As I’ve mentioned several times before, the Chase Freedom card is a favorite card in My Wallet today. At face value the card is simply a 1% Cash Back credit card that lacks an annual fee. However, this card offers one unique benefit that absolutely makes the card worth carrying. That is, each quarter, Chase Freedom customers have the ability to earn 5% cash back on select purchases.
Essentially, each quarter Chase selects a grouping of qualifying bonus categories that earn up to 5% cash back. Every quarter card holders can earn 5% cash back on the first $1,500 of qualifying spend. The only trick here is that each quarter’s bonus categories are different. So, in the first quarter you could earn 5% back at supermarkets, but in the second quarter you can only earn 5% back at gas stations. Overall, I’ve found that in every quarter it’s actually fairly easy to hit the $1,500 cap and earn the maximum amount of cash back allowable.
While I generally don’t value cash back, the important thing to remember about this particular card is that it’s cash back “points” are transferrable to the Chase Ultimate Rewards program. If you have both the Chase Freedom and an Ultimate Rewards card (Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Preferred, or Sapphire) you can easily transfer Chase Freedom cash back points into the Ultimate Rewards program. By allowing these transfers, it means Chase Freedom card holders can earn up to 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points a quarter. That’s a generous amount of points from a no annual fee credit card.
Introducing The Q4’18 Chase Freedom 5% Bonus Category
As I mentioned earlier, the 5% cash back bonus category rotates each quarter. Chase also only unveils each quarterly bonus a few weeks before the new quarter begins. So, up until a few days before Chase announces the quarterly bonus, the bonus calendar looks a bit like this.
However, about 15 days before each quarter end Chase eventually announces the 5% cash back quarterly bonus categories. This just happened a few days ago for the 4th quarter of 2018 and I must say I’m a bit impressed.
Yep! For Q4 2018 Chase Freedom card holders will receive 5% cash back at department stores, wholesale clubs, and on all Chase Pay purchases.
That’s right, once activated, Chase Freedom card holders can earn a total of $75 cash back on all holiday shopping at department stores, all other purchases at wholesale clubs, and again with Chase Pay purchases. The only thing that you must do before you can enjoy the 5% cash back bonus is activate the benefit.
Activate The Q4’18 Chase Freedom 5% Bonus Category
Activating the 5% cash back quarterly bonus is extremely easy. Luckily, Chase sends me an email each quarter to remind me that my activation is required. Within that email there are typically no less than 5 hyperlinks to activate the benefit. By simply clicking any one of those hyperlinks the benefit automatically activates and no further action is required.
After clicking any one of the hyperlinks my activation was complete and all I have to do is make qualifying purchases in Q4’18 to max out this benefit.
After clicking on any one of the before mentioned hyperlinks I was then directed to the above page which confirmed my activation. As I’ve mentioned before, activating this benefit is incredibly easy.
Likewise, if you fail to activate this benefit at the beginning of the quarter, Chase allows you to activate at any time before December 15, 2018 and will retroactively award 5% cash back on qualifying purchases. So that makes it even easier to make sure you maximize this benefit.
Final Thoughts
Well, all in all the Q4’18 Chase Freedom 5% cash back bonus categories aren’t that surprising. For the past few years the Q4 bonus includes some kind of holiday shopping category. What was surprising is that Chase is again offering 5% cash back on Chase Pay purchases. This is the 3rd (of 4) quarter that Chase has offered 5% back on Chase Pay purchases. Clearly the bank is trying to convince it’s customers to begin using Chase Pay.
One thing that I always think about when I see these quarterly bonuses is habit formation. See, Chase wants you to get in the habit of using Chase Pay because inevitably when they stop offering 5% back they hope you will continue using it out of habit. It’s the same reason that they offered Apply Pay, etc. in Q1. Chase hopped you’d set the Chase Freedom card as your default Mobile Payment card and forget about it. Then, every mobile purchase you make for the rest of the year will be on their card over the competitors. Similiarly, Chase offers 5% back on phone bills knowing that most people use auto-pay and would fail to change their card after the benefit ended.
So, keep that in mind when you activate these quarterly bonuses. While the 5% quarterly bonus is great at the moment, going forward you may be missing out on additional point earning opportunities.
