Chase Trifecta: Still Worth It in 2021?!

in today's video we're looking at whether the chase trifecta is still worth it in 2021 we'll look into what it is the pros the cons and what makes sense for you if you are someone that's been around the block who is an og there is going to be a chapters tool to skip to the next part if you get bored or something or if you already know what it is big favor as always is to give this a thumbs up and if you like stuff like this consider subscribing so what is the chase trifecta this is a three card setup that i recommend for most people starting the game it includes the freedom unlimited the freedom flex in either the sapphire preferred csp or the sapphire reserve csr for the freedom unlimited you're going to earn five percent back on travel booked through the chase portal three percent back on dining and then 1.5 everywhere else for the purpose of this system this is going to be the catch all card for the freedom flex it's going to be the same first two categories but you also earn five percent back on rotating categories every quarter you do need to activate this and it's only up to fifteen hundred dollars and spend per quarter but it definitely provides a ton of value to get an idea of what the quarters look like here is going to be 2020s and typically include something like grocery stores gas and also shopping the trick here is to load up on relevant gift cards during that quarter so for example let's say you spend about twelve hundred dollars at costco every year you can buy twelve hundred dollars in that quarter and then use one hundred dollars per month for the rest of that year in that situation you end up effectively earning five percent back for each of your costco purchases by themselves these are already pretty competitive cards five percent backed on travel booked through a portal is surprisingly good and same with three percent on dining factor in that these are no annual fee cards so it's not going to hurt you one thing a lot of people starting the game don't realize is that even though these are marketed as cash back cards you're actually earning points so five percent back is really five x back five percent is the floor but you can get more value out of it this is where the chase sapphire preferred and the chase sapphire reserve come into play because they end up increasing the value of your points you can think of it like a force multiplier the chase sapphire preferred increases the value of your points by 1.25 and the chase sapphire reserve 1.5 this is when you take those points and then either redeem them towards travel on the chase portal or use pay yourself back which is a program by chase for example until april 30th of 2021 you can use pay yourself back to get that 1.25 or 1.5 by redeeming those points towards home improvement stores and also grocery stores in terms of the multipliers for the card the csp and the csr feel too for a refresh the csp earns two weeks back on travel and also dining in the csr's three expecting travel and dining note that it's travel broadly so it's not stuff specifically booked on their site it's anything that you would consider travel so that's going to be airbnb expedia hotels.com a lot of different things even some tools and parking will count towards travel the csr also has a travel incidental credit and the fact that this category's so broad makes it very easy to use there are a bunch of other benefits that we'll cover in the pro column but this is the bare bone framework if you're someone who wants to learn more about these cards and you want to support the channel we do have links on our website askasabi.com and also down below in the description box thank you guys in advance for the support for anyone who fast forwarded to this section we're going to look at five of the benefits of running this chase trifecta number one is that it's a relatively simple setup so unlike a lot of the other ones you don't have to jump through as many hoops you don't have to deal with as many credits and you also don't have to dive into the rabbit hole of learning how to do award redemptions to me the chase trifecta is the setup for normal people who want to get value but who don't want to go overboard if the cards feel a bit confusing there's no shame in buying a label maker and i'll link this one down below which i think is a pretty good one number two is that you have outs so you have downgrade passed into no annual fee cards if you're someone who realizes that points aren't for them if you're someone who has a family and you're not thinking about travel anymore if life hits you in the face like 2020 did for a lot of people you have a way to downgrade these cards to no annual fee ones and focus on that cash back aspect for a lot of people who run cashback setups these five percent cards do play a pretty big role number three is that the csp and the csr's travel benefits can pay for those cards by themselves a really good example of this is that both of those cards provide primary cdw when you rent a car one thing they try to sell you is cdw and this can typically cost 10 to 30 dollars per day in my experience it's about 25 a day if you have primary cdw this means that you can rely on your credit card's benefit before going to your own insurance secondary on the other hand means that you need to go through your own insurance first before going to the credit card's benefit it could increase your rates in the long term if you're renting a car for four days that could easily be a hundred dollars in savings note that the cdw collision damage waiver is different than liability insurance so you still need to pay for that one the chase sapphire reserve also gives you priority pass which gets you lounge access for you and two guests saying this again because it's oftentimes a question you yourself and tree and also two of your guests and for someone who drinks then this can pay for itself already airports are notorious for overcharging especially for alcohol if that's not your thing then it's typically coffee and snacks which isn't too bad oftentimes coffee is still overpriced at about five dollars so you can still save a bit of money might not be as useful though for people who don't fly as much note that i'm mostly talking about u.s lounges here if you go to europe or if you go to asia their lounges are a lot more competitive oftentimes the food there is actually pretty good for example some of the food in the singapore airport's lounges their laksa was better than at the hawker stands there's also a lot of other benefits such as trip delay as well as baggage insurance number four is that the floor value of the points is relatively high so if other setups such as cities one if you wanted to redeem it as a statement credit for cash you're getting 0.6 cents per point so if you had 100 000 points that's going to be six hundred dollars here that four value as a statement credit is going to be one cents per point so one hundred thousand is