How to Maximize Chase Freedom’s 4th Quarter
Chase has announced their 4th quarter category and it includes Walmart and a variety of department stores. You can find a list of department stores included here. You have until December 14, 2017 to activate the offer for this quarter.
Related: Chase Freedom Credit Card Review
Maximizing Department Stores
There is a large list of department stores that can easily be used for regular personal purchases (new clothes, gifts for the holidays etc). Having said that I want to focus on two of the department stores listed where I think you can really maximize your return.
Sears –
Sears comes with a few different opportunities that I wanted to highlight:
- Sears sells a decent amount of 3rd party gift cards which will essentially get you 5% back at locations that are not a part of the Freedom category.
- Sears also sells $200 Visa Gift Cards (VGC) in store at many locations. Even when including the fees associated with these cards it is essentially buying UR points a .6 cents a piece. You can use the VGC for regular spend or drain the cards in other ways.
- Be on the look out for 100% Shop Your Way Rewards (SYWR) items. Occasionally sears offers items that you will get 100% of your purchase back in SYWR points. Buy these items for personal use, as gifts, or for reselling. Then use the SYWR points for something that you actually need. You would get the 5% back on your first purchase but you are able to double dip on the portal. Go through the portal to make the 100% SYWR points purchase and then you can go through again when cashing in your points. Shop Your Way Rewards can be used at other stores too, not just Sears. They can also be used at Kmart, mygofer, Lands’End, and The Great Indoors. Be careful because these points do come with an expiration date.
- Make sure you go through a shopping portal for any online purchases!
Kohl’s –
Kohl’s also comes with a few different opportunities – especially if you use ninja tricks and extreme stacking to get 50% off! The opportunities I would like to highlight are:
- Kohl’s, like Sears, sells a decent amount of 3rd party gift cards which will extend the 5% category to other vendors.
- Use extreme stacking methods – use a shopping portal (currently 4 UR per $1 for the Freedom), Yes2You rewards, discount codes, and Kohl’s Cash to get a maximum discount on your purchase.
- Occasionally Kohl’s has a personal appliance sale where it is possible to get paid to buy their appliances when you use extreme stacking and the rebates offered. You can then sell them on Craigslist or Facebook Local to increase your margins.
- Make sure you go through a shopping portal for any online purchases!
Maximizing Walmart
The real crown jewel of this quarter is Walmart. That is because it has EVERYTHING – even super interesting people!!! You can easily use this category to get 5x UR points for your regular everyday shopping at Walmart. But, let’s look at some different ways to maximize the quarter at Walmart. Some ideas I wanted to highlight are as follows:
- Walmart gift card reselling is probably not an option with maximum resell rates around 93%. But, Walmart gift cards do work at Sam’s club so it is a way to get 5% back at Sam’s club or at a Sam’s Club gas stations. You could always stock up on Walmart gift cards for future use at Walmart or Sam’s Club.
- Reselling opportunities are particularly plentiful in Walmart, especially the toys section!
- There are occasional sales/discounts on 3rd party gift cards.
- Walmart sells $200 Vanilla Visa gift cards online. This is a good way to rack up some UR’s if you refuse to shop at Walmart stores.
- A reader in our MilestoMemories facebook group (Thank You Senitra Horbrook) alerted us to some $500 VGC that her location sells and you are able to purchase them with a credit card. She even said they work in the money center…wink wink! Senitra was also kind enough to provide some pictures of a recent purchase.
- Make sure you go through a shopping portal for any online purchases!
Conclusion
While not as easy as previous Freedom 4th quarters (wholesale clubs, amazon) it shouldn’t be too difficult to maximize the $1500 in spend and rack up 7500 UR. There are a lot of different ways to approach the quarter. I hope that I gave you some good ideas to get you on your way.
How do you plan to attack this quarter when October 1st hits? Will you be using it for personal purchases, reselling, gift cards….let us know in the comments!
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[…] you go to make the purchase be sure to go through a portal, like Ebates, use your Chase Freedom card for 5x UR this quarter, or go through Chase Pay for 10x UR if you haven’t maxed out that deal yet. […]
[…] Earn 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases from October 1 – December 31, 2017 at Walmart and Department Stores. See full details here. […]
Hey Mark you tried the greendot card and it didnt work for MC( money order right?)
I found a bunch a different ones, going to try next week and get 3 of them.
For chase 5%
if i already spend 1200 out of the 1500$, and i make an order of 500$ in walmart GC.
Will it count as 5%? or like 300 of it 5% and 200 of it 1%?
I tried the Walmart Visa one – pictured in the article and it didn’t work for me but has for some others (even at the grocery store money center) but others have said Green Dot works (I have not tried it yet).
It would be $300 at 5% and 200 at 1%.
Walmart visa is greendot or was yours not? that what it saids in the picture.
Ill try a few and see which ones work.
Theres a metacorp,metabank, american express , and the greendot walmart visa gift card.
Which ones do you think are likely of being able to Money Order.
Even if it doesnt work , i can just use them as debit.
THanks
Maybe it was – I thought there was another green dot offering there but I could be wrong it was a few weeks ago. I think the other gift cards are hard coded against buying them with a credit card AFAIK.
I would go with the Visa in the picture and give it a try. I was able to use it online when I couldn’t get it to work at the money center. Although if you only have $300 left to go I would just buy Walmart Gift Cards if you ever shop there at all or use them at Sam’s club etc.
The Walmart one did not work at my store in the MC but others have said it did for them. The Greendot cards have also been reported to work.
I wouldn’t worry about Chase and buying gift cards unless you are doing large amounts.
Just saw the $500 Visa gift card at my Walmart yesterday. I want to know if anyone has used it to purchase a money order at Walmart. It shouldn’t be a problem, but I want to confirm.
Also, will Chase be able to see this as a gift card purchase? I know they close cards for this type of activity.
[…] Chase Freedom. That is on top of the 5X that you receive this quarter at Macy’s thanks to the rotating quarterly bonus categories. So you can earn as much as 15X when you shop at Macy’s […]
[…] Walmart’s free grocery pick up. The offer was for $10 off of my first $50 purchase. With Chase Freedom’s 4th quarter including Walmart, offering 5x UR points, I decided now was the time. Let me tell you, I loved it, but it did come […]
My Walmart store got rid of the $500 gcs unfortunately. Sears is 100 miles away.
Going to focus on online spending then?
What a Ridiculous title!!! I doubt you can go any lower thats the 1 good thing about it. If anything Its NOT Raining UR Points. If it was unlimited youd be correct. The way BA ha sbeen going lately its about to be put on my dont bother with the site list!
Issac – Sorry you feel that way. I was trying to have a little fun on Friday. I know I have not been writing long enough for people to get my sarcastic sense of humor. I thought the rest of the title, plus the image selected, made it pretty obvious it was about the Freedom card’s 4th quarter. I would have hoped you learned something from the body of the article though. Thank you for the feedback!
Don’t think purchasing third party gift cards will working. Read the fine print in footnote #7. “Department Store gift card purchases outside of the specific Department Store are excluded and will not earn bonus rewards”.
Datapoints will be easy to come by after checking chase.com and the rewards points after purchases post. I don’t think they’ll have specifics on what you purchase for exclusion.
I think it means that you won’t earn bonus rewards if you purchased a sears gift card from other places.
That’s the right interpretation.
Nancy in the past buying gift cards in store have not been a problem. I think Alex hit it on the head. A purchase from one of the stores listed will trigger the bonus no matter what the item is imo.