 Chase Ultimate Rewards are one of the valuable flexible currency for transferring to travel partners (various airlines and hotels) as well as for redeeming at 1.25x or 1.5x for travel or for now to "pay yourself back" on variety of purchases such as Grocery and Dining. At the same time it is hard to acquire Chase cards due to well know "5/24 rule" where in short Chase would not issue you a card if you have 5 or more opened account in the last 24 months.
One great work-around if you have family and friends to support you is the Chase credit card referral offers. Currently you can earn 20,000 Ultimate Rewards Points for each referral (Up to 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points per calendar year) if you posses the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink credit card. The icing on the cake is the person who you refer will earn an all-time high "100,000 Ultimate Rewards Points" for Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Ink Business Preferred (After meeting minimum spend). Also other No-annual fee Chase Ink card's earn 75,000 Ultimate Rewards Points as sign up bonus after minimum spend meet which are as good as it gets. So overall its a win-win situation for both referrer and referee!! To check if you are eligible to refer others use below link and get rolling:
If you are eligible you could potentially earn 20,000 Ultimate Rewards Points per referral which are valued at least $250 based on the "pay yourself back" feature but might provide much higher value for specific travel redemptions. So go ahead and get referring!! Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.
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 Chase Sapphire Credit Card is the baseline credit card you will need to transfer your Chase Flexible points a.k.a "Chase Ultimate Rewards Points" to various airlines and hotels partners of Chase Ultimate Rewards program (Apart from there Ink Preferred card). The good news is Chase has increased the sign up offer for their "Chase Sapphire Preferred Card" which has $95 annual fee to 80,000 points after $4,000 spend in 3 months after sign up. In addition it is throwing in additional $50 for grocery purchase reimbursement in your first year of the card. The best part of the offer is Chase has "Chase Pay Yourself back" feature where with Sapphire Preferred card you can redeem the points in select rotating category at 1:1.25 ratio. So, 80,000 points can technically be redeemed for $1,000 in those select categories as well if you are not looking to transfer to any travel partners (Airlines or Hotels). Currently you can redeem those points in "Groceries" as an eligible category till Sept 30th, 2021 which makes this card more compelling.  Chase 80,000 Ultimate Rewards Points offer on Sapphire Preferred Card! One of the important things to note is that you need to be careful about Chase 5/24 rule. If you have opened 5 or more cards in last 24 months then Chase would not approve you for this card. But, if are under 5 new opened credit cards (excluding certain business cards) then you may be eligible for this offer. Also since Chase Sapphire Preferred is counted as premium card for Chase it would increase the odds of approval if you have good credit score as well as existing banking relationship with Chase.
Also there are additional benefits such as free 12 months of Doordash subscription membership (DashPass) and $60 back on eligible Peloton membership. Overall its a great value for the card in year 1 for sure. Another great thing is if you have Chase Freedom or other Ultimate Rewards earning card you can move points from those card to Sapphire Preferred and get a value of ~1.25 times or transfer to partner airlines and hotels. Since there is no end date currently for this offer, get it while its still there as it does not get better than this!! Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.  Chase had added slew of limited time benefits to its premium Chase Sapphire Reserve card starting July 1st, 2020. One of the benefit was with Instacart where you would get reimbursed $50 towards the Annual $99 Instacart subscription or $9.99 per month subscription cost with maximum reimbursement cap at $50. The good news is that Chase is also providing ability to earn 5x Ultimate Rewards points when using Reserve card for spend of up to $3,000 till Sept 30th, 2020. Also the purchases made at Instacart count in groceries category, which allows you to cash out your Ultimate Rewards points for those purchase at a rate of 1.5 cent/point.
