Said goodbye to my CSP

I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa last year back when Chase was offering 50,000 points for spending $3,000 in three months (current offer is 40,000 points).

This is a wonderful card—not only is cool-looking thanks to the metal inside—it has benefits like no foreign transaction fees and the ability to transfer points directly to airline/hotel programs, including United, Southwest, British Airways, Hyatt, Priority Club and Marriott. The card gives double points on all travel and dining purchases and there’s a 7 percent annual points dividend on all new points earned on purchases throughout the year – even points that have been redeemed.

Why did I say goodbye? Well, the card’s $95 annual fee was coming due soon (it was waived the first year) and I just didn’t feel I used the card enough to justify paying that. In fact, I hadn’t made a purchase on it in six months.

I seriously considered paying the fee to keep it, however, back in November, I signed up for the Chase Ink Bold business credit card, which has a lot of overlapping benefits, including no foreign transaction fees and direct transfer to other reward programs. Now, you do need some sort of legitimate business to open this card (even small operations like freelance writing or selling on Amazon or eBay).

The Ink card also has some pretty awesome 5X categories, including at office supply stores and on cellular phone, landline, internet and cable TV (on the first $50,000 spent annually). Then there are 2X points per $1 on the first $50,000 spent annually at gas stations and for hotel accommodations when purchased directly with the hotel. This card is also $95 per year, but the first year is free.

Now I could have downgraded my card to the no fee regular Chase Sapphire card, however, I had read reports of some folks getting a bonus for both the Preferred Visa and MasterCard, so I wanted to give myself the opportunity to possibly open the MasterCard later this year. So I opted to cancel completely. I didn’t attempt a retention offer the way I did with Citibank, I simply requested to close my card and transfer the credit line to another one of my existing Chase cards.

My hope in transferring the credit line was that my credit score wouldn’t take a hit (sometimes cancelling a card can lower your credit score because it can increase your debt to credit ratio, even if you pay it off monthly). Also, I wanted some potential leverage in opening additional Chase cards. If given a low limit on a new card, Chase allows you to transfer some the limit from your existing cards.

So, while I’m sad to have said goodbye to my CSP, I hope we’ll meet again in the future.