Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Gives You 17% Cash Back?

A tipster emailed me and told me there’s a hot new credit card out. Often times, I don’t pay too much attention. However, since I am working on a big write-up of last week’s Finovate conference, I thought it would be worth looking into to keep the flow of information going here and possibly help a couple of readers score some rewards points.

Well, I’m glad that I looked into it. I’m almost hesitant to post it, because it seems too good to be true. I’m sure you’ll agree if you’ve read the title. I mean 17% cash back is crazy, right? Of course, there are a couple of conditions. For me, they aren’t major gotchas, but your situation may be different.

Enough beating around the bush. Here’s the deal… The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is offering 50,000 bonus points when you spend $3000 in three months. What can you do with 50,000 points. Well there are numerous rewards to choose from. However, I personally have this card and I noticed that there’s an option on the Chase rewards site to cash them in for $500. I’m quite likely to use this option.

Some of you out there may be taking to me take for my math. If you spend $3000, you’ll also get 3000 points in normal points earnings (at least how I understand it). At the end of the 3 months you’d have 53,000 points for your $3000 spend… a cool 17.66% back.

However, you might even be able to squeeze this deal for more value. If you use the points for travel, you can get $625 in flights for your 50,000 points. If you go that way and use the other 3000 points via the cash back option on the website (perhaps buy yourself a meal and some drinks on that flight) you would have $655 of value for the $3000 you spent. That comes out to a whopping 21.83% in value for $3000 spent.

I realize not everyone spends $3000 in 3 months on their credit card. However, I think that many families could do it. Chase usually allows cardholders to add a spouse to the card, so a family could put all their expenses on it. My wife and I don’t even have kids and I think we would probably be over $3000 in 3 months. We might get close towards the end, but purchase some canned foods and filling up our chest freezer may get us there. We might also do a few other projects that we put off.

The other gotcha is that this card has an annual fee. It’s $95 a year… but the first year is free. From what I can tell it isn’t that amazing except for the bonus… I would cancel it after I’ve soaked it dry for its bountiful bonus.

I know some people hate the promotion of credit cards. I think that for those with the discipline to control their spending, they provide a great opportunity to get more bang for your buck. This is one such case where discipline pays off… and pays off handsomely.

I use Chase Credit Cards almost exclusively. You can see proof of that when I showed you What’s in Lazy Man’s Wallet. One of the things that I like about Chase Cards is that you can set them up to take money from your bank when your bill is due. I never have to worry about sending them a check. I never have to worry about missing a deadline and incurring any fees. I don’t know if I can explain in words how much peace of mind that buys… it is astronomical.

So readers, please tell me… am I missing something here? Doesn’t the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card sounds like a great deal?