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Moving Points From the Sapphire Preferred to the Sapphire Reserve

Sept. 15, 2016
3 min read
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Moving Points From the Sapphire Preferred to the Sapphire Reserve
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My husband recently pulled the trigger on the new Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, and thankfully was approved and will be the very happy recipient of 100,000 Ultimate Reward points as soon as he hits the $4,000 minimum spending requirement in the first three months.

Probably like many of you, he has had the Chase Sapphire Preferred for several years and had been racking up points on it at a rate of 2x points on travel and dining, 1x elsewhere. Now that he has the Chase Sapphire Reserve that will earn 3x on travel and dining, 1x elsewhere, the Sapphire Preferred Card will likely be "retired" from his wallet. However, he wants to be sure to move over the 44,000+ points he has on that card to the Sapphire Reserve, especially since they are worth more when associated with the Sapphire Reserve than with the Sapphire Preferred if you want to use them to pay for travel through the Chase website.

To move his points over to the Reserve Card, he first logged into his Chase account and went to his old Sapphire Preferred Card.

From there he clicked on the point balance on the upper right hand side to reveal an drop down box where you can select "combine points". You can combine points to another Ultimate Rewards earning card you have, or one held by one household member who is also an authorized user.

He then opted to move all of his points on the Sapphire Preferred over to the Sapphire Reserve.

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This process was instant, and as you can see below via the Sapphire Preferred his 44,869 points were previously worth $560.86 towards travel via the Chase website, or 1.25 cents each via that card.

Now that the points have been moved to the Sapphire Reserve they were immediately worth $673.04 towards travel if he decides to use them in that manner since they are worth 1.5 cents each towards travel with that card.

Getting $113 in additional value for your points to use towards travel simply by moving them from one card to the next is not chump change, and it makes the Sapphire Reserve potentially even more valuable if you like to use your points in that manner. We don't traditionally use our Ultimate Reward points at a fixed value for travel since we like to transfer to partners like United and Hyatt, but at 1.5 cents each it isn't a bad deal, especially if you use to it purchase an airline ticket that would then earn miles on top of that.

Between the additional value added to our "old" Ultimate Reward points with the transfer, the $300 travel credit each calendar year, the 3x points on travel and dining, and of course the 100,000 sign-up bonus points, the $450 annual fee the Sapphire Reserve carries is well worth the expense in my opinion.

I'm still waiting to drop below 5/24 in December to hopefully get my own Sapphire Reserve, but we are making the most of his shiny new card for the time being! Anyone else already do the point switch over from the Sapphire Preferred to the Sapphire Reserve?