It’s officially the 4th quarter which means the Chase Freedom 4th quarter bonus category is now live! For Q4 2017 the Chase Freedom 5X bonus is on purchases at Department Stores and Walmart. That’s great news, especially considering most of us spend a lot of time in department stores during the holidays.
It’s also great because it’s a category which is difficult to earn bonus points otherwise. While I appreciate 5X points on dining, I already have cards that earn 3X points. So while I take advantage of each quarterly bonus, I don’t actually get much out of dining. I don’t have any cards that earn bonus points at department stores, or Walmarts, so this quarters bonus represents a large marginal increase from just 1X points.
If you are a current Chase Freedom card holder make sure to activate your quarterly bonus category today. Doing so allow you to earn 5X points at most department store and Walmart locations all quarter long. Luckily, if you forget to activate the bonus until later in the month Chase will award points for any qualifying purchases that take place within the quarter prior to activation.
Transfer Chase Freedom Points To An Ultimate Rewards Card Account
While it’s great earning essentially 5% cash back on the Chase Freedom card, it’s even better earning 5X Ultimate Rewards points. This is only possible if you also carry a Chase Sapphire Ultimate Rewards card. Having both the Freedom and any Sapphire card allows you to transfer Chase Freedom ‘points’ to another card’s Ultimate Rewards account.
Moving points from one card account to another might not seem like a huge priority, but it’s absolutely worthwhile. Chase Freedom points are essentially just 1% cash back. When you move those points to a Chase Sapphire Ultimate Rewards account you can use those same points as you would any other Ultimate Rewards points. For starters, if you move the points to a Chase Sapphire Reserve Ultimate Rewards account you could redeem points for $0.015 toward travel through Chase travel.
However, if you transfer points to a partner loyalty program you could get even more value. After doing just a little bit of homework you can easily get from $0.04 to even $0.10 of value from Ultimate Rewards points. Not a bad rate of return considering you’re earning those points from a no annual fee credit card.
Final Thoughts
I’m a big fan of the Chase Freedom card and the 5X points rotating bonus categories. I especially love when the quarterly bonus category is a category I don’t already earn a bonus on. It’s also great that Chase offers this bonus in Q4 at department stores. Most of us spend a lot of money at department stores during the holidays. It’ll be great earning 5X points on all my holiday purchases this year.
Keep in mind Chase caps each quarterly bonus to the first $1,500 of spend each quarter. I’m not sure that I’ll spend the full $1,500 on gifts this year so I’l have to make an extra effort to buy groceries and home goods from Walmart to help maximize this quarters bonus.
