As many of you know, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is my favorite card. The majority of my spend is dining and travel so earning 2x Ultimate Rewards in those categories equates to a "return" of about 4% on spend.
One of the perks of the card is an annual 7% dividend where all the points earned in the previous calendar year (including the signup bonus) earn an additional 7% UR bonus deposited in February. So if you earned 45,000 miles from the signup bonus (the current bonus) and spent an average of $1,000 a month on travel/dining and $1,000 a month on other stuff, you would have earned a total of 81,000 Ultimate Rewards points.
You would then receive a dividend of 5,670 Ultimate Rewards points. The value of those points more than offsets the $95 annual fee making this a really great card to keep forever.
Unfortunately, Chase has changed the card offering for new card members and eliminated the dividend. Lame. It sounds like current card members will be able to receive the dividend for the next two years (2014 and 2015) and then it will be eliminated as well. I am sure this will be communicated via email/letter but figured I'd write about it since this is my everyday card.
Chase has replaced the dividend with increased rental car coverage which is great for the 1-2x per year that I rent a car but I would definitely prefer the dividend to stay forever.
This is still a phenomenal card and will continue to stay in my wallet despite losing 7% of my points after 2015.
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