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3 months of status, plus a fee free challenge
If you’re unfamiliar with FoundersCard it’s a membership program whereby members get access to a bevy of benefits. Among them…Caesars Diamond status, 10% off British Airways Roundtrips, Cathay Pacific Silver Status, 3 months of JetSmarter, the list goes on and on. I inquired last year about joining. The biggest reason I was interested, at the time, was using Caesars Diamond status stay 4 nights at the Atlantis in the Bahamas and pay only the resort fee. You can read Out and Out’s review of that perk here. Ultimately I’ve held off, and have debated the decision ever since. Typically FoundersCard charges $495 + $95 initiation fee. You can often score much better deals than this: I’ve been offered 2 years with a waived initiation and a pro-rated $295 a year if I’d pay for 2 years in advance. A very solid deal IMO. What perked my interest again was a recent email I received introducing another benefit: AA Platinum Challenge.
Typically AA Platinum Challenges cost $200 + $300 if you want the status during the challenge. FoundersCard is offering it fee free.
Enroll by March 2nd and get 3 months of free Platinum Status with the opportunity to extend.
If you want to extend. You’ll need to earn 12,500 EQM and $2k EQD.
- Eligible Airlines
- AA
- British Airlines
- Finn Air
- Iberia
- Japan Airlines
Full Terms and Conditions.
- One key component of this offer is you must be enrolled in business extra. I’ve written about how lucrative business extra is in the past, and if you’re interested I’d read this post.
This increases the appeal of FoundersCard significantly. I’ll have to make a decision soon 🙂
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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