going to be one thousand well the avenue pay yourself back depending on which card you have that's one point two five or one point five cents per point so 1 250 or 1500 this is also extremely useful for anyone else who wants to do normal travel and normal life stuff rather than doing yolo trips first class flights are nice but sometimes life happens if you are looking to do aspirational trips then the points do have a pretty high ceiling this is how normal people are able to do cool trips if you're looking to do first class business class or if you have maldives or bora bora on your list then these points can be pretty helpful you can typically get two cents per point and that's the numbers i use because i think that's a fair range but if you look at the sticker price it's a lot higher for flights it could range up to eight to ten cents per point based off what people are actually paying based off what they charge in hotels i would say about three to four cents per point i think two cents is pretty fair though given what people happily pay and what people consider deals on places like flyer talk since people oftentimes get confused with this let's go through a quick example so if i want to stay at ventana big sur this is going to be part of hyatt going on the hyatt website this is a category 7 which requires 30 000 points at the moment of filming this chase transfer points over to hyatt at a one-to-one rate so 30 000 chase points is 30 000 hyatt points the 30 000 points is 300 if i redeem it as a statement credit and then if i did pay yourself back or book through travel about 375 to 450. instead i'm using those 30 000 points to book one night in ventana big sur and the retail price for that is two hundred and fifty dollars so if you take the retail price and then divide it by the number of points you need that's going to be four point two cents per point and this is just me keeping it simple if you were paying that retail price there's going to be taxes and other fees involved with taxes and fees that's 1 386 dollars so really 4.62 cents per point this is not for everyone but there's definitely opportunity to get a ton of value if you care about stuff like this let's flip it around and look at some disadvantages the first one is that you don't have as many transfer partners as american express and also city if you get into the more advanced side of award travel then you might want to have those and i would argue that you would probably want to evolve from chase into those additional setups also depending on where you live and whether you care about hotels the value might be relatively capped just because it might be harder to redeem those points so for example if you live in dallas and you don't care about hotels for hyatt then you're not going to have as many transfer partners and then you kind of have to be forced to redeem for 1.5 cents per point rather than doing those two cents per point transfers still not bad by any means but there is more potential if you want to add into it number two is that chase does outsource some of their customer service so if you're someone who doesn't like that if you're not a fan of that then that's something to consider and by outsource i don't even necessarily mean in another country i mean that their insurance claim department isn't owned by chase if you look at something like american express it's technically under the same umbrella the benefit of that is that sometimes it's easier to deal with claims when it's all internal at the same time i wouldn't be surprised if your profitability numbers for american express affects how successful your claims are i'm pretty sure if you're someone spending a million dollars with them they're going to be a bit more lacks than the person spending ten thousand dollars number three is that it slows down substantially after the first year so this is a pretty big problem for all setups in the first year when you're getting those intro bonuses it feels really good second year it's less exciting intro bonuses offer outsized value and oftentimes it does make sense to chase that high i covered this more in about 60 seconds in the year two part so is the chase trifecta still competitive for new people starting the game absolutely i think this makes a lot of sense if you want a high floor value for your points but you also want that high ceiling this is my recommended setup for people who want points but also who don't want to go overboard and don't want to do too much work factor in that the chase sapphire preferred at the chase sapphire reserve can both be downgraded to no annual fee cards it makes it a no-brainer starting point the other consideration is that there is a 524 rule meaning that if you have five or more new credit cards in the last 24 months their algorithm is going to reject you my view is that you want to grab that chase bag while you still can all these other issuers that have competitive cards are waiting for you on the sideline is this setup still competitive for people in the second year and onwards i think it really depends on you if you want to keep it simple then it probably does make sense if you end up going on card match and you have an offer for 125 000 points for the platinum card and you're getting tempted by that i think it makes sense to test it out i'll put a card match link down below if you want to check for that yourself one of the core benefits of the setup is that you can take a break from it and you can downgrade those cards ironically if you go to american express and you end up getting bored of them as well in a few years you're probably going to be eligible for these chase bonuses again for most of the chase cards you're going to be eligible for a bonus if you haven't gotten a bonus in the last 24 months and if you currently don't have the card for sapphire cards it's 48 months and that's why i recommend starting that clock now and then you can come back to it in the future again if you're looking to learn about these cards we have links on our website asksabby.com and also down below in the description box my question for you guys is what are your thoughts on this setup and if you're someone who's evolved past it what was your experience let me know and everyone else know in the comments down below if you liked it give it a thumbs up it really helps us out if you know anyone else who benefit share this with them i'll probably help them out but otherwise hope you guys liked it see you guys next time

Channel: Ask Sebby

Views: 96,056

Rating: 4.9610977 out of 5

Keywords: asksebby, ask sebby, chase sapphire reserve, chase sapphire preferred, chase freedom unlimited, chase freedom, chase trifecta, chase trifecta vs amex trifecta, chase vs amex, metal card, best travel card, chase trifecta 2021, chase trifecta explained, chase trifecta asksebby, chase trifecta cards, best chase cards, best card system, is chase trifecta worth it

Id: G7Uq4Vz_fMQ

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021