IHG Rewards Card Finishes 5 Years
Recently my Chase IHG Rewards Select credit card passed another anniversary. I've owned this card now for five years- way longer than I originally expected I'd keep it. Let's check the score to see if it has been worth it.
For me to keep a card 5 years, when most cards I churn at 2 years- and some after just 12 months!- you'd expect it's special. You'd expect I use it regularly. Well, you'd be half right.
I charged zero on this card in the past 12 months; not a single purchase. That wouldn't seem to bode well for getting value from a card. Especially from a card that charges a $49 annual fee. What did I get in exchange for paying $49 for a card I never used?
The Power of Zero
The cool thing about this card is I don't even have to use it to get value from it! While I charged $0 over the course of the past 12 months I still earned almost 17,000 IHG Rewards points from it. Those came in the form of a 10% rebate on rewards points redeemed for free nights. I have a lot of IHG Rewards points, the result of... well, mostly credit card sign-up bonuses from cards such as this in years past. 😂 At a valuation of $0.007 apiece those points are worth $119.
The rebate on redemptions isn't the only valuable fringe benefit of this card. It provides a free night certificate every year. Lately I've been making those worth easily $150, sometimes more. The last cert from this card I redeemed in Waikiki, Hawaii.
Then there's the value of the platinum elite status the card grants me. As I stay in mostly limited-service IHG hotels like Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express that's not worth a heck of a lot. This past year I did catch a few upgrades I might have chosen to pay a bit extra for if they were offered at a fair price. Let's say those are conservatively worth $25.
So, the card's benefits are $119 + $150 + $25 = $294, and its costs are $49, yielding a net value of $245 this year. That's slightly better than last year's score with this card and is phenomenal for an off-year card I didn't even use.
They Don't Make 'em Like This Anymore
I mentioned above that I didn't expect to keep this card for 5 years. I had intended to churn it after 2 years. But then Chase stopped offering it. They replaced it with a card charging a higher fee that didn't offer better benefits. I instead of churning this one I supplemented it with another Chase IHG card. I canceled that card a year ago (after two good years with it) to pursue other opportunities. Meanwhile I've kept chugging along with this card because making $200+ per year without really even using it is pretty awesome. Now I'll go for another year and try to do it again.
For me to keep a card 5 years, when most cards I churn at 2 years- and some after just 12 months!- you'd expect it's special. You'd expect I use it regularly. Well, you'd be half right.
I charged zero on this card in the past 12 months; not a single purchase. That wouldn't seem to bode well for getting value from a card. Especially from a card that charges a $49 annual fee. What did I get in exchange for paying $49 for a card I never used?
The Power of Zero
The cool thing about this card is I don't even have to use it to get value from it! While I charged $0 over the course of the past 12 months I still earned almost 17,000 IHG Rewards points from it. Those came in the form of a 10% rebate on rewards points redeemed for free nights. I have a lot of IHG Rewards points, the result of... well, mostly credit card sign-up bonuses from cards such as this in years past. 😂 At a valuation of $0.007 apiece those points are worth $119.
The rebate on redemptions isn't the only valuable fringe benefit of this card. It provides a free night certificate every year. Lately I've been making those worth easily $150, sometimes more. The last cert from this card I redeemed in Waikiki, Hawaii.
Then there's the value of the platinum elite status the card grants me. As I stay in mostly limited-service IHG hotels like Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express that's not worth a heck of a lot. This past year I did catch a few upgrades I might have chosen to pay a bit extra for if they were offered at a fair price. Let's say those are conservatively worth $25.
So, the card's benefits are $119 + $150 + $25 = $294, and its costs are $49, yielding a net value of $245 this year. That's slightly better than last year's score with this card and is phenomenal for an off-year card I didn't even use.
They Don't Make 'em Like This Anymore
I mentioned above that I didn't expect to keep this card for 5 years. I had intended to churn it after 2 years. But then Chase stopped offering it. They replaced it with a card charging a higher fee that didn't offer better benefits. I instead of churning this one I supplemented it with another Chase IHG card. I canceled that card a year ago (after two good years with it) to pursue other opportunities. Meanwhile I've kept chugging along with this card because making $200+ per year without really even using it is pretty awesome. Now I'll go for another year and try to do it again.