Related — Per Katie’s Travel Tricks, the CSR reserve bonus is now available to people who have CSP. https://katiestraveltricks.com/portfolio-items/chase-sapphire-reserve/
I have the CSP and am looking for my next SUB card. Thoughts on CSR?
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For personal cards - yes. Can’t hold more than 1 personal SW card at a time and can’t earn the bonus on a personal card if you have earned one on ANY of the personal cards in the last 24 months.
Does not apply to Business cards, so with those you CAN hold more than 1 at a time and earn a bonus on more than one regardless of time frame. (You still can’t earn the bonus on the SAME biz card until 24 months have passed.)
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You know, I should probably qualify my original statement:
There are definitely other card families where you can hold more than one and earn bonuses etc, so probably best to just always check online for cards you are thinking about.
As soon as I wrote my last response I thought about the Marriott card Matrix of Death™ one needs to reference to see all of the possibilities on what card you might be eligible for. So, my statement was too broad.
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Anyone with a Chase Ink Cash - Staples is selling the virtual $200 Visa cards online without a fee again! (Easy 5x points with the Cash card at office supply.)
If you don’t have an Ink Cash but are working on a sign up bonus for a Chase card, can be an easy way to accelerate your spending toward that bonus. Can use these Visas anywhere.
The same applies when they have no fee MasterCards - even can use those in Costco, which is Visa only. You just use the MC GC as a debit card. 
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Hi @JJT — question for you. DH has a SW business visa, I have a SW personal. My MIL and DS30 both want to get a SW card for the free luggage. What’s the best route for them to take for them to get there most points? DH or I referring them?
ETA: MIL is flying with us in Oct, DS is flying with his GF in April, Oct & Jan. It’d be cool if they could get a companion
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In general: Definitely use a referral link from your cards to them so you get those in your own account. Either of your referrals will allow them to choose any SW card when applying.
(If you wanted to account for those points as MIL’s and DS’, you could always book flights in their name with the referral points you earned, of course. Once they have the cards themselves, doesn’t matter who booked the flight, they get their card’s perks.)
If there’s no immediate rush, I’d definitely avoid the current personal card offers - which are smallish 30K points and a Companion Pass good for ~1 year.
I’m not sure if there’s an announced end date for this current offer, but my take: very meh overall. If they knew they were going to use the CP benefit a lot, maybe a little better, but not much, really. I’d rather have more points, or at least the full 2 year CP.
I think when the personal cards revert, at worst they’ll go back to 50K, and then a little into the year we might see some elevated bonuses again. (I got 100K last August for my Priority.)
This site is good to see past bonuses so you might watch for last year’s to possibly happen again:
Scroll down that page to see links for the other SW card pages.
If they are OK with going for business cards, those bonuses are the usual higher ones than the personal. But, the annual fees and spend to earn them are higher too.
Also, if choosing between the personal cards, I’m team Priority even though it has the highest annual fee. You get to pick any seat except Preferred at booking for everyone on your same flight record, plus upgrade to Preferred 48 hours out from flight if any are available.
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I saw this after I was replying - so of course, if DS can use that CP multiple times in a year the current offer might be more than the meh I gave it.
I supposed you could think of it this way: If each flight will cost 10K points, 3 RT flights with a free CP is equivalent to 60K SW points. Add that to the 30K that comes with the current offer and it is a respectable 90K “value”. (Plus the referral points.)
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Thanks for your analysis on this!
I’m thinking of getting this card because I don’t play any points/loyalty games otherwise (it’s too complicated for me as I’m a US citizen/permanent resident but currently live/work abroad with mainly foreign expenditures except for holidays in the US - especially Disney).
I have a very basic but important question: is it possible to pay off the monthly balance on Disney cards through automatic autopay/billpay from my US bank account? Not having that option would put me off getting it.
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I don’t know of any reason you couldn’t autopay.
Just want to point out: the Inspire card is also the only Disney card of the three that does NOT charge a 3% foreign transaction fee.
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Indeed, that definitely caught my eye!
