The Personal Card That Offers 5 Points Per Dollar Has Doubled its Signup Bonus for a Limited Time
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No Annual Fee Chase Freedom®
- Has a limited-time 20,000 point signup bonus
- Gives you another 2500 points for an authorized user
- Can Give You an ‘Extra’ 24,000 Points Per Year, Each Year
This is one of the very best no fee cards.
The limited-time 20,000 point signup bonus after $500 spend within 3 months is an increase over the previous 10,000 point bonus. It’s marketeed as $200 cash back, but the points have better uses as I’ll explain below.
The card also offers 2,500 bonus points (“$25 cash back”) for adding a free authorized user to the account and making a purchase within the same time period.
Even though the Chase Freedom card is a no fee card, it has strong earning because it offers 5 points per dollar in a different set of categories each quarter.
You have to register anew each quarter for the bonus, and then you can earn the 5x offering on up to $1500 in spend for that quarter.
The 5 points categories for the first quarter of 2015, January through March, are: grocery stores, Starbucks, and movie theaters. Grocery stores are easy.
Since this represents an extra 4 points per dollar on top of the standard 1 you’d earn with most cards and in most categories of spending, you pick up an extra 24,000 points per year with Chase Freedom. Which is pretty good on a no annual fee card. (The math is 4 extra points per dollar x $1500 per quarter x 4 quarters, so 4 extra points on $6000 spend or 24,000 points.)
To Get the Most Value from the Freedom Cards, You Need Sapphire Preferred or Ink Plus Too
The Freedom Cards are cash back cards only — 1% for normal spend, 5% for the 5x bonuses spend each quarter — unless you have one of the premium Ultimate Rewards cards.
If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred Card (or Ink Plus business card) you can move your points earned with Freedom over to an account with one of these cards.
That makes all of the points transferable to miles with Ultimate Rewards partners.
- Airlines: United, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Korean Airlines, Southwest, Singapore
- Hotels: Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, IHG Rewards
- Ground: Amtrak
That’s because you can transfer the points from your Freedom card to one of the other card accounts that allows transfers to miles and points… so you wind up with transferable points instead of cash back.
Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of any advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either.
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