Summer 2025 Pay Yourself Back
We’re down to crunch time with the second quarter Pay Yourself Back categories, still my primary method for redeeming Chase Ultimate Rewards points. Since the benefit first appeared in 2020, I’ve consistently found at least one useful method for cashing out these points via PYB. And this quarter, I’ve found multiple categories worth redemptions. Today, I’m getting into those Summer 2025 Pay Yourself Back choices. But I’ll start with a quick reset on why I focus on this type of redemption.
Why Pay Yourself Back?
Our interest in cashing out Ultimate Rewards actually predates Pay Yourself Back. We redeemed at a one cent per point rate for years prior for multiple reasons. Redeeming via Pay Yourself Back for the last five years has been a no-brainer – we’ve picked up 1.5 or 1.25 cents per point via the Chase Sapphire Reserve for something that previously made sense at 1 cpp. We continue to enjoy redeeming this way to pursue our goals, travel-related and otherwise.
Maximizing Summer 2025 Pay Yourself Back
Once again, my wife and I have zeroed out our Ultimate Rewards balances this quarter. While we’ve always found useful categories, we take a “bird in the hand” approach and use all of our Chase points without knowing the exact future of Pay Yourself Back options. This is where we’ve been busy redeeming lately.
Groceries
We’ve primarily used Pay Yourself Back to zero out our grocery bills for the past three months. Of course, some naturally consider bonus spending categories to determine which card to use for given purchases, and my wife and I generally do, as well. That said, we’re okay with “only” earning 1x while erasing certain staple purchases via Pay Yourself Back. Everyone’s different, but the relatively-negligible amount of additional rewards via bonus categories isn’t worth giving up on the solid PYB redemption opportunity.
In addition to wiping out our current grocery costs, we’ve decided to time-shift our grocery spend. Effectively, we’re paying our future grocery bills ahead, then promptly erasing these transactions with PYB. We’re doing so by purchasing Kroger gift cards, where we normally shop for our groceries. Also, we’re time-shifting our Kroger fuel points earning to other timeframes, since fuel points aren’t earned on Kroger gift card purchases (only when they’re actually used).
Unfortunately, gone are the days of time-shifting most any third party gift card spend in my region, since I can no longer use Kroger gift cards to buy those other ones. But we can easily realize solid redemptions, albeit more deliberately, by steadily using our Kroger gift cards on our normal grocery spending.
Fuel
Beyond grocery stores, we leveraged this quarter’s gas stations PYB category. Like grocery stores, Chase Sapphire Reserve earns a subpar 1x at gas stations, but we leveraged Chase Offers to compensate for that thin earning this period. For instance, Chase has repeatedly targeted us for Kroger Fuel (3% off) and Marathon (6% off) Chase Offers. Knowing we would have no problem using these points on groceries, I didn’t invest too many PYB redemptions here, though. Rather, I only spent at gas stations on my Reserve when I could stack with a Chase Offer.
Upcoming Travel, and a Few Gifts!
After an extended break, my family and I have decided to return to Disney World in the near future. I picked up a few Disney gift cards during one of Kroger’s recent 4x fuel points promos, but not too many. After all, this deal would degrade if I acquired more fuel points than we’d reasonably consume.
We also took this quarter’s opportunity to buy gift cards for our little ones’ teachers and sports coaches and subsequently erased those charges.
Summer 2025 Pay Yourself Back – Conclusion
Again, we zero out our Ultimate Rewards balances every quarter without flinching. But we also know much is changing with the Sapphire Reserve. Could we be tempted into different redemptions in the future? Possibly! My multiple Chase Ink Business Cash card accounts come with varied anniversary dates throughout the year, meaning our 5x earning resets are staggered. Plus, our multiple Freedoms bring more 5x earning opportunities each quarter. The Ultimate Rewards bucket is dry now but will be full again soon enough.
Have you redeemed Chase Ultimate Rewards points via Summer 2025 Pay Yourself Back categories? How?
