Alright I’ll admit that this headline is a little sensational. Everyone who reviews credit cards and other financial products know the basics about the Chase Freedom Rewards Card. It is one the better cards out there and some credit card sharks prefer the Chase Ultimate Rewards Program to almost any other rewards program. But let’s quickly review the program and one bonus that you can take advantage of this month until November 26, 2011. After all, $225 dollars in this market is worth a read.
The Cash Back
Many cards rewards programs offer some type of cash bonus for signing up. In almost every case there is some catch. Most of the time the card issuer requires that you spend a certain amount of money within a certain time frame. That is not really too much to ask since they are in the business to get you to use their cards. But often, the amount you are required to spend and time frame in which you are required to spend it make the cash back offer not worth it.
Chase Freedom Rewards is the Cash Back offer with a heart.
In the case of the Chase Freedom Rewards card it doesn’t require that much spending to get your $100 cash back. It is basically $100 cash back if you make $500 in purchases in your first 3 months after you receive your card. I’m ok at math and I figure that means you have to spend roughly $167 per month on your credit card to obtain the $100 cash back. Another way to look at it s that you get 20% off of everything you buy for the first $500 you spend.
The 5%
You will receive 5% cash back on up to $1,500 spent in bonus categories every quarter. This may not sound like much, but if you carefully watch the bonus categories you will pocket an additional $25 per month in saving on the things you normally buy. Not too shabby. Once again Chase Rewards are pretty generous in this category as well. You get new bonus categories every month, which entices you to keep the card longer. The catch is that you have to log onto the Chase Rewards website to activate your rewards each quarter. Here is a link to the Calendar.
Are you part of the 1%
Maybe that’s a bad joke considering that the NYC police cleared out the protesters in the park today. Still it is nice to know that you get 1% cash back on all items you purchase with no limits at all. You could spend $1 million dollars and pocket a cool $10k in savings. That’s $10,000 dollars saved! Imagine that. I don’t want to mock this too much because many other card providers even have limits on their 1% cash back programs. Once again this makes Chase Freedom one of my favorite cards.
The 10% Cash Back Kicker
This is a nice bonus but it obviously can’t apply to every purchase since that would be amazing and Chase would not stay in business. The 10% bonus cash back rewards applies only to certain online merchants. I did a quick search and right now it applies to Kohls.com and a few others, but they are insisting that they are going to add several merchants to the list. We will keep you posted as more merchants are added to the list. In the meantime don’t forget to check out the Amex Small Business Saturday and get $25 dollars to spend at any US small business.
That sounds nice Credit Sense. But there is still another $125 missing. Where is it?
Looks like you’re good at math too. For this you need to take a few extra steps. For the month of November 2011 Chase is giving $125 if you open a checking account and deposit $100. It’s a pretty good deal without any obvious catch. You get
FREE ATM access nationwide
FREE online banking, which many banks charge $10 per month for.
FREE debit card. We all know the controversy around debit card fees.
FREE text and E-mail alerts.
24/7 mobile access.
· Have you used the Chase Freedom Rewards Card?
· Do you like another rewards program better?
· Do you use Chase Bank? If so let us know how you like it.