Should you apply for Chase cards first?
Chase Bank issues a ton of personal credit cards, but famously imposes a very strict requirement on who is eligible to be approved for a new one: if you have opened 5 or more new credit cards accounts in the last 24 months, you won’t be able to get the vast majority of Chase cards. If you’re getting started filling out your credit card portfolio, it’s vital to be aware of this rule and plan around it. But does it mean that you should prioritize Chase cards over other compelling cards?
Short version: yes.
But, I think it’s important to distinguish between Chase’s own cards, which earn Ultimate Rewards, and the co-branded cards, which have benefits tied to a specific brand, like Marriott or United. Here’s the longer version.
Ultimate Rewards Cards
A simple pairing of the Sapphire Preferred (or Reserve, if you’re fancy) and the Freedom Unlimited offers a big big up-front pile of points, solid earning rates, and excellent rewards.
The good
The welcome bonus on the Sapphire Preferred usually goes back and forth between 60 and 80,000 points; right now it’s the latter, although probably not for long. The Freedom Unlimited offers $200 cash back, but in the form of 20,000 UR points. So by signing up for both, you can net 100,000 points once you hit the minimum spend, good for $1250 in travel through Chase’s portal, or even more when used to book flights or hotel nights by transferring to hotel and airline partners (those 100,000 points could net you 20 nights or more in Hyatt’s economy properties).
The two cards also make a solid 1-2 earning punch. The Freedom Unlimited earns a minimum of 1.5x, but 5x on travel booked through Chase’s portal, 3x on dining, and 3x at drugstores. The Sapphire Preferred only earns 1 point on baseline spending, but gets 5x on travel bookings through the portal, 5x on Lyft (through March 2025), 3x on dining, as well as 3x on online grocery purchases and select streaming services, while earning 2x on general travel purchases.
Once earned, the points are easily redeemed at a solid value of 1.25¢/pt through the Chase travel portal. There are also simple ways to obtain a high value by transferring them to United or Hyatt and redeeming them through those loyalty programs, as well as potentially even higher face value by redeeming for upscale travel or niche opportunities with international partner airlines.
The less good
So why not start with these two cards? Well for starters, there’s a real annual fee involved. A year ago, the CSP offered nothing to offset its $95, which made it a very tough pill to swallow. That has been improved significantly in the past few months. Now, you receive $50 in statement credits each year for hotel bookings through the Chase portal, an opportunity that should be pretty easy for most people to redeem at full value. You also receive a 10% points bonus on your dollars spent (not points earned) each year. So if you spend $30,000 on the card, you’ll get 3,000 UR points. In that case, you’d get at least $87.50 of the $95 fee back.
But if you pair the CSP with the Freedom Unlimited, much of your spending will be on general purchases not earning a bonus. The smarter decision is to earn 50% more by using the Freedom, but then this will reduce the benefit of the 10% bonus and result in your net annual fee being higher. You’ll also need to remember to switch between the Freedom Unlimited for non-bonus purchases and the CSP for dining, travel, and the like. Some people advocate adding the Freedom Flex to this mix for maximized UR earning opportunities (at the expense of a healthy dose of complication).
This is not a bad setup by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, it’s a perfectly good place to start. But you really need to be dedicated to the Chase UR system to maximize your benefits, and that can be a drawback when there are so many excellent cards on the market.
And that’s why I, personally, prefer not to choose between paying $50 to have the CSP in my wallet or diverting my spending from better or more useful cards into the Chase universe. And that’s really the thing about the UR cards: they’re very, very good, but none are the best at what they do. In the Amex Gold, the Bilt Mastercard, and the Capital One Venture X, you can get 4x on dining and groceries, 3x on flights, 2x on all purchases, and 1x on rent, all for a net annual fee of $5. UR points are more valuable than Amex or Capital One points, but I’m not sure the difference is that great. Even if it is, the Bilt card matches the CSP’s earnings nearly point-for-point, and those points are even more valuable than Chase’s in my opinion (offering the same 25% redemption bonus through the travel portal, also having United and Hyatt as key transfer partners but also adding American Airlines). Oh, and the Venture X will also give you unlimited Capital One, Priority Pass, and Plaza Premium lounge access.
Really, the main reason to start with the CSP is to collect those 60-80k bonus points, and start the clock ticking to recycle that bonus. Chase will let you collect a welcome bonus on a Sapphire card multiple times, but only once every 48 months. That’s maybe not the worst idea, but for me, I’d rather prioritize cards I like.
Co-branded cards
The story is a little different when it comes to co-branded cards. Most notable among these are Chase’s United, Southwest Airlines, Marriott, IHG, and Hyatt cards. Here, if a given card makes sense to you, you should be sure to pick it up prior to getting 5/24-barred. For me, that was only the IHG Premier card. It’s an excellent card that offers a ton of free hotel nights and serves a key role in my wallet. The Hyatt card is also excellent, but to get the most out of it you really need to spend at least $15,000 on it, which is way more than I wanted to divert from my other cards; that’s one I’ll aim to pick up a few years down the line. The United cards, meanwhile, are among my favorite cards on the market, and work with my favorite airline. But I just don’t fly United often enough to justify opening a card with an annual fee without any imminent plans to actually take advantage of its benefits. Similarly, if you fly Southwest regularly those cards can be lifesavers to help navigate SWA’s boarding quirks, but didn’t offer much value to me.
Summary
We are lazy, too lazy to hyper-optimize a credit card strategy around a card we don’t love. If you think you’ll love the Chase Sapphire, though, or if you want to max out the bonus, go for it! The important thing is that you don’t miss out on the Chase cards you want by neglecting 5/24, and don’t feel bad for focusing on other cards if those make more sense for you.