Select Chase Freedom/Flex Cardholders: Paypal, Wholesale Clubs, Select Charities

Yup-including buying costco giftcards at costco.com making this quarter pretty terrific and damn easy to max both of my Freedom cards.

First thing to know is you need a "paid" Chase card- that is, one with an annual fee.

There's several that are $95 a year but don't really offer much other than the ability to transfer points--- if you don't travel significantly then your best route to max point value for travel is when you ARE finally planning a big trip, get the signup bonus for one of those cards (which will vastly outweigh the $95 fee) and do your transfers under that 1 year of $95 fee.

But if you travel a significant amount then getting- and keeping- the much higher fee CSR can be pretty profitable- especially if you can use some of the various monthly and annual credits for other things it offers.


Either way you have 2 routes to book travel with Chase in general-


ALL cards even free ones can use the chase travel portal... but free cards only get 1 cent per point this way so it's a waste of your time- just take 1 cent cash instead.

The $95 fee cards get 1.25 cents a point- which is still not terrific compared to most point transfer options.

The CSR gets 1.5 cents a point- which CAN be worthwhile in a few specific cases rather than transfers (for example to book Southwest Airlines-- because transfers to them usually only get you ~1.4 cents a point).

Chase points if you have a paid card transfer 1:1 to a bunch of Airlines...and several hotels (though only Hyatt is ever worth considering the rest suck for value of points).

For most airlines though (and also Hyatt hotels) you can usually get nearer 2 cents a point at the low end for coach fares or Hyatt hotels.... and often 4-6 cents a point or more for business or first class flights.



Typically if you just google something like "best use of chase points to X" where X is where you're wanting to go, you'll find all the usual travel blogs with posts about the best airlines and programs and values.

There's also more general ones lilke:

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/re...mum-value/

https://upgradedpoints.com/credit...ds-points/

https://onemileatatime.com/guides...ds-points/

as examples.

Yes, but only visa cards like freedom can be used in warehouse, not mastercard (flex). Last time discover had warehouse as 5 percent category earlier this year, i had purchased gift cards online to use in store so that 5 percent Cashback would apply.