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Monday, September 14th is the last day to register to 5 or 5.5 points per dollar on up to $1,500 in spending at gas stations and at Kohl’s. You can now click here to activate this quarter’s 5% categories. You have until 09/30 to earn 5 points per dollar in those categories.
Visa counts all 7-Eleven’s as gas stations, even if they don’t sell gas, so I’ve stocked up on Visa gift cards from there on 3 Freedom cards. Those cards can be cashed thanks to cards like REDcard, Serve, and Bluebird.
Other gas stations also sell gift cards that can be liquidated for cash. Or you can always buy gift cards for the gas station of your choice and lock in extra savings by purchasing them on a Freedom card this quarter.
Chase Freedom is an excellent no annual fee card thanks to its quarterly 5% categories. While they call it 5% cash back you’ll really get 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent which can be worth much more than 5% cash. For $1,500 in spending per quarter you will earn at least 30,000 Ultimate Rewards points (7,500 points per quarter at 5 points per dollar spent). The $100 signup bonus also comes in the form of 10,000 points that can be used for $100 cash back, but would be put to better use if used as airline miles.
2015 bonus categories:
Q1: Grocery stores, Movie theaters, Starbucks
Q2: Restaurants, Bed, Bath & Beyond, H&M, and Overstock.com
Q3: Gas stations and Kohl’s.
Q4: Amazon.com and more to be announced.
Through the end of 2015, the Freedom card also earns a 10% annual point dividend. The final dividend will be paid out in February 2016 for 2015 purchases. That means you’ll earn an effective 5.5 points per dollar on purchases from the 5 point categories and you’ll earn an effective 1.1 points per dollar everywhere else.
Freedom alone can’t transfer points into much more lucrative airline/hotel/train currencies, but if you or your spouse has a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or Ink Plus card then you can transfer points from Freedom to one of those cards and from there to your favorite travel currency. You can read at the end of this post which currencies they can transfer to and why those points are much more valuable than just taking cash back. The Freedom card can also keep your points alive for free if you do close one of those cards.
If you use those points for a trip worth where they are worth 2 cents each and then you’ll have effectively earned 10-11% back on those “5 point categories.” The sky is the limit of the value of airline miles as they aren’t tied to the cost of a ticket. That’s good for people in the know and bad for those who are not. 1 mile can be worth 0.25 cents or it can be worth 25 cents, it all just depends on how you use them.
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14 Comments On "1 Week Left To Register For Freedom Q3 Bonus Spending"
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Dan, which Visa GC did you buy in 711? In my area they only sell the variable amount ones for cash only.
I live in CT and went to a local 7-Eleven and bought 6 $500 One Vanilla Visa gift cards (3 on each of my two freedom cards). Then loaded them to Redcard. Worked just fine for me.
@Stephen what will chase think you purchased thousands of dollars in gas in one day?
Does anyone know if there’s anywhere in monsey to buy gift cards. 7-11 doesn’t let
@dave: don’t worry they just give the point they do not think think
I am getting a Chase Freedom card because they are discontinuing the Amtrak association. The card will come in October. Do I lose out on signing up for the 5% back rewards(since next week is the deadline) Thank you for your input. Sharon
@ Stephen
Redcards still work as of 9/7/2015 in CT?
Not only 7-11s in our area (north seattle) won’t let you buy gift cards with credit card, I was just told by a major grocery store (QFC, part of Kroger) that they stopped taking credit cards for any gift card purchases 2 weeks ago. This is after two other major grocery stores in the area, Safeway and Albertsons already told me no more credit card for variable load visa/master gift cards early this year.
if you can still do these, you guys are lucky.
@Danny. They did a few days ago when I last loaded on Saturday.Why, did something recently change?
@Dan: I went to 7-Eleven today and the only type of gift cards I saw was re-loadable, isa GCs. It has MyVanilla ($20-$500) , netSpend, green dot. Can any of these be loaded to a Serve/Bluebird?
“Visa counts all 7-Eleven’s as gas stations”
source?
No just staying in the loop on viable areas to load.
@PCN: there it is. my vanilla loads to serve. I heard they might start charging a loading fee in family dollars though but it hasn’t happened to me yet though(b’h)
first time reading about this.
I want to buy the gift cards but unsure how to redeem through “redcard”
Do i have to enroll in this and if so where