The New Blue: Chase Sapphire Reserve Business Card

 I will admit, I totally blew the Sapphire Reserve Business card off when I first saw it come out on June 23, 2025. Sure, 200,000 points sounds AMAZING!!!!, but a $795 annual fee, then $30,000 spend to get them?! Ouch! No thanks!

The immediate thought I had was "why put $30K into one card's sign up bonus when that amount of money could be used to hit multiple new card's sign up bonuses?!"

This what where I started; but then when I started to consider which and how many cards we could get, I realized that there wasn't a guarantee of approval for all of those cards, nor a guarantee that their current sign up bonuses would still be available by the time we were ready to open the next card.

On top of that, obviously opening and managing just one card is a lot less work than trying to strategize and line out the opening of maybe 4-6 new cards. In fact, I realized that going for this offer could be beneficial in our long term strategy because it would allow us to take a break from needing/wanting to open multiple new cards, given that we'd have to put ALL of our spend on this card for several months to hit the minimum spend. 

The more I thought about, the more it actually did kind of make sense for us to get. YIKES! 

Unlike other Chase Sapphire or Business cards, the minimum spend on the current sign up offer is six months, not three. Really, that's the saving grace and reason why we got this card and can hit a $30K spend. Averaging that out, at $5k/month, our budget doesn't have us spending even that much money. However, going back to my post about knowing your routine spend AND planning ahead for bigger expenses, I knew that some of our large upcoming expenses (ski passes, a dental procedure (to be paid back with HSA funds), a sauna (a what?! Yes, my husband has been researching and saving for months and was finally ready to order. I told him, not without a new card first! ha), and our fall anniversary Singapore/Maldives trip), would definitely get us over the minimum spend when combined with our monthly expenses.

I also assumed that *now* is the highest offer the card is ever going to have and since we could, we should take advantage. Honestly, if this were an American Express offer, I don't know if I would have felt so strongly; but I will take ALL of the Chase points we can get since Chase is the only bank that partners with Hyatt. We LOVE Hyatt as a travel partners for their standard award pricing, ways to earn awards like free nights, and the ability to be gifted temporary elite status (with Guest of Honor awards).

So know you know, obviously, I just had to go for it!

Let's talk through the card and it's benefits to see if it may be a good fit for you.

Chase Sapphire Reserve Business Card

Annual Fee: $795 (I know - this is super high! I'll speak to this below)

Current (Elevated) Sign up Offer: 200,000pts for $30k spend in 6 months (I know, this is also super high. I spoke above why this works for our family right now).

Off-Setting the Annual Fee

The signup offer and the benefits of this card can make it easy to offset the $795 annual, depending which of these you use. The annual fee is typically charged within a month of you opening the card. It does not count towards the minimum spend for the sign up bonus.

Note these aren't all of the benefits, but these are what I personally assume are most universally useful:

• $300 ANNUAL travel credit: this doesn't have to be utilized in Chase travel portal; just charge anything travel related to your card and you'll get a credit on your next statement. (This benefit renews annually)
• Global Entry/TSA Precheck: $120 credit every 4 years; charge this card for your application and receive a credit
• Airport Lounge access for Sapphire Lounges and Priority Pass (good for you and 2 guests to get in free; you can pay for additional guests)
• Doordash benefits <honestly these are kind of annoying to use though; but you can get DashPass, which gives you free deliveries (valued at $120/yr), and then there's monthly benefits like $5 restaurant credit and (2) $10 non-restaurant credits
• $100 to Giftcards.com ($50 Jan-Jun and $50 Jul-Dec)
• Earn 4x points on directly booked hotels and flights

Offer Benefits that Some May Find Useful:

• $10/mo Lyft Credit and earn 4+x points on Lyft spend
• $200 Google Workspace
• $400 Ziprecruiter
• $500/yr (split $250 per Jan-Jun and $250 Jul-Dec) credit for The Edit: note this requires a 2-night stay and gives you complimentary benefits like free breakfast for 2, upgrades, $100 hotel credit; but from my searches so far, these tend to be REALLY expensive hotels, like $1,000/nt, which I will never be willing to pay cash for.

Why am I  even Suggesting this Card?

Honestly - I would (and did!) take advantage of getting this card with it's high elevated sign up offer now and use the above benefits to offset the annual fee. Then next year, once you've had the card for 12 months, I would plan to downgrade or close the account (assuming you can downgrade to an Ink, I'm not sure if we know right now). This is my own personal plan; I opened the card for the massive sign up bonus, but don't plan to hold this card long term.  

I figure, even if we only utilize the $300 travel credit, $5 doordash food credit/dash pass, $100 Gift card credit, and Lounges on the few occasions just my husband and I are flying (since we have two kids; or I pay for one kids as an extra guest); that's still valued at least $450 to help offset the $795 annual fee. I'll pay ~$345 net fee to get 200K Chase points!!! Mostly because I know for my family and our travel goals, how valuable Chase points are and how they can be hard to come by!

As a reminder: never close a card before you've held it for at least 12 months to keep in good-standing with the bank. If you're charged the annual fee, with Chase (like next summer after you've held the card for 12 mo), you have 30-40 days to call and downgrade and they'll refund you the fee!

So what do you think? Am I crazy, or did I make the right choice for us? I will say we've had the card close to a month and already made a big dent with our major one-time expenses!

I know this card isn't for everyone and definitely not everyone has a spend this high. But if you're like me and actually think you can make the card work for your household, I would SO appreciate if you utilized my referral link to open the card (reminder, if you're viewing this through a Meta app, please open an external browser to apply. This protects your data and gives me credit). If you're interested, but want more information on business cards as well as how to apply for them first, read here!

If you're unsure, fill out my next card recommendation form, and I'll give you my two cents!

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> Looking for more information on points/miles? You can find all of my points talk posts linked here.

> Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!