Setting the “Rewards You Give Up” Input on a Welcome Offer

A welcome offer asks you to put a set amount of spending on a new card. The Welcome Offer Value Calculator counts the points that spend earns on the new card, then subtracts the rewards that same spend would have earned somewhere else. The second figure is an input you set yourself, and it moves the result more than the annual fee does.

What the input means

The calculator takes a "baseline reward rate": the cash-equivalent share of the required spend that you would have earned anyway, written as a fraction (0.02 is 2%). It is a cash fraction, not points, because the card you would otherwise have used may earn a different currency.

The arithmetic, as written in the tool's code:

• first-year cost = annual fee + required spend × baseline reward rate
• cost per point = first-year cost × 100 ÷ total points
• net value = total points × cents per point ÷ 100 − first-year cost

Set the rate to 0 if the honest answer is that the money would have sat in a debit account earning nothing. Set it to what your usual card pays if the spend would have gone there.

A worked example

The calculator's own example offer: 60,000 bonus points after $4,000 of required spend, a $95 first-year fee, and 1 point per dollar on the spend. That is 60,000 + 4,000 × 1 = 64,000 points.

Only the baseline rate changes between rows. The 0% to 5% rates are illustrative; they are not any card's actual rate.

For the cost column: $95 + $4,000 × 0.05 = $295, and $295 × 100 ÷ 64,000 = 0.46¢ per point.

Against three published valuations

The points in this example are priced as Chase Ultimate Rewards. The three publishers the site tracks disagree about that currency, and the site never averages them. As published, The Points Guy values it at 2.05¢ (1 September 2026), CardRatings at 2.3¢ (16 September 2026) and Upgraded Points at 2.0¢ (1 September 2026).

Net value is 64,000 points × cents ÷ 100, minus the first-year cost:

Moving the baseline from 0% to 5% lowers the net value by $200 on every publisher's row. The $95 fee is the same in every row. The choice of publisher moves the net by up to $192 (CardRatings against Upgraded Points). The baseline rate is your input, and it is the one the page cannot fill in for you.

What this does not capture

• Whether you would have spent it anyway. The calculator treats the required spend as spending you were already going to do. If you would raise your spending to meet the requirement, the extra spending is a cost the tool does not model.
• Whether you redeem at these values. The net figures assume the points are worth what a publisher says. Points redeemed at lower value are worth less, and the three publishers do not agree on one number.
• Year two. This is a first-year figure. The fee recurs and the bonus does not; see The Second Year, When the Bonus Is Gone and the Fee Is Not.
• Approval and credit effects. The tool does not know whether an offer is available to you or what a new account does to your credit.

The same forgone-earnings idea applies to redemptions; see The Rewards You Give Up by Redeeming Points.

Informational only, not professional advice. Last reviewed: October 2026.

Sources

• The Points Guy — monthly valuations
• CardRatings — how much are points and miles worth
• Upgraded Points — travel points and miles valuations