The Chase Sapphire Reserve® is widely regarded as the best premium travel credit card on the market thanks to its generous signup bonus and incredible perks. It’s got a lot of moving parts, so let’s take a look at how they work.

Let’s start with the bad news. It has a $550 annual fee that is not waived for the first year. Plan on it being charged to your card in the first month or so. Most people don’t get past that fee. But read on…that fee gets you a ton of amazing perks.

For starters, you get a generous welcome bonus after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months.

Having Sapphire Reserve also makes your Ultimate Rewards worth 1.5 cents each when redeemed via the Chase Travel℠ to book travel. For example, 60,000 points are worth $900 of travel.

Next, you get a $300 annual travel credit that is good for any sort of travel expense. Even paid tickets. So unless you are spending less than $300 on travel per year (in which case, why are you reading this website?) the annual fee becomes more manageable.

Finally, your Sapphire Reserves comes with complimentary membership to Priority Pass, allowing you to access more than 1300+ airport lounges worldwide.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® also gives you a $100 credit every four years to cover your application fees for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry, as well as some of the best trip interruption and rental car insurance coverage on the market. Personally, I think that TSA Precheck is the best $100 I have ever spent.

The fee is certainly not cheap but in this case it is absolutely worth it.

Note that Chase has restrictions on the Chase Sapphire cards that limit your ability to get multiple versions of them. [More details on that here].

Bryce Conway's trip

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Portugal

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