Freedom 4th Quarter Plans
Last week a reader reached out to ask how I was racking up Ultimate Rewards after earning over $25,000 in miles & points profit this year. I responded that they come from our 3 Freedom cards (one O.G. Freedom and two of the Flex variety) and my old Ink Plus. That reminded me that I never did a post detailing my Freedom 4th quarter plans to rack up 22,500 Ultimate Rewards! Let’s take a look.
Chase Freedom October – December, 2022 Bonus Categories
Here are bonus categories for Chase Freedom Flex and the discontinued Chase Freedom card. Starting October 1 through December 31, 2022, Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex cardmembers can earn 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases on the following:
- PayPal: Cardmembers will automatically earn 5% cashback on eligible purchases made when checking out with PayPal at tens of millions of online businesses.
- Purchases made using PayPal at Walmart will only earn a total of 5% cashback.
- Walmart: Cardmembers will automatically earn 5% cashback when shopping for gifts, groceries and more when shopping at Walmart or on Walmart.com.
You can activate the bonus categories on this page.
My Plan Of Attack
There is for sure some meat on the bones here. Walmart is an easy target with the holidays upcoming and them offering up large grocery sections etc. I think that the vanilla Freedom we have will be completed mostly here. Whatever is leftover will probably go on the card whenever PayPal is an option at checkout online.
For the two Chase Freedom Flex cards I can do a little bit better though. My buddy Randy reminded me of the in app PayPal QR code and how handy that can be this quarter. PayPal allows you to spin up a QR code in their app and pay with any card you choose in store by scanning the code. It then bills the credit card, or checking account (barf), that you select. This will trigger the 5X PayPal earning this quarter.
But, it gets better. Take a look at this list and see some of the vendors that accept this method of payment. There is a pharmacy on the list that should net you an extra 2X per earning since it normally earns 3X. The breakdown is 1X on everything, 4X for the 4th quarter and 2X at pharmacies. That is a nice little stack there.
You can top that if you jumped on the awesome new Chase Freedom Flex welcome offer, or do so now. Giant Eagle is on the list, and I am sure there are other grocery stores that accept PayPal out there as well. This would net you 9X per dollar with the 1X everywhere, 4X for PayPal and 4X on grocery with the welcome offer.
Final Thoughts
There are a few different ways to attack this quarter and a few other ways to stack your earning for more than 5X. That makes this one of the better options we have seen for quarterly bonus earning, if you play it right.
What is everyone else’s Freedom 4th quarter plans? Let me know in the comments.
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I have the original Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Flex. I am renovating my kitchen and buying a lot of stuff at Home Depot. I charged $1,500 on each card to buy six $500 Home Depot gift cards at the drug store that accepts PayPal QR payments.
Freedom: 1x all + 4x PayPal quarterly bonus = 5x * $1,500 = 7,500 Ultimate Rewards
Freedom Flex: 1x all + 2x drug store + 4x PayPal quarterly bonus = 7x * $1,500 = 10,500 Ultimate Rewards
18,000 Ultimate Rewards for a $3,000 spend averages 6x/$1. I used my Chase Freedom Unlimited for additional gift cards at the usual 3x drug store rate.
FYI, Home Depot had no issue with my using as many gift cards and credit cards as I wanted. For one $20,000+ purchase, I used six gift cards and split the remaining balance among three new credit cards to earn sign up bonuses.
Nice work! Yeah they will take as many gift cards as you want to throw at them!
Are you referring to Paypal Key with the QR code thing? I thought that was dead.
No there is a QR code in the PayPal app so you can use it to pay in store. They scan your phone (like a mobile wallet). Only works at certain stores – most of the bigger ones are in the link in the article.
Well, I canceled my like, 30-year-old Paypal account after they reinstituted their new ESG penalty clause so it leaves Walmart. It’s one of the few grocery stores in my rural area so it’s not hard. I guess if I get in a corner with this I might buy some amazon gift cards to dump into my Amazon account which will eventually get used.