Yep I'm in rebuilding mode, so Sapphire is still on the very far horizon.
Plus I burned Chase in a ridiculous fashion -- I had a CITI backed store card, it was about to go 30D late during my awesome divorce (lol) and just before it went late, it was sold to Chase. $8000 balance I think. Never made a payment again so it was charged off by Chase, who I've banked with since 92. Chase never gave me any offers and whenever I went to my bank the CSR's screen showed in big red bold font "ACCOUNT CHARGED OFF". I never expected them to let me back in, but the FU preapproval showed up on CCJ and when I apped instant approval for a toy card limit.
I'm not even sure if CSR or CSP will be all that helpful yet in terms of award redemption, I still have to run the analysis. I generally fly cattle class on Spirit or Frontier because neither of those has ever annoyed or bothered me, and most of my travel is "oddball" travel through a TA. For example, I've spent $20,000 in a year renting 4-cabin catamarans and sailing with friends. It's not "typical" travel, although it does (usually) code as travel. Not sure what URs or MRs would offer me since I rarely fly to Europe anymore.
Cash back APPEARS to be a better value for me (especially something like Alliant's 3% card). My airfare is rarely over $50 per leg, no "free mileage ticket" is going to beat that. I don't stay at hotels very often (fancy AirBNBs more than a humdrum hotel). I do take a lot of big ship cruises a year (maybe 60-70 days this year) but those aren't expensive. Renting sailboats or going on safari in Africa aren't items that you find discounted very often (or ever) and there are no rewards programs for either, haha. I don't dine out very often, at home or on vacation.
So at the moment, I figure a good rotation of cashback cards makes sense -- so I guess CSR (3% on travel?) or Citi ThankYou Premier/Prestige (3% on travel?) makes the most sense if I can get my "travel" spend all coded properly for that return.
At some point I'm going to share my sanitized spending spreadsheet to see if anyone can eyeball what I'm missing in terms of rewards. 3% of $70,000 = $2100 a year and right now with Disco I'm getting 1%+1% = $1400 a year. $700 a year left on the table makes me gnash my teeth, $2 a day.
