How Card Experts Use Their Chase Sapphire Preferred Bonuses

Bankrate’s editorial team is full of Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card fans. And there’s a big new welcome offer for the card that Chase just announced this week that provides a timely example of why this card is consistently a staff favorite.

For a limited time, the card offers 100,000 points for spending at least $5,000 within the first three months of account opening. That’s $1,250 in value when you redeem your points for travel purchases through Chase Travel. And with a transfer to a high-value partner, you can get 2 cents per point out of your Chase rewards, according to Bankrate valuations. That means the potential value of the new bonus rises to $2,000.

The generous welcome offers are one of the reasons our team loves this card so much, and we get excited sharing our stories about how we’ve used the points from past offers ourselves. If you want to know what credit card nerds do with their Chase Ultimate Rewards, we’re here to tell you.

Here’s how five Bankrate experts spent their Chase Sapphire Preferred welcome bonuses.

Ana Staples, Principal Writer: Two weeks in Mexico

I applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred back in 2021 — the last time it was advertising a 100,000-point bonus. This was the highest-value welcome offer I’d ever gotten on a credit card.

I spent the bonus on the issuer’s travel portal to book a trip to Cancun for myself and my mother in early 2022. I booked her a roundtrip ticket to fly from Moscow to Cancun for around 60,000 points. My ticket from Austin, Texas (where I lived at the time) to Cancun cost a little over 17,000 points. I spent the remaining 23,000 points to pay for our stay at InterContinental Presidente Cancun. Considering the nightly rate was about $130 to $140 per night — what a steal! — it was like getting two nights out of our two-week stay for free.

We still talk about that trip all the time. About micheladas and chips with guacamole on the beach, the ruins of Tulum rising over the Caribbean coast, and the tiny tropical island of Isla Mujeres. I hope my credit card rewards will take me there again one day.

John Puterbaugh, Senior Editorial Director: An upscale weekend getaway in Savannah, Georgia

John and his wife also took advantage of the 100,000-point bonus during the pandemic. They each applied for the card, which resulted in them earning 200,000 points in total. The couple pooled their rewards and used around 80,000 points to pay for a weekend getaway and a luxurious hotel in Savannah, Georgia.

Since the hotel was covered, they felt free to spend more on food and entertainment in Savannah. And they still had a large pile of points saved afterward, which they used on lodging for more routine family trips with their two kids.

“I’m big on just keeping a big stock of points and then using them in little ways to trim costs on trips, rather than going all out on specific points-funded trips,” John says.

Sarah Gage, Managing Editor: Trips to South Carolina and Texas

Sarah signed up for the card when the offer was elevated to 75,000 points in May 2024. She used 51,000 of the points for a three-night solo trip to the Wild Dunes Resort in Charleston, South Carolina, which would have cost just under $1,200 out of pocket.

Sarah combined the rest of the bonus with the Chase points she earns through her regular spending on the Chase Freedom Unlimited®, Chase Freedom®* (discontinued) and Chase Sapphire Preferred cards. She used the rewards to cover a New Year’s Eve trip with her son to the Grand Hyatt San Antonio, which was “a steal at 14,000 points a night with club access.”

“San Antonio, Texas goes HARD on New Year’s Eve fireworks,” she says. “The main show was right behind our hotel (we watched from the pool deck), but there were smaller shows going on across the skyline. The hotel was also walking distance to the Riverwalk, so we spent a ton of time exploring.”

Lance Davis, Vice President of Content: A ski trip in Utah

Lance and his wife have made it an annual tradition to take a quick vacation in February.

In 2022, he earned the standard 60,000-point bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred and used it to go on a ski trip in Park City, Utah, in February 2023. The couple purchased two Delta flight tickets from Atlanta, Georgia, to Salt Lake City, Utah for around 55,000 points.

Courtney Mihocik, Senior Editor: A honeymoon in Europe

Courtney earned the standard 60,000-point bonus and spent it on her European honeymoon. She spent a little over 19,000 points for a hotel booking in Zurich, close to 16,000 points on flights and 10,000 points on a car rental.

Swimming in Lake Lucerne in the middle of a heatwave was one of the highlights of the trip. “The water was so cold, but it was over 90 degrees, so it felt fantastic,” she says. “We also waded in Lake Geneva the night before. We sat next to the river in Zurich and put our feet in because of the heatwave. Funny enough, that hotel I booked in Zurich was where we found out I was pregnant!”

The bottom line

Few cards on the market elicit such a universally positive sentiment from credit card experts as the Chase Sapphire Preferred does. From the beaches of the Caribbean to the cold waters of European lakes, our team has used welcome bonuses to take some rather unforgettable trips.

If you’re interested in the Chase Sapphire Preferred, this is a great time to apply. You can score a generous limited-time offer worth up to $2,000, depending on how you redeem the rewards. And I hope our card pros have given you some ideas on how you can put your points to work.

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