travel booking doesn’t add up to the actual value. The reason for this is because all bookings are managed by a third party. Think of this as if you were booking a flight with Expedia.com or a hotel with Booking.com. This causes the price to sometimes be at a premium when booking through Chase Travel. Not great. I would value the $500 of Chase Travel as $350-$400 of actual value.

Personally I like the idea of having 25,000 extra points rather than $500 of Chase Travel. I don’t like the $500 of Chase Travel because it complicates trip booking. With 125,000 Chase points I can book an extended trip for myself OR a booking for me and a friend. It gives me more flexibility for the length of trip and kind of trip. The $500 in Chase Travel sounds appealing but when it's not actually $500 in value, it doesn’t go super far.

The other issue I have with the Chase Travel credit is that if you have any problems with a booking, you cannot call the airline/hotel/rental car company. You have to talk to the third party that manages your Chase Travel booking.

The point total of 125,000 points is intriguing as it's nice for long haul routes to places like Japan, Australia or New Zealand. Oftentimes these business class bookings for the 14+ hour flights can cost 100,000 points or more. And business class is well worth it for that long of a flight. Trust me—I took an economy class flight to Sydney from Los Angeles. Not the most comfy and zero sleep.

How can you use 125,000 Chase points?

Thinking about 125,000 Chase points is exciting to say the least. You could book a 10 night stay at the Hyatt Regency Tokyo Bay in Tokyo, Japan for just 120,000 points total. You could book a one way flight to Australia or Japan in business class for 75,000 (optimally) with points left over!

The extra 25,000 points with the new Chase Sapphire Reserve® welcome bonus are good to have to give yourself a little extra room for a second vacation or a longer stay.

What are some of the other benefits of the Chase Sapphire Reserve®?

With a $795 annual fee, you would hope that the Chase Sapphire Reserve® would come with some excellent benefits. Depending on what you spend your money on, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® has the potential to be worth it.

First off you get a $300 annual travel credit that can be used on a wide variety of travel related categories (flights, hotels, parking cruise lines etc.). An easy credit to use for anyone that travels at least once a year.

If you are a concertgoer or love seeing shows or sports, the up to $150 biannual credit of StubHub and Viagogo (totaling up to $300) are fantastic.

You can also get up $150 of biannual credit for restaurants that operate through OpenTable (totaling up $300). Something that I have found anecdotally that most of my friends would use in a heartbeat. The only issue with this benefit is you would have to make sure the restaurant of your choosing is indeed on OpenTable. The food promos don’t stop there. You can also get up to $300 in annual value via DoorDash credits.

There’s $250 available towards Apple TV+ and Apple Music subscriptions as well as up to $120 in annual Lyft credits. Still more. You can also receive a $120 application fee credit for Global Entry, TSA Precheck or Nexus every 4 years. Lastly, you can get up to $120 annually (in monthly credits) for Peloton.

Now, this is a lot thrown at you at once. A lot of coupons. Kind of annoying—I get it. BUT if you are doing the math on these credits, you only have to use some of them for the credits to be worth the hefty $795 annual fee.

It helps to know in relation to the welcome bonus in case you have a friend or relative looking for a Chase Sapphire Reserve®. You know that the credits can still be worth it for the right person.

Final Remarks

I would have to say that the Chase Sapphire Reserve® new offer is definitely the best offer yet. The 25,000 extra points compared to the $500 in Chase Travel from the previous Chase Sapphire Reserve® offer can be worth more when you take advantage of Chase’s travel partners. You could get up to 2 cents per point (CPP) or 3 CPP when transferring to Chase’s airlines or hotel partners. And with a larger amount of total Chase points, you have the potential of booking longer flights to a place like Singapore or New Zealand. Or you could have a dream vacation in Europe for 5 days booking flights and hotels with Chase points. The possibilities can be endless.