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Stack bonuses on Chase Freedom for a higher rate of earn
Currently, Chase Freedom is offering 5x on purchases at Department stores for the 4th quarter of 2019. But, why earn 5% back, or 5x, when you can do so.much.better. with “stacking” this offer via Chase’s shopping portal. Let me explain.
First. Chase is offering 5x for these categories:
What does Chase classify as department store?
Aliexpress
Beall’s of Florida
Belk
Bergdorf Goodman
Bergners
Bloomingdales
Boscov’s Department Store
Boston Store
Dillards
Goody’s
Gordmans
JC Penney
Kohls
Lord & Taylor
Macys
Neiman Marcus
Nordstrom & Nordstrom Rack
Peebles Dept Store
Saks Fifth Ave & Off Fifth
Sears
Stage Stores
Stein Mart
The Bon Ton
Von Maur
Younkers
How to earn up to 17x miles? Shopping portals. Up to 21% with TopCashBack
Cashbackmonitor is an amazing place to compare offers.
JC Penney and Bloomingdale’s are both offering 12x with AA or United. 10x with Alaska. That means if you spent the entire $1500 on say some electronics or a new mattress at JCP, you’d walk away with 7500 Ultimate Rewards and 15k-18k Air miles. Incredible.
Saks and Neiman’s are offering 6x with AA and BA, 12% topcashback
Chase has their own portal
If you aren’t familiar with this feature of Chase, you’re missing out. You can shop via your Chase portal to earn mega bonus points at a wide variety of retailers. How? Simply click on the retailer you’re looking to shop with, and voila, you’ll be taken to their site and, as long as the Chase portal is live, you’ll earn bonus points on your purchase. It’s located under “earn bonus points” and then I always sort by earn rate.
If you have multiple Chase cards you want to make sure you’ve populated the Freedom one as well.
Currently these department stores are offering 6% cash back when you use the Chase portal to purchase
I am pretty certain this stack works. Chase explicitly states that you can’t earn 5x under two separate 5x categories like a restaurant inside a gas station, but nothing prohibiting stacking Freedom 5x with Chase portal.
How we use Chase Freedom to get closer to lie-flat seats and 5 star suites.
If you’re like me and carry a Chase Premium credit card like the Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or Ink Business Preferred then you can combine your Freedom points into those accounts in order to transfer them into valuable partners. This is by far the most advantageous usage of Ultimate Rewards, but also increases the value when redeemed in the Chase Travel center. For instance, if you move them into a Chase Sapphire Reserve account, your points will instantly be redeemable for 1.5cents per point, a 50% increase over redeeming them in the Freedom Chase Travel Center.
Don’t have a Chase premium card? You should definitely check out our thoughts and the latest offers on:
You can help us out by using our Chase Refer a Friend bonus
We get points when you sign up which aids us in taking more and more trips and providing helpful reviews.
- $150/15k Welcome Bonus
- No annual Fee, 5x rotating quarterly bonus
Overall:
Chase Freedom offering 5x at department stores at a time when a lot of people will be doing Christmas shopping is amazing, especially when you can stack it up with a great portal. Keep earning!
*feature image is British Airways First Class 747 – a great use of Ultimate Rewards is upgrading on BA
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 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℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. 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.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
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.
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