My Game Plan For Chase Freedom’s 4th Quarter 5% Categories
The Chase Freedom card is one of the mainstays in my wallet. It is my wife’s oldest card and it is here to stay. I have called it the one card everyone should get in the past. Lucky at OMaaT leaked the Chase Freedom’s 4th quarter categories. I wanted to review the new categories with you. And I wanted to share my game plan for Chase Freedom’s 4th quarter 5% categories. I will give you my handbook on how I plan to max it out!
Chase Freedom’s 4th Quarter 5% Categories
The categories for the upcoming quarter are as follows:
- Department Stores
- PayPal
- Chase Pay
Registration will open tomorrow, Sunday September 15th. You will earn 5% back (or 5X Ultimate Rewards points) for your first $1500 in purchases from October 1 – December 31.
In order to turn these points from straight cash back into actual Ultimate Rewards points you need to have one of the following Chase premium cards:
- Ink Preferred
- Sapphire Preferred
- Sapphire Reserve
- Ink Plus (no longer available)
If you have one of these cards you can combine the points from your Chase Freedom card with one of these cards. That unlocks the points and makes them transferable to travel partners or allows you to use them in the Chase Travel Portal for 25%-50% more value.
My Game Plan for the 4th Quarter
Department Stores
The least enticing option is department stores. If you are shopping at one then by all means use the card but I don’t plan on spending much money there. Maybe I will grab a few gifts for the holiday but it won’t amount to much.
Chase Pay
If you have listened to our Podcast then you know I do not like using mobile wallets much. So that would make you think Chase Pay is not an option for me but luckily Chase Pay is also online. Some websites, like Walmart, offer Chase Pay at check out. It is always hard to get Walmart at a discount so I will be sure to use this often. I will purchase a lot of the kids toys from there for the holidays and potential reselling options. Walmart will often have gift cards on sale online too. That could lead to free points for me with my gift card reselling business or at least some discounted Uber rides.
Here is a list of where Chase Pay is accepted.
PayPal
This is where I hope to spend a bulk of my money. Now some people will simply PayPal a friend and eat the 3% fee. Purchasing Ultimate Rewards at $0.006 a piece isn’t a terrible play but I wouldn’t recommend this route. It is a lot more costly than it needs to be and there are risks of a PayPal shutdown.
I used to love racking up 5X earning with my Ink Plus purchasing gift cards from PayPal Digital Gifts. It died years ago but whenever PayPal is added as a 5% option it feels like old times. PPDG and eBay don’t have as many gift card sales as they used to but they still come around from time to time. And they usually have more than normal in the 4th quarter. So I plan on doing a bulk of my 5X earning in this space.
Remember that PayPal is also an option to checkout at many online retailers, like Walmart. When you go to pay look for it to be an option to pay with. You should be able to max it out pretty easily.
Final Thoughts
This is not quite as good as in years past. I would have loved to see some warehouse stores added but PayPal and Chase Pay make it pretty easy to max out. I plan on using most of my bandwidth on discounted gift cards that I can resell. Walmart and eBay look to be my two main sources for those things. Let’s hope for some nice 4th quarter sales!
That is my game plan for Chase Freedom’s 4th quarter 5% categories, what is yours? Share it in the comments below.
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That is a great plan
I purchase a lot of Shell gasoline for my business. My Shell app allows me to use Chase Pay, so I’m hoping to be able continue earning 5x.
This is sort of unrelated, but has anyone noticed a complete lack of award space lately? I’ve been checking so many different portals, with so many different currencies…I feel like the award space I do find is dynamically priced and of course out of the question. Just wondering if this is something anyone else has run across lately. Makes me think cash back or simply booking travel via UR Sapp Reserve portal might be the way to go in the future. All those 60K miles one-way biz seats to Europe and S America have evaporated.
I think portal booking domestically makes a lot of sense a lot of the time and makes things easier overall. Internationally (in biz at least) points still make a lot of sense.
Same as last year– buy Walmart gift cards on-line with Chase Pay.
I will do some of that as well if I don’t max it out at the end.
Are there any options to pick up VGCs with Chase Pay?
If you have Samsung pay then you can grab some Vanilla cards at Costco
Chase Pay w/ Samsung Pay at Costco. Finally a quarter for warehouses!
I used this last year but forgot about this option. Using Chase pay with Samsung Pay opens this up to almost everywhere.
That is a great plan for sure
Why don’t you like using mobile wallets. It is so convenient?
Old fashioned I guess – I usually have the card in my wallet anyway