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MMMondayMemo: Activate your Chase Freedom 5x categories
Each Monday Miles has decided to drop a tip, hint, tutorial, trick that maybe you’ve missed or haven’t heard before. If you’re an expert in this field, some of these may be things you already know, but there are a lot of beginners out there who are just getting their feet wet. This week the Monkey Miles Monday Memo is making sure you earn those 5x category bonuses. It’s easy to forget they need to be activated! This week’s MMMondayMemo: Activate your Chase Freedom 5x categories.
What are Chase Freedom 5x categories?
Each quarter Chase designates certain spend categories that will earn your Chase Freedom will earn 5% back on every purchase that you make, up to $1500. If you carry another Chase card that earns Ultimate Rewards you can convert your cash back into ultimate rewards at a rate of $100 = 10,000 points. If you were to max out the quarterly bonus you could earn 5x $1500 or 7500 Ultimate Rewards. It’s a quick, easy, and straight forward way to earn lots of Ultimate Rewards on purchases you’d make anyways.
What does it mean to activate my 5x categories?
Well, here’s the thing. Chase is ultra generous in giving you 5x points on designated categories, but they require you to activate those categories to get your bonus. So you have to go here and enter your card info. Once you’ve done that you don’t need to do anything else to collect your bonus points.
What are categories for this quarter?
Great question. Chase has designated the following categories as eligible to earn 5x points. You can activate now and up until December 14th to earn 5x points on all of your purchases during the quarter. 
How can I see how much I’ve already spent on my 5x categories?
I wrote an entire article on how you can easily see how much you’ve spent. You can read it here if you’re interested in learning more. Chase limits the amount of bonus you can earn at $1500. This means the most you can earn off bonus categories with your Chase Freedom in a calendar year is 30,000 Ultimate Rewards. A great and easy way to earn a bucket load of points!
What are some great uses of Ultimate Rewards points?
Well Chase has some great transfer partners. I recently flew on Lufthansa First Class from Frankfurt to Los Angeles and it was an absolutely INCREDIBLE experience. I transferred a combination of Ultimate Rewards, Citi Thank You points, and American Express Membership Rewards into Singapore Airlines’ Krisflyer program. I took an over $10,000 flight for 80k Points and roughly $300. The power of points is incredible and provides ability to achieve so many aspirational experiences like this…it’s the reason I urge you all to pay close attention to your spend so that you are maximizing every dollar you spend. When you Activate your Chase 5x Category bonuses each quarter you’re doing a very easy thing to help you max your spend.
It’s easy to forget! So make sure you Activate your Chase Freedom 5x Category bonuses!
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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