July was a fun month. Jenn and I took separate vacations. While Jenn and Emma went on a girls’ trip to Munich and Dublin with Jenn’s sister and our niece, I took our son Alex to Berlin and Dresden. It was a little strange being on separate vacations, but with us both being in Europe, texting our adventures back and forth was fun.
Alex and I wanted to do a lot of hiking in Saxon Switzerland National Park in Germany along the Czech border. Unfortunately, it rained a lot while we were there, and we only got to hike for a couple of days. Because of that, we spent more time in Dresden than we originally planned, which turned out to be great. I absolutely love Dresden and hope to return someday.
The girls enjoyed their trip as well. Between the two cities they visited, two of the girls preferred Dublin and two preferred Munich. That just goes to show that everyone has different travel preferences. I’ll get a chance to spend a little over a day in Dublin in late September, so I’ll get to see what I think soon enough.
Chase Sapphire Preferred Bonus
Back in May, I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which at the time had a 100,000 point bonus. This month, I finally finished the required spending on the card and received the bonus.
In the meantime, Chase has “refreshed” their Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which is the big brother of the Preferred card. The big news was that the annual fee jumped to $795 per year. At one point, this card had an annual fee of $450. A few years ago, it was increased to $550, and now with this refresh, it’s an eye-popping $795.
Each time the annual fee is increased, there are new benefits and credits added, which theoretically add value. Obviously, if you don’t use those credits, they are worthless. The list of credits is quite long, but most involve travel. In fact, the card seems to be designed for people who are very frequent travelers. It gives 8x on travel purchased through the Chase travel portal, 4x on flights and hotels not purchased through the portal, 3x on all restaurant spend, and 1x on all other spend. It has great airport lounge access benefits as well.
By contrast, the Chase Sapphire Preferred has a $95 annual fee and gets 5x on the Chase travel portal, 2x on other travel, 3x on dining, 3x on groceries, and 3x on streaming services, and 1x on everything else. There really aren’t any benefits to speak of on this card, except for the ability to transfer points to a variety of hotel and airline programs.
Personally, I’m glad I went for the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It’s a great choice for normal people. 3x on dining, groceries, and streaming services are categories in which most people spend a significant amount of money. There are good bonus categories on the Reserve card as well, but they are mostly related to travel, which is great if you travel a lot, but for people who don’t, the Preferred card makes much more sense.
Either way, it’s going to take a lot to convince me to spend $800 on an annual fee, and right now, I’m not interested.
On to the Point Check!
Our spending was a little higher than normal, mostly due to being on vacation. As much as I obviously try to reduce our vacation spending on flights and lodging, there really isn’t too much you can do about things like train tickets, bus tickets, and dining out. There’s no way I’m going to Germany without eating döner, and I’m certainly not denying Alex his currywurst. For some reason, they won’t let me pay for my döner box with Wyndham points.
We did a pretty good job of using the bonus categories of some of our credit cards, which meant that we earned a 7.7% return on spending on cards that we weren’t trying to earn a bonus. I’m pretty happy with any number over 5%, so I’m thrilled with that number.
| Card Used | Spend | Points Earned | Point Value | Points Per $ | Return on Spend |
| Amex Gold | $533 | 1797 | $35.94 | 3.4 | 6.8% |
| Ink Cash | $449 | 2,247 | $46.06 | 5.0 | 10.2% |
| Wyndham Business Earner | $410 | 2,242 | $24.66 | 5.5 | 6.0% |
| Total | $1,392 | 6,286 | $106.67 | 4.5 | 7.7% |
In addition to the spending on cards where we aren’t working on a bonus, I spent a little less than $3,900 on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card, earning over 7,600 Chase Ultimate Reward Points. That also put me over the required spend to earn the sign-up bonus of 100,000 points. Jenn spent a little over $2,100 on her IHG Business Card and earned almost 8,900 IHG points. She had previously earned the 140,000 point signup bonus for $4,000 spending in 3 months, but she is now just a little more than $2,000 in spending away from earning the additional 60,000 point bonus for spending a total of $9,000 in 6 months.
All of that left us with a total of:
- 272,100 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
- 194,600 IHG points
- 125,500 Amex Membership Rewards Points
- 93,000 American Airlines Miles
- 83,300 Wyndham Points
- 79,100 Alaska Miles
- 33,400 Marriott Bonvoy Points
- 32,700 Citi Thank You Points
- 16,800 Hyatt Points
- 16,700 United Miles
- 1,500 Delta Miles
- $133 in Cash Back
According to the Points Guy’s valuations, the grand total of those points, miles, and cash back is a little less than $14,200. That is an increase of around $2,600 from the previous month, mostly due to the Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus. That’s a pretty massive jump in just a month. Our total points values have increased for the last few months, so hopefully, we’re really starting to stockpile some points in programs that will really allow us to book some great vacations in the future.
Newby to Expert Traveler 