Chase Upgrade BONUSES Coming + Bilt 100% Airline Bonus

In this video, I want to talk about three things. We apparently have an upgrade bonus in the works when you upgrade from Sapphire Preferred to Sapphire Reserve. Then on the Sapphire Reserve, all the new perks of the refresh card are now live for existing card holders and you can start activating them. And lastly, we have a transfer bonus of up to 100% when you transfer built points out to a certain airline. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges aka the credit shu. And on this channel, I cover US credit cards, personal finance, and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. But let's get into the video. All right, so first of all, upgrade offers are when a bank will offer you a certain amount of points or cash back for spending a set amount of money within a certain period of time, most often 3 months, when you upgrade to a higher card in a series of cards with a higher annual fee. kind of like a welcome bonus, but for upgrading to a higher level card, not for opening a brand new account. One of the most well-known upgrade offers and one that I have personally taken advantage of is the upgrade offer from the Hilton Honors Amx card with that has no annual fee to the Hilton Honors Surpass card that has a $150 annual fee, but it gives you greater benefits. I got 75,000 Hilton points for doing that upgrade. And in the past, AMX would target you for an upgrade after one year. I'm not sure if that's exactly how it works now, that one-year thing, but these upgrade offers are still around. Here's a screenshot of a similar offer, and it seems that this person was being offered a 100,000 points to upgrade. And that screenshot was on a website called Frugal Flyer. He has a whole article on Hilton Card Strategy, which is worth checking out. I'll paste it down there below in a pin comment. There are also AMX upgrade offers from the gold to the platinum. And these can range from not very good, like this one for 25,000 points to pretty good, okay, like this one for 125,000 points. But anyway, upgrade offers have been a thing with American Express for many years. But now it seems Chase is getting in on the act. Here is a comment from their verified account on the r/chase Sapphire subreddit where they say, "Upgrade offers are coming. Stay tuned." And this was actually a response to someone asking about upgrades for current Sapphire Preferred customers to upgrade to the Sapphire Reserve. So, this would definitely be a positive for people who want to upgrade to the Reserve. But for me, it does just signal that Chase has seen AMX's business model of pushing the high-end cards is working and they're just copying it. Chase executives are probably even listening into the MX earnings calls. But anyway, how much will these upgrade bonuses be? Well, I'm not sure. We don't have much info to go on, but they definitely won't be as much as the bonus for opening a new account. Okay? Well, at least I don't think they will be. So, if I had to guess, maybe I would say 50,000 points. Let me know what you think they will be in the comments below. As for when this starts, they also left that as a mystery. This person even asked when is soon. But, you know, if they're talking about it publicly, I think it means that they've already pretty much planned it out thoroughly. And my guess would be that we're going to see it before the end of 2025. People tend to spend a lot of money in the holiday season anyway, so it's a great time to offer an upgrade since people will be thinking about spending on Thanksgiving travel, dinner, Christmas presents, etc. So, they'll probably be more likely to upgrade since they have increased spend that would be needed to get an upgrade bonus. Just my thoughts on it. All right, now let's talk about Chase's new Sapphire Reserve benefits that have just gone live. So, back in the summer, Chase refreshed the Sapphire Reserve credit card. Remember all the ads with Claudia Schiffer? Well, on the date of that refresh, new card holders who applied would get all the new benefits. But current card holders, which means people who applied before June 23rd would have to wait until October 26th for most of those new benefits to kick in. Well, October 26th was yesterday, so you now have access to a load of new benefits, which includes the new points earning multipliers on spending, new credits. Let's go through all of them. So, this is what Chase says on the landing page. Your purchases will earn eight points per dollar on Chase Travel, replacing the 5x on flights and 10x on hotels and car rentals. Four points per dollar on flights and hotels purchased direct. Okay, that replaces the 3x. 3x points on dining worldwide. I think that was already a thing. 5x points total on Lyft, 10X points on Pelaton. Then we get into redeeming points earned. This is kind of a negative. The points that are earned after this date, they're now only redeemable for one point per dollar through Chase Travel uh on bookings that don't activate points boost, but there's a lot of points boost eligible stuff uh on the Chase Travel portal. So, you can get up to 2 cents per point in value with that. So, it might really not be that much of a negative. Okay, let's look at all the benefits. So, the $300 travel credit, that's the same as before. Now, we have a new one. $500 annually for prepaid hotel bookings. With the edit, you get IHD Platinum Elite Status up to $300 annually in statement credits when you dine at Sapphire Reserve exclusive tables. You get complimentary Apple TV, Apple Music value of $250 annually. Up to $300 in annual StubHub credits up to $300 in annual Door Dash promos for restaurant, grocery, retail, plus complimentary dash pass membership worth 120 annually. up to 120 in lift credits, up to 120 in Pelaton credits, up to 120 in statement credits every four years for Global Entry, TSA Pre-Check, or Nexus. Now, a few of those already existed, like obviously the travel credit, and the Global Entry, but I've just read you out the full list, the full suite of benefits that you're getting, which includes uh everything that just got activated yesterday. Your annual fee will be $750 on your next anniversary date and that is adjusted up from $550 which is what you had before and the fee for each authorized user is going to be $1.95. So probably the most interesting to people will be the hotel credit since it's $500 split into two sets of 250. So that's something you can get a lot of value out of. And all these things have now been added to the card for current card holders. But don't forget many of them you do need to activate in your online account. Again, copying AMX, but go in and check it out. All right, guys. Let's now talk about this 100% transfer bonus for Built. So, November 1st is coming up and that means rent day for Built members, both members of the Built credit card or just people who pay rent through the Built platform or use the Built dining program, etc. linked to current cards in their wallet that aren't the Built card. Basically, anyone who earns built points can take advantage of this and this is a transfer bonus to Etihad Airways. Now, this is a reasonably useful airline. You can use Etihad Miles to book American Airlines business class. You can also get access to greater award availability on Etihad's own flights if you book with their own miles. I'll paste an upgraded points article down below so you can see what's the best way to use Etihad Miles. Now, you should be able to view the transfer bonus in your built account. Now, I can see it here. You can see I'm going to be getting 25% because I'm just a blue member, but silver gets 50%, gold gets 75, and platinum gets 100%. And remember, this is for one day only, November 1st, which is what they call rent day. So, if you want to transfer and get this bonus, do it on that day. Of course, if you don't know how to use Etihad miles, then I'd hold off. Uh, it's best to only transfer when you know what you want to do and have found award availability already, unless you've used these particular miles before and you're very experienced with the airline and you feel that it's not a risk. Okay, last thing you want to do is get your points trapped in a certain airline with really no possibility of redeeming them and then you basically lose the points. And don't worry if you miss it this time cuz next month on rent day, it'll probably be a bonus to another airline. So, it might be something that you're able to take advantage of. And if you're interested in earning Built points, I'll put a link down below to join Built. You can use their system for their dining program where you just link any card in your wallet and you can get an extra three points per dollar on dining spending at any of the Built restaurants. You can also pay rent through Built for a small fee which can really help with signup bonuses on credit cards. And of course, they have their own credit card where you can pay rent with no fee. And you can sign up for that too after you become a member of their program. Link is below. If you do sign up though, don't forget to link your existing cards from your wallet so you can earn those extra points on top of what you already earn on your credit card on dining and also at Walgreens. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.