One Year of Earning and Burning with the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

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For many newbies in the points and miles world, getting a grip on the ins and outs of the hobby can be challenging (to say the least). Your best bet is to start simple with one of the most important decisions you can make -- selecting a travel rewards credit card. While you may not be ready to carry an arsenal of cards in your wallet, choosing a lucrative one to use exclusively can be very rewarding.

In this post, I’ll look at how easy it is to earn rewards by opening and using just a single card for one year. And the subject for this analysis is the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card — one of TPG's favorite cards for beginners.

Let's take a closer look at how rewarding the card can be in your first year of membership.

Let’s start with a quick overview of the card and why it’s such a solid product, especially for first-time cardholders. This card currently offers a sign-up bonus of 80,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. The 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points alone are worth $1,600 based on TPG's most recent valuations — but as you'll see later, you can get even more value out of this bonus.

In addition to the initial bonus, the card is quite valuable for everyday use, as you earn 3 points per dollar on broad definitions of dining and 2 points per dollar on travel expenses (including services such as Uber).

These points can be redeemed directly for travel at a rate of 1.25 cents apiece through the Ultimate Rewards travel portal. However, you can also transfer them to various airline and hotel partners, including World of Hyatt and United MileagePlus, giving you some great ways to make the most of your points.

Other benefits include no foreign transaction fees, primary auto rental collision damage waiver and trip cancellation/interruption insurance. The card comes with a $95 annual fee.

One year of spending

So if you open the card, earn the sign-up bonus and use the card exclusively for the first year, where does that leave you? Obviously, the answer depends on your spending patterns, so for this analysis, I used data on consumer expenditures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from the most recent year available (2019) to estimate what an “average” household would spend (and thus earn) on the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

In doing so, I used the following assumptions:

Only the "Other lodging" category under "Shelter" can easily be paid with a credit card — since you’ll pay a fee for making most mortgage and rent payments with credit cards.
The “Vehicle purchases” category under “Transportation” can’t be paid with a credit card, but all other transportation expenses can.
All “Personal insurance and pensions” expenditures can’t be paid with a credit card.
All other expenses (including “Education”) can be paid with a credit card.

Again, your situation may differ substantially, so feel free to adjust these assumptions in order to calculate your own earning potential.

Here’s a quick table that shows how these spending patterns in the first year of card membership translate to Ultimate Rewards points:

Category	Spending	Earning rate	Points
Sign-up bonus	N/A	N/A	80,000
Food at home	$4,643	1 point/$1	4,643
Food away from home	$3,526	2 points/$1	7,052
Alcoholic beverages	$579	1 point/$1	579
Housing (other lodging)	$961	2 points/$1	1,922
Utilities, fuels and public services	$4,055	1 point/$1	4,055
Household operations	$1,570	1 point/$1	1,570
Housekeeping supplies	$766	1 point/$1	766
Household furnishings and equipment	$2,098	1 point/$1	2,098
Apparel and services	$1,883	1 point/$1	1,883
Transportation (gasoline)	$2,094	1 point/$1	2,094
Other vehicle expenses	$3,474	1 point/$1	3,474
Public and other transportation	$781	2 points/$1	1,562
Health care	$5,193	1 point/$1	5,193
Entertainment	$3,090	1 point/$1	3,090
All other expenses	$3,540	1 point/$1	3,540
TOTAL	$38,253	N/A	163,521

As you can see, the "average" American consumer would earn more than 163,000 Ultimate Rewards points in just the first year of carrying the card in your wallet. That's quite a haul!

What do 163,000 Ultimate Rewards points get you?

Of course, earning points is one thing, but knowing how to redeem them for maximum value is a completely different story. Fortunately, the Ultimate Rewards program has a variety of valuable redemptions, most of which involve transferring points to the program's 10 airline and three hotel partners.

Here's a sample of what you can get from one year of using the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

Up to 5 round-trip tickets to Hawaii

Beach in Hawaii with tourists — If you have your sights set on visiting Hawaii, you can fly American or Alaska from the West Coast of the U.S. for just 26,000 British Airways Avios round-trip. (Photo by Clint Henderson/The Points Guy)

Planning a trip to the Aloha State using points and miles isn’t always the easiest goal in this hobby. However, you have a couple of options at your disposal through the Ultimate Rewards program.

My personal favorite is for West Coast residents. By transferring points to your British Airways Executive Club account, you can take advantage of the carrier’s distance-based award chart to book tickets from several gateways to Hawaii for just 26,000 Avios per person, including Los Angeles (LAX) and Phoenix (PHX) on American or San Diego (SAN), Oakland, California (OAK), Portland, Oregon (PDX), and Seattle (SEA) on American Airlines and Alaska Airlines.

Note that this price is only valid for nonstop itineraries, and you must find saver-level award availability to book. That said, the year’s worth of points from the Sapphire Preferred could get you five round-trip tickets, and you’d even have over 13,000 Ultimate Rewards points left over.

For those readers in the eastern part of the U.S., you also have options to redeem this haul of points for tickets to Hawaii by transferring to Singapore's KrisFlyer program to book United-operated flights (again, if you can find saver-level award availability). These will be slightly more expensive — 35,000 miles per person for a round-trip itinerary — but the above haul of Ultimate Rewards points could still get you four of these tickets.

A round-trip United flight from Newark to Honolulu booked with Singapore miles — (Screenshot courtesy of Singapore Airlines)

Note that you can also transfer Chase points to United MileagePlus. However, flights from the U.S. to Hawaii booked with United miles will set you back 45,000 miles apiece.