Instacart already has partnership with Costco and grocers such as Safeway & Kroger. So, most of your grocery would easily be covered if you shop at those stores (although at a slight mark up on price!). But the good news is that you get unlimited free delivery with the Chase Sapphire Reserve partnership with Instacart (for at-least 5 months on monthly plan!!) along with earning 5x Ultimate points per dollar spent (Up to $3,000 spend till 30th Sept 2020) and ability to pay for those purchases by redeeming your Ultimate Reward points at a rate of 1.5x. So, do register for this promotion if your favorite store is on Instacart platform and maximize your earning and spend on the Chase Sapphire Reserve card!. You can find more details on this deal here. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website. Chase Sapphire "Pay Yourself Back" for Easy Cash-out at 1.25c (Preferred) or 1.5c (Reserve)!6/1/2020  Chase Sapphire cards has added an amazing feature called "Pay Yourself Back" effective 05/31/2020 where you can cash out ultimate reward points at value of 1.25 cent/point (Preferred card) or 1.5 cent/point (Reserve card) for your purchases made with the card in certain categories. For starters below categories are valid till 09/30/2020:
As per the media release the statement credit will post within 3 days after redeeming ultimate rewards for the said charges. You can access the special pay yourself back page here after logging in your chase account and redeeming ultimate reward points for either 1.25 cent/point or 1.5 cent/point value for the said categories depending on which sapphire card you have purchases on. Chase Sapphire Preferred comes with $95 annual fees whereas Chase Sapphire Reserve has annual fees of $550 (although Chase has lowered annual fees to $450 for any renewals from now till December 2020 instead of the regular fees of $550). Also Chase Sapphire Reserve comes with $300 annual travel credit which can now be redeemed against Grocery store purchase or Gas station purchase till Dec 31st, 2020. So, if you have huge stash of Ultimate Reward Points then having one of the Sapphire credit cards would allow you to redeem the points at a great value. You could also upgrade an existing freedom card to Sapphire card. Do remember though that if you go after Sapphire Reserve card you would have to probably pay regular fees of $550 instead of reduce fees of $450 or you could upgrade to Sapphire Preferred for $95 annual fees. So, do your math if it's worth for you to upgrade and to which card!! Hat tip (Doctor Of Credit) Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website. Most of the airlines in US have a co-branded card between themselves and the merchant bank. But there are few credit cards which earn points that can be converted to miles of number of airlines. These cards have advantage of filling out the void of few thousand miles required in specific airline program as well as help in accumulating enough points which can be converted to miles for a reward travel. Lets explore these cards further:
1. American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card: This is one of the go-to card for earning points which can be converted to lot of partner programs, most of them at 1:1 ratio. This card has following features:
The best part of this card is the redemption options available. You can redeem your points into miles for following airlines at the time of this writing:
There are other airlines as partners but for them you can redeem the points only for specific tickets. You can also redeem for various hotel partners but that's not the focus of this article. The complete partner list can be found by going here and selecting "Use Points -> Airlines" 2. Chase Sapphire Preferred: This is one of the favorite personal credit card for lot of people simply because of the ability to earn bonus points on purchases through its "Ultimate Rewards Mall". This card has lot fewer airline partners compared to American Express Premier Rewards card and it transfers the points at 1:1 ratio as well. United and Korean airlines offer great redemption value. This card also has some great features as listed below:
The airline partners are listed below:
3. Starwood Preferred Guest: The value of this credit card lies in points+cash redemption in its brand hotels as well as 1:1.25 points to miles transfer ratio to most of its partner airlines. So for every transfer of 20k points you end up getting 25k miles. Also the long list of partner airlines makes this credit card a good to keep. Below are the features of this card:
The amazing airlines partners list can be found here although few of them are listed below
Note: I do not earn any referral credit from the links above. Also I advise to look for best available offer before applying for the credit cards.  Most folks think that Cashback is a very small incentive of which one should not care much. I would like to give you a glimpse of how much can you save with cash-back as well as why it is one of the secret weapon in saving in your day to day life.