Thanks for the quick response, then I’ll just double check with my bank. I’m paranoid since having had a bad experience with a European card that would not accept autopay (and refused to communicate about payment challenges by email…)
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Every US credit card I have ever had is always BEGGING for me to use autopay!
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Thanks @JJT for your reply. It was super helpful. My MIL is on the fence because of the $1k spend to get the points and the annual fee, so she might not do it. Especially if we’re paying cash for the flights instead of points on the Oct family trip, she’ll be on my reservation and will get the free bag anyway. DH and I go often enough that paying OOP for one flight per year isn’t a big deal. And save our points for our couple trips, or when we cover the cost of a flight for one of the kid’s boyfriend/girlfriends.
My DS though, would definitely benefit from the card. I think they already bought the flight for April, but knowing they’re coming with us at least once a year, and the pattern they are already creating traveling multiple other times a year, it’ll be worth it.
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This year I’ve noticed all my flights costing at least 50% more points than previous years. I’ve seen the preferred seats cost under $30 and the extra leg room seats around $50 (for my flights). If those are important to anyone, you may want to get the card that gives you those perks at booking- especially if you have a group that would like to sit together. Those perks can pay for themselves in 1 flight.
That’s really odd! The Disney cards are through Chase. All of my credit cards are on auto pay, including Chase.
Using points for flights is my preferred method. I don’t want to keep track of travel vouchers when things change (and with me they always seem to!)
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Disney Inspire Visa Card Analysis - and some Double Dipping
TL;DR:
- You can do fine just getting an Inspire card and holding it for 2 years.
- You can do a little better by double dipping and downgrading to a lower card in Year 2.
- You can do a LOT better by mixing and matching an Inspire with a Cap One Venture card.
Pre-spiration
I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again:
If you are playing the larger credit card rewards and points game, the Disney Visas are usually not worth using up a Chase 5/24 slot.
(5/24 is shorthand for Chase’s rule that they will not approve a new card application if you have opened 5 new cards from ANY bank in the last 24 months.)
Also, the annual fee Premier card is often not worth holding after the first year because you could do better downgrading to the free Disney Visa and using other cash back or rewards cards with higher returns - then using that cash back for Disney spend.
This new Inspire card is kind of the same - but the annual spend rebates do make it a more attractive card.
If you are a Disney person and just not into focusing on any other cards - then it is probably a no-brainer to hold one of these cards.
(Even though I gasp do play the rewards game, my DW and I still hold the no-fee cards, especially useful since they made getting the 10% off in Disney purchases so much easier.)
Inspire-ation
After all of that: If you know you are going to spend money at Disney directly for tickets, an AP, and/or resort/cruise charges, those annual $100 & $200 rebates makes the calculus for people a pretty nice deal - maybe even if you are a rewards gamer and you can live with giving up a 5/24 slot.
Assumptions
In each scenario shown below, let’s assume:
-
You earn the bonus for a new card and hit the specific Disney spend that would earn both of the annual bonuses. You would also spend enough at Disney to earn the Inspire credits every year you hold the card.
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You pay for your Disney+ all year to earn the $10 credit each month.
-
Thirdly, we shall thusly assume the baseline annual spend shown in the table below.
You will note that yonder table also handily also calculates how many Disney Rewards you would earn with each type of Disney Visa. (You may also note that the added Rewards earned on the Premier card are mostly eaten up by the $49 annual fee vs the no-fee card!)
Note, we are not including any referral bonus here, but that can easily be added if you already have a card in your household.
If you applied for a new Inspire card, earned and spent as capitalism requires, you would net $942 in credits and rewards. If you held the Inspire card in year 2, the multi-year net is $1,284.
| That’s pretty nice! But can we do better? Yes. Yes we can. |  |
Double Dipping
Nice is nice.
 |
But, there’s a hack one might want to think about: The double dip. |
Things to Know:
- The annual rebates are based on your card year, which starts on your card approval date.
- You absolutely want to keep a new credit card open for a full year once you are approved, because banking rules.
- You have 30 days after the 2nd year annual fee hits your card to cancel or product change it and Chase will refund that annual fee.
The Double Dip tactic is simple enough, assuming the timing works for your Disney spend:
- Apply for the Inspire card, earn the bonus and annual rebates this year.