Up to 28 free nights in Hyatt properties

Park Hyatt Istanbul Macka Palas exterior — Hyatt is a great option for Ultimate Rewards points, allowing you to book stays at properties such as the Park Hyatt Istanbul. (Photo by Ariana Arghandewal/The Points Guy)

One of my favorite ways to use Ultimate Rewards points is transferring them to World of Hyatt. The program has very reasonable redemption rates that start at only 5,000 points per night for a Category 1 property. However, you can get some extreme value by using points at higher-tier locations such as the Park Hyatt Zurich for just 30,000 points per night.

Here’s a breakdown of how many nights you could get with 163,521 points across the program’s property spectrum:

Category 1 (5,000 points/night): 32 nights.
Category 2 (8,000 points/night): 20 nights.
Category 3 (12,000 points/night): 13 nights.
Category 4 (15,000 points/night): nine nights.
Category 5 (20,000 points/night): eight nights.
Category 6 (25,000 points/night): six nights.
Category 7 (30,000 points/night): five nights.
Category 8 (40,000 points/night): four nights.

I’m particularly intrigued by the option to book a nine-night stay at a Category 4 property such as the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay with a year’s worth of points from the Sapphire Preferred. I actually stayed here for eight nights back in November 2020 (as part of the Work from Hyatt program), and we had a blast — even though it was offseason.

A quick search of dates for this spring shows some dates at more than $300 per night, giving you more than $2,700 worth of value. Remember, too, that this doesn’t even consider the program's option to redeem points for suites. Even though this would reduce the number of nights you could book with a year's worth of Chase points, this could be a great splurge.

Up to 27 short-haul one-way flights

As noted above, one of the best aspects of the British Airways Executive Club program is the distance-based award chart it uses. On short-haul flights of 650 miles or less, you'll need a mere 6,000 Avios for a one-way ticket (or 9,000 Avios if the flight is from, to or within North America). This means that you can get up to 27 one-way flights that cover these short distances. Alternatively, you could expand your search to flights that are 1,151 miles or less and snag 15 of these one-way award tickets through the Executive Club program.

Since this is a great option for flights into (or out of) Oneworld hubs, let's take a look at a sample of how wide this will go across a few key cities in the Oneworld network. The following maps show the states/countries within 1,151 miles of the given airport, thus requiring just 9,000 Avios for one-way flights.

American's hub in Miami (MIA):

(Screenshot courtesy of Great Circle Mapper)

British Airways' hub in London Heathrow (LHR):

American's hub in Chicago O'Hare (ORD):

As you can see, you have a lot of options that fall within this range.

Airfare and five nights at Universal Studios for a family of four

Plan a family vacation with one year of earning with your Ultimate Rewards points. (Photo courtesy of Summer Hull/The Points Guy)

This final option is very specific but goes to show that if you play your cards right (pun intended), you can actually unlock an all-inclusive vacation with enough points to cover both award flights and free hotel stays. The Hyatt House across from Universal Orlando Resort is a Category 3 property in the World of Hyatt program, requiring just 12,000 points for a free night. Thus, a five-night stay would require 60,000 points and would book you into a studio suite — with two queen beds and a full kitchen.

This would leave you with 83,521 Ultimate Rewards points in your account.

For flights, you have a couple of different options. First, you could book flights directly through the Ultimate Rewards travel portal. With the Sapphire Preferred, your Chase points are worth 1.25 cents apiece, which means that these remaining points are worth more than $1,000 toward travel. That works out to roughly $250 per person — and if you book far enough in advance, that shouldn't be hard enough to find.

Another option would be to transfer your points to British Airways. As noted above, nonstop American Airlines-operated flights that cover up to 1,151 miles in distance would be just 9,000 Avios each way. You could thus use 72,000 points for four round-trip tickets (18,000 apiece) from any of the following American airports:

Charlotte (CLT).
Chicago O'Hare (ORD).
Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW).
Washington Reagan (DCA).
New York LaGuardia (LGA).

You could also look at transferring to United MileagePlus, JetBlue TrueBlue or Southwest Rapid Rewards for these flights — but be sure to crunch the numbers to see if transferring makes more sense than simply using the Chase portal for your trip.

This really demonstrates the incredible versatility of Ultimate Rewards points — and transferable point programs in general. Best of all, you'd still be left with roughly 11,000 points. If you're not currently earning this type of currency, now is a great time to start.

Bottom line

The Ultimate Rewards program is typically viewed as one of the most lucrative ones out there, thanks largely to its fantastic transfer partners. The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card has been around for quite some time, but as you can see above, you can unlock some terrific value by opening and using the card exclusively for just one year.

Keep in mind too that the above calculation may even be a bit too conservative:

The calculation assumes that you’re spending what an average consumer would. If you typically spend more in a year or have more purchases in different bonus categories, then your earnings will be even higher.
The calculation assumes that you don’t make any purchases through an online shopping portal. The Ultimate Rewards shopping portal allows you to earn bonus points at close to 300 online retailers, a nice way to boost your earnings even more.
The calculation assumes that you only open one card. There are many others that will earn you bonus Ultimate Rewards points in certain categories, including the Chase Freedom Unlimited (1.5 points per dollar spent everywhere) and the Chase Ink Business Cash Credit Card (5% cash back/5x points on the first $25,000 in combined purchases each account year at office supply stores and on telecommunication purchases). You could even consider a card outside of Ultimate Rewards, like the IHG Rewards Premier Credit Card or the World of Hyatt Credit Card. These will unlock additional perks and earning opportunities to extend your travel options even more.

Regardless of these last few details, I hope this post has demonstrated just how rewarding a single travel rewards credit card can be, especially in the first year.

Application link: Chase Sapphire Preferred offering 80,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first three months.

For more information on the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, be sure to check out the following posts:

Additional reporting by Stella Shon.