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Most miles and points credit cards are currently offering some kind of welcome bonus, but when you look out at the sea of deals that are out there, one offer stands out more than any other, and it stands out because it comes attached to a fantastic credit card and because it could be considered to be one of the most valuable publicly available welcome offers on the market.
Welcome to my favorite credit card. Welcome to the card_name
The card in brief
Annual fee: annual_fees
Cost of additional/employee cards: $0
Current welcome bonus: bonus_miles_full (more details).
Note: Not only is this a great offer, but it’s also an offer that currently has the lowest spending requirement that we’ve seen on this card. Historically, the spending requirement has been as high as $15,000.
Earnings: card_name earns 3 points per dollar on the first $150,000 spent in combined purchases in the following categories each anniversary year:
- Travel
- Shipping purchases
- Internet, cable, and phone services
- Advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines
- Cardholders earn 1 point per dollar on all other transactions and on all transactions above the $150,000 yearly maximum.
Key benefits:
- Primary auto rental cover
- Cell Phone protection
- No foreign transaction fees
- Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption Insurance
- Purchase protection
- Extended warranty protection
- Roadside dispatch
- Transfer points to 11 airline partners and 3 hotel partners in a 1:1 ratio (details)
- Get 1.25 cents/point in value when you spend your points on travel through the Chase Travel portal
Quick thoughts
If you’d like a full-blown review of the card_name together with all the reasons why I think this is a great card to have, you’ll find it here.
In brief, however, these are just some of the reasons why I love this card:
- The welcome bonus is fantastic. Even if you value Ultimate Rewards points as low as 1.25 cents each* (the value you can get out of each point when booking travel through the Chase portal), this bonus is worth $1,250.
- The earning rates are strong and the travel spending category (in which this card pays out 3 points/dollar) is so broad that I’ve yet to find an example of a travel expense that doesn’t qualify for the boosted earnings.
- The card_name is one of just two cards that charge annual fees of under $100 and that can make a number of no annual fee Chase credit cards even better than they already are (the other card is the card_name). All the details of how this works can be found in this full review, but suffice it to say that if you value Ultimate Rewards points at 1.5 cents each (as I do), this card can turn a no annual fee card into a card that offers effective rebates of up to 7.5% in select spending categories.
- The primary rental car cover and the cell phone cover are both great benefits to have and when you consider that they’re being offered in exchange for an annual fee of just annual_fees, that seems like great value.
Overall, this is by far and away my favorite credit card as it pairs a low annual fee with strong earning rates and great benefits.
When you add to that the fact that it’s also offering a fantastic welcome bonus, it becomes a card that’s almost impossible for miles & points fans to ignore.
*I don’t know of anyone who values Ultimate Rewards points at a level that’s this low. I value them at 1.5 cents each and even that will be considered conservative by some.
Bottom line
The history of credit card welcome offers teaches us that fantastic deals don’t usually hang around for very long and that once they’re gone, they often don’t return (remember the 100,000 offer that came with the card_name?) so the fact that this bonus continues to be available astonishes me.
For anyone who loves Ultimate Rewards points this is a genuinely great card, and I like it so much that if a draconian new rule was ever brought in that limited us to just one card (across all card issuers), this would probably be the card that I would choose.
That, in one sentence, sums up just how good I think this card is.
