Next credit card, after Chase Sapphire Reserve
·2 mins
At $550 a year, Chase Sapphire Reserve is pretty expensive for me, especially when we aren’t going to travel or eat out all that much (or probably even if that weren’t the case). - Maybe not. After the $300 travel credit, think of the remaining $300 or so (i.e. $250 plux taxes) as purchase protection and travel insurance.
Some alternatives:
- Fidelity:
- Free, with 2% cashback. (So, no need to track categories or anything.)
- Foreign transcations aren’t free.
- While I can have the money go directly into a Fidelity account, don’t think I can have it invested too automatically. So, a bit of hassle.
- No Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver, so major blocker.
- Alliant:
- Flat 2.5% cashback. (That’s pretty high.)
- All other goodies such as no foreign transaction fee, rental car collision coverage etc.
- $99 fees 2nd year onwards.
- Check if they allow another card for Sneha for free. If so, that’d be cool.
- Current card from First Tech:
- 1.6% cashback for some categories, 0.8% for others. So, pretty miserable.
- Free though.
- Current Chase’s Freedom:
- 1.5% cashback.
- It does have it higher in some categories. It may be a bit of hassle to track that.
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is secondary whereas Sapphire’s is primary.
- Amex Platinum:
- Travel rewards highly coupled with Uber and they’ll likely go to waste for us.
Overall:
- Alliant’s looks best. Check past expenses to see if its fees are worth the difference in cashback. (It should probably be so.)
- Or just stick with Chase’s Freedom to keep things simple.