Is It Finally Time to Downgrade My Chase Sapphire Reserve?

I’ve had the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card for a few years now, and it’s been pretty good value for what I pay for it. But it’s undergoing some major changes later this year and I’m wondering if it’s still worth keeping.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve is a “premium” rewards credit card with a $550 annual fee. That’s quite a lot, although it isn’t actually as much as it sounds, because one of the benefits is a credit of $300 per year on travel purchases (including flights and hotels). I can easily spend that much on travel in a year and it’s spending I would’ve done anyway, so the card effectively costs only $250 per year. That translates to about $21 per month, which is actually quite good for the benefits it offers.

One of the changes to the card is that the annual fee will increase to $795. With the $300 credit that comes down to an effective cost of $495 per year or about $41 per month. That’s still manageable but it reaches a point where I need to take a hard look at the benefits to see if they’re actually worth the cost.

In rough order of importance, these are the benefits of the card that I actually use:

• Access to Priority Pass airport lounges plus Chase Sapphire lounges
• Transfering points to travel loyalty programs (although Southwest Airlines and Hyatt hotels are the only two I’ve actually found useful)
• Earning 3 points per dollar on all travel purchases
• Redeeming points for 1.5 cents each in the Chase Travel portal
• Monthly Lyft credit
• DoorDash DashPass membership
• Rental car coverage

And here is how those benefits are changing:

• Airport lounge access: No change, but it’s been steadily losing value over time. Nowadays there just aren’t that many Priority Pass lounges where I fly. Also, the card used to be one of the few that offered access to Priority Pass restaurants, but that ended last year. The Chase Sapphire lounges are a neat idea, but I don’t normally fly to any of the airports where they’re currently open.
• Transfering points to travel loyalty programs: No change.
• Earning points on travel purchases: Net positive. The card will now earn 4 points per dollar on flights and hotels booked directly. This means that the earning rate is increasing while the range of eligible purchases is shrinking. In particular, flights and hotels booked with third parties will no longer count, nor will other types of travel purchases like rental cars and public transportation. I guess this is fine with me since most of the purchases I make would still count anyway. The card will also earn 8 points per dollar on travel purchases through Chase Travel, which might be useful.
• Redeeming points in Chase Travel: Net negative. Points will only be worth 1 cent each. The “replacement” for this will be something called Points Boost, which are certain offers that can be redeemed at a rate of up to 2 cents per point. I doubt I’ll be able to make good use of that, so I consider this change a negative.
• Lyft credit: No change.
• DashPass: No change.
• Rental car coverage: No change.

What about the “$2700 annual value” that Chase is advertising in order to justify the increased fee? Well, a lot of the new benefits are specialized credits for various businesses, and I honestly don’t see anything I’d actually use.

All this means that the effective cost is doubling while the benefits I use are getting only slightly better overall. This doesn’t seem like good value to me, so I’m planning to downgrade to the Chase Sapphire Preferred. That card has a $95 annual fee (about $8 per month) with many of the same benefits.

Here is how the benefits change when I downgrade:

• Airport lounge access: Loss. I’ll miss this benefit, but like I said, there don’t seem to be many Priority Pass lounges where I fly anymore. I’ve made up for this by getting the U.S. Bank Altitude Connect card, which offers four free Priority Pass visits per year and even includes restaurants.
• Transfering points to travel loyalty programs: No change.
• Earning points on travel purchases: Reduction. The Preferred card earns only 2 points per dollar on travel purchases rather than 4 points, and only 5 points per dollar through Chase Travel rather than 8 points. (Note that the Preferred is still using the “classic” system of earning points for all travel purchases, rather than limiting it to flights and hotels.)
• Lyft credit: Loss. I think I can manage without this. It’s $10 per month and I don’t use Lyft enough for this to be a big deal.
• Redeeming points in Chase Travel: No change, at least compared to the new Reserve. The previous redemption rate of 1.25 cents per point is being replaced with the same 1 cent plus Points Boost as for the Reserve.
• DashPass: No change.
• Rental car coverage: No change.

Seems like a pretty good deal to me.