- Next year right after the annual fee hits, spend on the cards and earn the rebates again.
(The $100 one is likely easiest to earn if buying park tickets or an annual pass.) - You’d have until the 30 days to wait for the annual rebates to show up. Once they do, cancel the card or downgrade to one of the lower or no fee cards.
Here’s what that might look like for both downgrade paths:
Now, those additional net numbers are not really ginormous, but every little streamline helps.
Additionally, if you in fact would NOT be meeting the Disney spend in year 2 to earn those Inspire rebates, you are going to want to want to downgrade to the free card after the annual fee hits or your net will take a big hit from the Inspire $149 fee without those $300 in rebates.
Alternate Universe Double Dip!
One last idea: what if we add a totally different card to this equation in year 2?
The Capital One Venture card earns 2x Cap One Miles on all spend. Period.
And, you can use the Cap One Travel Eraser to pay for any spend that appears as TRAVEL on the statement at 1 cent per Mile.
You know what codes as travel? Undercover Tourist and (reportedly) AttractionTickets .com
I believe the sign up bonus for a Venture right now is 75,000 Miles (and might also still have a $250 travel portal credit, but I am going to ignore that.) The card has a $95 annual fee.
If you met the Venture spend for that bonus, you would earn about 90K Miles worth, or $900 value at 1 cent per mile. (You could use those rewards at a better value, see discussion way back in thread about my plans.)
Here’s the alternate scenario:
- Year 1: Same as above: Apply for Inspire, earn the bonus & rebates, spend on the card as assumed.
- Year 2: As soon as annual fee hits, spend enough to earn those Disney rebates again, downgrade the Inspire within 30 days to the free Visa.
- Year 2 Part Deux: Apply for the Cap One Venture, earn that bonus and put your spend on that card for the year.
The $2,050 net from this scenario is almost $770 more than the “Inspire All the Time” plan.
Sure, you have to cash those Cap One Miles in for a statement credit - but if you’re going to Disney and buying tickets for multiple people, those Miles will be easy to use.
(Also, the darn Venture card earns 2x on EVERYTHING. Much simpler earn rate than the Disney cards.)
And, don’t forget: If you are not playing the bigger rewards game, you can close your Disney cards and do it all again 24 months after you earn your bonus.
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ETA: Fixed in previous post.
I just realized I used the estimated value of 1.45 cents per point for the Cap One miles above, which is accurate if you transfer those points to partners. But if using them as travel eraser 1 cpp, then, whoops those miles should be $900, not $1300. I’ll fix that tomorrow.
( I have the 1.45 value built into my rewards sheet and it carried over.)
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How do we feel about the Delta gold business? I can’t do a regular non-business gold as I’ve had they offer before. Looks like online it’s 90k points for $6k spend over 6mo (although I’m seeing others say they’ve had $4k and $5k min spend). They waive the annual fee for the first year, so I’d likely only use it for the points to fly this year (plus free checked bags) then cancel after a year. Good deal or no?
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Delta is definitely outside of my wheelhouse - when I listen to the Frequent Miler podcasts and they talk Delta cards and perks etc, I usually end up zoning out and just making a mental note to check their blog posts if and when I ever think about hitting Delta rewards! 
I know @ryan1 is a Delta flyer, so tagging him for any advice!
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Same here. Not a ton of flights where I want to go- at least not direct.
I signed up for the gold business card, which was 60,000 (or was it 70,000) points if I spend $4000 in 3 months. So to earn 90,000 points seems great if you reach the spend limit.
We fly almost exclusively Delta since DTW is a major Delta hub.
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I have the delta business gold as well — in early 2025, Southwest decided to double the required point redemptions and add a layover or two for most of my regular flights between New England and the Midwest. I opened the Delta card and the Chase United airlines card. I’m downgrading the United card to the no-annual fee version and will probably cancel the Delta card.
Both airlines are better than the dreaded American, which flies smaller regional planes that leave me feeling like I’ve been standing on a vibrator plate for hours, but neither wowed me with good redemptions or flight paths either.
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