Let's start with a typical credit card. Most credit card with offer you 1% Cashback on all of your transaction and have no annual fee on them. While getting 1% is good you can do much better than that! Below is a glimpse on how much you can potentially earn in Cashback with your credit card in brick & mortar stores. The trick is to use specific Cashback card for given category of purchases and the acceptance of Visa/MasterCard/AMEX in those stores. Below I have listed how much you can earn in Cashback and the specific card/cards which helps you with that. Also certain card's carry annual fees but if you have lot of spend on the card with annual fees it may very well be worth it. 6% Cashback on all the grocery purchases at supermarkets (excluding warehouse club like Costco and Sam's club -- Hey but there is a work around for that as well!! Keep reading!) a. American Express Blue Cash Preferred - $75 Annual fees 3% Cashback on gas stations a. American Express Blue Cash Preferred - $75 Annual fees b. Costco True Earnings Card c. Bank of America BankAmericard Cash Rewards 3% at department stores a. American Express Blue Cash Preferred - $75 Annual fees 2% on Travel & Dining a. Chase Sapphire Preferred - $95 Annual fees b. Costco True Earnings Card If you are looking for a no fee card than check out Chase Freedom or Discover More card with its 5% Cashback on rotating bonus category every quarter. (5% cash back on Max $1500 spend in bonus category and you need to register for bonus every quarter) How to Maximize your Cashback in stores: 1. If you are using American Express Blue Cash Preferred card you can shop for gift cards at grocery stores like Safeway and Kroger for other stores from which you actually want to buy stuff. For e.g. you could buy gift cards for Staples, Chili's, Southwest Airlines, Lowe's etc etc.. and potentially earn 6% on those and then use those cards to do the actual buying in your favorite store. You can even buy gift card's for Shell, BP and Amazon thus earning you 6% for those purchases. 2. If you are using Chase Freedom or Discover More card to do the shopping at 5% category bonus store you should check out those stores to see if they carry the gift card of your favorite store. Essentially these gift cards would already yield 5% Cashback on your future purchases. 3. What if the bonus category store does not have gift card for your favorite store? Do not worry! You could buy an VISA, MasterCard or AMEX Prepaid gift card using your credit card. Make sure you buy the highest denomination card as these cards usually have fees ranging from $3.95 for $25 card to $5.95 for $500 card so it would be worth the hassle if you buy $500 card. This will eventually drop your 6% Cashback to ~4.8% or your 5% Cashback to ~3.81% but its still better than getting 1% Cashback. How to Maximize your Cashback for online purchases: 1. Using your credit card and going through Cashback portal to your favorite store: You could shop by first checking Cashback website's such as CashBack Holics, Evrewards & Topcashback to find out the portal which awards best cash back rates for your favorite online store. The good ones in my opinion are Ebates, MR. Rebates, Topcashback, Ultimate Rewards (Only for Chase customers) and ShopAtHome. You could even earn Cashback for your flight reservation, hotel booking or bidding as well as for your dream vacation. So do not miss to cash on this opportunity 2. Buying gift card's for your favorite stores and then using those gift card's to make online purchase: There is huge secondary market which sells gift card's at discount of anywhere from 3% to 30% for most of the chain stores you wish to shop online at. You can compare the rates at Giftcardgranny before you start. Two of the popular gift card resale sites are Plastic jungle and Cardpool. You can even earn cashback while buying gift card using Topcashback. So essentially this creates a "double-dip" situation where you buy the gift card online at a discount and then use the discounted gift card to make the online purchase at your favorite retailer online store through a Cashback portal giving you some more Cashback. You can even do a potential "triple-dip" with a little more work by first buying VISA/MasterCard/AMEX branded prepaid gift card from your 5% or 6% credit card Cashback awarding store and using the prepaid card in turn for buying gift card online. Do note some online stores DO NOT award Cashback when buying stuff using the "store gift card", so you might want to check the terms for Cashback. 3. Using the VISA/MasterCard/AMEX prepaid gift card for Online shopping: So you bought this gift card at a 5% Cashback category bonus store or 6% Cashback grocery store. You can register these cards on your name and use them for the online purchase as well earn Cashback from the online Cashback portals. Since the Cashback from online Cashback portal ends up in your account with that portal and NOT to your prepaid gift card, you do not need to worry about the gift card once the funds are exhausted (The only time you might be worried is when you want to make a return of the purchase and thus will need to keep the prepaid gift card safe with you). 4. Shopping at Costco at a Cashback of ~4.8% or ~3.8%: Since you could buy a prepaid VISA/MasterCard/AMEX at the bonus category store or the grocery store, you could use that to buy Costco Gift card online through Costco website. Here is the direct link to the page. The best part is you could make a purchase using VISA or MasterCard where as in store you can only use AMEX branded card. Hopefully you learnt something which you can use for your daily purchase. Did I miss anything? Anything else you would like to add? Disclaimer: None of the links above earn me any referral. |
AuthorI love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel: Archives
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