If I were starting from the very beginning with miles and points right now, I’d pick this card as my first card.

What’s this magical go-to card? The Chase Sapphire Preferred. It’s been around since before I started earning miles and points back in 2011, and at the time, I didn’t know enough about the “right” things to do to know that this was the absolute best card I could have gotten to get started.

Why is this card the best starter card?

The points it earns are transferable.

Transferable points are the absolute best way to get started in points travel because they give you options. And options lead to good redemptions, which lead to happy travel experiences, which leads you to quickly realize the value of points and miles. I think a lot of people typically start off with a miles-earning card from their favorite airline, which makes sense . . . if you don’t know what you’re doing. (Full disclosure: When I first started, my first card was an airline card because I also did not really know what I was doing! And I made that same mistake.) But here’s the problem with that strategy: When you have one specific kind of miles, you can redeem those miles only with that airline’s program. So if you go to book a trip and that airline’s program doesn’t offer the best flight options, you’re kind of stuck! Those airline-specific miles can’t be changed into any other kind of miles. That’s the point where a lot of people get discouraged and then let their free-travel dreams fizzle out and then just give up. But imagine this: you have points that can be magically turned into MULTIPLE kinds of airline miles. And that means you can compare which airline’s program has the best award seats at the best rates, and then once you pick the best option, you can transfer your points and turn them into that exact right type of miles for the trip you want to take, on the dates you want to take it. Now you have a bunch of different airline programs available to you, and you can pick the one that gives you the best value. So you save points and feel satisfied with your redemption.

They’re the best kind of points.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred earns Ultimate Rewards points, which are my favorite and most highly valued kind of points. And for beginners, they should be even more highly valued because they’re just plain easy to use on a lot of really popular transfer partners. Two of the most popular ways beginners sometimes use these points are by transferring them to Hyatt and Southwest for hotel stays and domestic (or Mexico or Caribbean) flights. These are probably the two least-complex redemption options, so most people feel really comfortable with them. But the Ultimate Rewards program also has a ton of great international transfer partners, like Air Canada Aeroplan, Singapore KrisFlyer, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, and more. So if you’re interested in booking international travel, you’re also covered. Ultimate Rewards points are probably the most versatile points available and have a really high value potential, so you have a lot of flexible options available to you. Easy!

This card opens up the Chase points ecosystem for you.

This specific card unlocks a whole bunch of extra potential from other cards. Chase offers three special cards that earn Ultimate Rewards points (which we know now are the best kind of points): the Sapphire Preferred (which is the card I’m talking about here), the Sapphire Reserve (which is a great card with a much higher annual fee, and probably more fitting for advanced points-and-miles travelers), and the Ink Business Preferred, which is a business card. If you have any one of these three cards, then whenever you get any of Chase’s other no-annual-fee cards that ostensibly only earn “cash-back points,” you gain the ability to move those “cash-back points” to your special card’s account and then they magically become Ultimate Rewards points, too. It’s like you’re supercharging your cash-back points by funneling them through your Sapphire Preferred card account.

Here’s a diagram that shows how that works, in case you need to see it visually:

Most people who are just starting to learn how to earn and use points and miles for almost-free travel are pretty reluctant to start off with a high-annual-fee card like the Sapphire Reserve, and I totally understand that. It’s a great card, but it sounds scary to a beginner to jump right into a $550 annual fee when you might not even be sure how to get that cost recouped yet. And I also know that a lot of beginners are leery of the idea of applying for a business card if they aren’t sure that their small side hustle even “counts” as a small business. So even though the Ink Preferred offers a 100,000-point bonus and has the same low $95 annual fee as the Sapphire Preferred, it’s harder to get people on board with that one. So that leaves the Sapphire Preferred as the typical best option for newbies.

It’s easy to earn more than 1 point per $ spent.

The Sapphire Preferred gives you 3 points per dollar you spend on dining, online grocery orders, and these streaming services:

It also earns 2 points per dollar on all travel (or 5 points per dollar on travel booked through the Chase travel portal, but that’s usually not the best option).

So any time you go out to eat, boom, you’re earning 3x on your bill. A $100 meal means you’ve just earned 300 Ultimate Rewards points.

It has a relatively low spending requirement to unlock the welcome bonus. The spending requirements for some cards can be incredibly high (e.g., $30,000 of spending in the first three months), but the Sapphire Preferred only requires $4,000 in spending in the first three months to unlock the 60,000-point welcome bonus. That’s doable if you have at least $1,334 of household spending per month. So you just put all your bills, grocery expenses, etc. on this card until you’ve reached the $4,000 spending requirement and you’ve unlocked 60,000 of the best points (plus the points you’ve earned from the actual spending itself).

So there you have it: my case for why the Sapphire Preferred is the best all-around card for someone who’s just getting started in points and miles. And even if I wasn’t sure what else I was going to do next, I’d get this card ASAP so I can get started earning points and learn the rest as I go. Chase has a rule that you can only get this card (or the other Sapphire card) again after 48 months have passed since you last received the welcome bonus on a Sapphire product, so the sooner you get started, the sooner you can get the clock going on the next time you can apply for this card and earn the bonus a second time.