Quick Answer… yes! There was a time when the thought of spending that much money just to have a credit card seemed insane. But here we are, considering adding a second one of these in our household. Why? Because, we think the sign up bonus of 150,000 points makes it easily worthwhile. Even if you were to cash out the points and cover the fee that way (do not recommend, by the way), you would still have come out ahead with around 75,000 points left to use on travel. And, there are so many other ways to recoup the fee.

Let’s get into it.

First of all, who is eligible? Anyone who hasn’t previously received a Sapphire Reserve bonus and doesn’t currently hold the card is eligible. Until recently, Chase would only allow people to hold one card in the Sapphire family (Reserve or Preferred), but now you may hold both. Chase has also recently added lifetime language to their cards – so in the past you may have been eligible again for this bonus every 48 months, but now they have shifted to a per-card bonus. If you get this bonus now, it’s possible you will never be eligible again (unless rules change, which often rules do).

Now, on to the ways to get that fee back.

The easiest credit for this card is the annual $300 travel credit. The first $300 you spend that codes as travel will be credited back to you. A great thing here is that Chase has a really broad travel category and this is easy to trigger. Airfare, lodging (hotels, VRBO, AirBnB, national and state park accommodations), rental cars, cruises, and travel agency charges all code as travel. We’ve found that buses, trains, parking, and tolls will trigger this as well. The day to day Pittsburgh parking lots/meters code as travel as does the PA turnpike. It is possible to use this credit with every day spending you already have figured into your budget. Bam, this is now a $495 card. Another thing to keep in mind is that even if you choose to downgrade this card after the first year, you will get the credit immediately after your card-year anniversary and can use it again before downgrading. So, really, this could be a $600 benefit.

The next credit that is pretty easy to use is the Chase Sapphire Exclusive Tables credit. This is a program that lists upscale restaurants for which you get a $150 credit twice per year (Jan-Jun, then Jul-Dec). The restaurants are limited, but there is a Pittsburgh restaurant: Eleven! What’s more, if you can get to Eleven in the Strip and buy a $150 gift card, this will trigger the credit. The gift card will be good at any Big Burrito restaurant – Mad Mex, Alta Via, Kaya, etc. This is great news for folks that would typically eat out at a more casual place like Mad Mex, but not necessarily at Eleven (although, highly recommend!). One further way to maximize this – if you open the Sapphire Reserve NOW and use the first credit by June 30th, then you will actually get this credit three times in the card year, totaling $450. Think of all of the burritos and margaritas you could buy with that!

Great, only $45 left to make back the whole annual fee. You could stop here and call it a day. Or…

The Reserve also gives you $150 credit twice a year towards StubHub (Again, Jan-June & July-Dec). Now, if you’re already a big concert-goer or like to get to professional or college sports or other events, you could just use these credits potentially three separate times in the first card year. But if you aren’t, Tom has used this credit to buy tickets to the Penguins and WWE Raw. He picked these events because two tickets totaled about $150 dollars. He then re-sold the tickets right on StubHub and made about ⅔ the amount back. Each time they sold within a few days. This is another credit that can be used three times if you open the card before June and do it now, sometime between July and December, and then one more time after January 1. That’s another $300. Wait a second, now we’re $250 ahead on this card. 

With the Sapphire Reserve you get a complementary Dash Pass for Door Dash, and $25 in annoying monthly credits – $10 x 2 on non-restaurant places and $5 toward restaurants. We don’t always use this but have found value in Dollar General for detergent and other cleaning products (in store price same), and sometimes some bigger items from Restaurant Depot. We’d value these dumb little credits at around $100 for the year.

Another benefit that we appreciate is the travel insurance – this card has the industry-leading credit card travel insurance that can help with trip delay, baggage damage/delay, medical bills in a foreign country, and even medical evacuation, among other things, even when only a small portion of your trip is placed on the card. We recently had a positive experience using this benefit for our daughter when her flight got very delayed in Orlando that you can read about here. It’s hard to say what to value this at, as everyone has a different idea about purchasing insurance like this. Let’s call it a $100 value. 

We also heavily use the lounge access we get with this card. It comes with a Priority Pass Membership (make sure you activate it ahead of time) that can get you and two guests into a network of airport lounges, of which there are 240+ in North America. Here you will find typically a quieter place to wait for your flight and typically complimentary food and beverages. You can also get yourself and two guests into the growing list of Sapphire Lounges. Not all airport lounges are created equal, and Pittsburgh’s is certainly nothing to write home about, but we estimate this perk might save us at least $250 per year, possibly more. We recently had an experience where there was no airport lounge and we had a layover at a meal time, and ended up spending $60 on yucky airport sandwiches. We’d prefer free lounge hummus instead any day. 

There are some other subscriptions and benefits that come with this card that we won’t go into because the above are the ones that we’ve found pretty easy to use. Also, we’re now at close to $1200 in benefits on this card without even taking into account the lounge access and travel insurance. It kind of feels like we’re trying to see you a coupon book, but still, we say, make yourself an Excel spreadsheet or download an app like Award Wallet and open this card. We haven’t even gotten into what you can do with those 150,000 points, but I’m sure you can think of something!