The Year-End Credit Card Scramble | Moxie and Miles

These are not my cozy fall vibes

We're in the middle of Q4. There's a new chill in the air, the sun sets before we leave work, and thoughts turn to gatherings with family, roasted root vegetables, cherished traditions... and maximizing your credit card credits before they expire?

Most premium cards reset on January 1st, which means we're in the annual "use it or lose it" scramble. If you didn't use your hotel credit, restaurant credit, or event credit by December 31st, it's gone. Sure, a fresh credit appears on January 1st, but that's not a bonus—it's just the same benefit you were promised when you paid this year's annual fee.

Here's the thing nobody says out loud: using these credits often requires more planning than an actual vacation.

The Real Cost of "Free" Money

When you pay a $795-$895 annual fee, you're essentially prepaying for a coupon book and hoping you remember to use all the coupons. Your $795 is sitting with Chase instead of in your savings account earning interest, and they're betting you won't extract full value.

Some points bloggers claim the banks are "paying us" to hold these cards. (Sure, if you count a scavenger hunt through hotel booking portals as getting paid.)

The Chase Sapphire Reserve Staycation Scramble

Let's say you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve and no travel plans before New Year's. Here's how you could theoretically extract value before the end of the calendar year:

The Edit Hotel Stay ($250 credit)
Book a 2-night stay at an Edit Hotel to activate your $250 credit. Many of these hotels are expensive, but if you're browsing medium-sized cities, you can find options. Use the $250 credit, pay any remaining balance with Chase UR points for a small redemption boost, and you'll also get free breakfast for two, a $100 hotel credit, early check-in, and late check-out.

That $100 hotel credit could cover dinner one night.

Chase Exclusive Tables Restaurant ($100 credit for Exclusive Tables through December 31st)
The other night? If you're lucky, there's a Chase Exclusive Tables restaurant near your hotel where you can use your $100 credit for a meal. Many of these restaurants are higher end—hopefully delicious—so you'll likely spend more than $100 for a meal for two.

And there aren't that many of these restaurants. Chase really, really needs to add more restaurants for this "benefit" to be meaningful.

StubHub ($150 credit through December 31st)
Does your staycation city also have performances, theater, or sporting events you're interested in? You might use the StubHub credit for tickets. Again, odds are good that two tickets will cost $200-300, which means you're still spending real money to "use" your credit. It should be for an event you'd want to attend anyway at full price.

And yes, this requires the stars to align: a city with all three options, a weekend you're free, and venues you actually want to visit.

The Time and Brain Space Tax

So yeah, that sounds like a sweet little staycation. And it's a lot of planning, researching, and finagling to get there.If researching possible ways to use your credits is fun to you (nerdy confession: it is fun for me), then it's a decent use of your time. If it sounds like a lot of time and frustration, then this benefit needs to be reconsidered as, well, a benefit.

The Crunch Is Real

For folks who held the CSR prior to June 25, 2025, these credits only became available on October 26th. This means there's barely two months to "get value" before December 31st.

When calculating if a premium card is worth the fee—and each year we get to reconsider—it's important to consider if the benefits are something you would use anyway. You also should consider the value of your time and your brain space.

Are you spending hours planning a staycation you wouldn't otherwise take, just to justify an annual fee? Are you adding "optimize Edit hotel search" to your mental load during the busiest season of the year? That's not a benefit. That's homework.

Permission Slip

If you're reading this in late December and realize you didn't use these credits, you didn't fail. The system is designed to be just inconvenient enough that many people won't bother. That's the business model.

Fall should be about pumpkin spice and cozy sweaters, not credit card calculus.

Coming Next Week: I'm researching 3 midsize cities where you can actually pull off the full CSR staycation trifecta (Edit hotel + Chase Dining + StubHub event) in one weekend. Let's see if this is genuinely useful or if I just prove my own point about how much work this actually is.