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The Chase Freedom Flex
The Chase Freedom Flex is an all out beast of card. Hands down, it’s one of the best on the market and offers category earn rates that beat out many cards that come with a big annual fee. If you don’t have a Chase Freedom Flex, get it. If you have a Chase Freedom, convert it.
Why?
I challenge you to find another card on the market that offers up to 3x to 5x rates earn rates on various categories, offers World Elite Mastercard benefits, Mobile phone insurance, and comes without an annual fee. It doesn’t exist.
A full breakdown of the benefits:
- No Annual Fee
- Earn $200 or 20k Ultimate Rewards after $500 spend in 3 months
- reader referral offer has an extra 5x category ( fluctuates between gas and grocery stores for 6 months, capped at $12000 )
- 5x on Bonus Quarterly Categories – each quarter members can activate a 5x category bonus on purchases up to $1500 per quarter on the selected categories
- 5x on Travel purchased through Chase Travel
- 3x on Dining including take out/eligible delivery services.
- 3x on Drugstore
- 1x unlimited cash back on all other purchases.
- 0% interest for 15 month on new purchases
In addition to all of those…you’ll get World Elite Mastercard benefits, including
- Mobile Phone Insurance – Up to $800 per claim and $1,000 per year on mobile phone protection
- theft and damage on users listed on the phone bill paid by the cardholder
- Lyft – $10 in credit for every five rides taken in a calendar month
- This gets applied to the next ride
- 1x per month
- ShopRunner – free membership
- 2 day shipping at over 100 stores
- Fandango – 2x VIP+ points on movie tickets bought on the Fandango app or Fandango.com
Pairing Chase Freedom Flex with Chase Sapphire Preferred ( or Sapphire Reserve, Ink Business Preferred) makes your points transferrable
The Chase Freedom Unlimited credit card is a cash back card when held on its own. This means you’ll earn your points or rewards in the form of Ultimate Rewards which can be used as cashback/statement credit or within Chase Travel at a penny a point. However, since its in the family of Ultimate Reward cards, if you hold a Premium Ultimate Reward card, you can transfer your points from the Chase Freedom Flex to one of the premium cards 1:1.
This would give you access to Chase’s great list of transfer partners so you could potentially get even more value.
Explaining the cashback to Ultimate Reward aspect futher.
The Chase Freedom Flex is technically a cashback card, meaning the Ultimate Rewards you earn can’t be transferred into the partner programs that we so often speak about. However…if you carry either a Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or Chase Ink Business Preferred you can move them into one of those accounts and then transfer.
Below is a picture of the new Singapore Suites – a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards (available when this card is paired a premium Chase credit card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred )
The Sign up Bonus: $200 bonus or 20k Ultimate Rewards
Oh yeah, there is a lucrative sign up bonus as well. You’ll get $200 in the form of 20k Ultimate Rewards after you spend $500 in 90 days after card opening.
There is a reader referral offer that fluctuates and offers an extra 5x bonus category. Go here to see that
0% interest for 15 months
The Chase Freedom Flex comes with an introductory 0% Interest rate on all purchases for the first 15 months. After that, you’ll need to check what the prevailing rate is on the card. I would be very aware of utilizing this benefit. It’s a great way to get a free loan, but at the same time credit card interest rates are egregious and we never ever recommend carrying a balance.
What are the sign up rules for the Chase Freedom Flex?
This is a new product so, even if you hold the Chase Freedom, which this card is replacing, you can apply for the Chase Freedom Flex.
5/24
- Almost all of Chase’s cards are a part of their 5/24 rule. This means that you can not sign up if you have opened more than 5 credit cards in the last 24 months.
How can the Chase Freedom Flex help you achieve you travel goals?
First off… our travel goal here at MM is to travel in the best possible way to anywhere our heart desires. I, pre pandemic, traveled around 125k to 150k miles a year and tried to review as many new hotels, and airline cabins as possible. It drives my desire to eek out every point out of every dollar I spend. That desire also aligns with readers who aren’t so bothered by the best cabin, hotel, and prefer to stretch your points out in low to mid range hotels. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, you want to earn as many points as possible and this card helps you do that quickly. Personally…I’ll be looking to use my points on flights like Lufthansa First Class
A quick example of how you can earn 60k points by spending $500 a month in your first year.
This is without a single purchase on dining, pharmacies, or travel. All of which would earn you 3x
- Spend $500 in first 90 days = 20k Ultimate Rewards
- 5x Rotating category bonuses = 30k Ultimate Rewards
- $1500 per quarter or $6k a year multiplied by 5x earn rate
Overall:
This is a no brainer card. There is no annual fee and you get an overwhelming amount of benefits and ability to earn a ton of points.
Personally, I’d recommend pairing this with either a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred. The would mean your annual fee would be under $100 and your earn rates would be fantastic with the ability to transfer to partners. If you’re looking oustide airlines, one of my favorite redemptions has been the Alila Uluwatu in Bali, booked with Hyatt points – transferred from Chase.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based.
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
80k offer in branch currently – I think this should be online soon
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
Super solid welcome offer.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash , Ink Business Unlimited you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
- 3x on dining
- including eligible delivery services for takeout
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards – Chase Travel Portal
- $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Ultimate Rewards/Chase Travel
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Primary rental car coverage is my favorite
There is currently an 80k offer after $4k spend in 3 months available in branch, and up to 90k after $6k spend in 6 months. I suspect some version of this will be online soon if you don’t want the hassle of going into a branch.
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 60k is a very, very good offer. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back. .
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
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