The Chase Freedom Flex card is a great cash back credit card with amazing flexibility and the potential to earn a lot of cash back rewards across a great deal of categories.
Summary
Sign-Up Bonus
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Benefits
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Drawbacks
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Sign-Up Bonus
The Chase Freedom Flex credit card offers some really great perks for new cardmembers.
One of them is a $200 bonus after you spend $500 on purchases within 3 months from account opening. This is equivalent to getting a 40% discount on a $500 purchase. Neat!
Another benefit for new cardmembers is that you receive 5% cash back on grocery store purchases (not including Target or Walmart purchases) on up to $12,000 spent in the first year. This is an excellent benefit as there are not many cards that offer 5% cash back on groceries.
Last but not least, you get 0% intro APR for 15 months from account opening on purchases. This is particularly advantageous if you’re planning to make a big purchase and you’d like to be able to pay down the balance monthly without having to pay any interest.
Benefits
Cash Back Galore
The Chase Freedom Flex credit card has a plethora of cash back benefits.
Each quarter you get 5% cash back on up to $1,500 on combined purchases in bonus categories. The categories change each calendar quarter, and must also be activated each quarter. If you forget to activate your bonus categories, you will only receive 1% cash back on purchases made in the bonus category. Luckily, Chase emails its cardmembers a reminder to activate about a week before the start of each quarter, and makes it easy to activate. 1-click in that email and you are good to go!
The Freedom Flex card also gives you 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards – another excellent benefit!
If you use Lyft regularly, you will also benefit from using your Freedom Flex card to to pay for your rides as you will receive 5% cash back on those expenses as well, all the way through March of 2022!
This credit card also offers 3% cash back rewards for both dining and drugstore purchases, which is good for restaurant food (either dine-in or take-out) and buying medicine or other pharmacy items.
Any purchases that don’t fall into one of the above-mentioned categories earn 1% cash back.
Cash back rewards earned with the Chase Freedom Flex card do not expire as long as the account is open, and there is no minimum redemption amount. In other words, you can redeem cash back for any amount at any time.
No Annual Fee
Credit cards with no annual fee are my favorite, and the Chase Freedom Flex just so happens to be one of them!
Drawbacks
Fees
The Chase Freedom Flex card has a balance transfer fee of either $5 or 5% of the amount of each transfer, whichever is greater. This is not an issue for anyone who will not be transferring a balance from another credit card to the Freedom Flex card.
Also, there is a 3% foreign transaction fee when using this card to make international purchases. No big deal if you don’t travel overseas or if use a credit card without a foreign transaction fee when traveling abroad.
Rotating Bonus Categories
Although you are able to earn a solid 5% cash back on certain categories each quarter, the categories for a given quarter may not necessarily align with merchants or services on which you spend your money.
Furthermore, if you fail to activate your bonus categories, you only get 1% cash back in those categories instead of 5%. Even though the effort required to activate is minimal, it can still be slightly annoying for some.
Final Verdict
The Chase Freedom Flex is an excellent cash back credit card with numerous categories for earning coveted cash back rewards, ranging from 1% to as high as 5%.
You earn 5% on bonus categories which change and must be activated each quarter. These categories are pre-determined by Chase, and therefore may not always line up with your expenses. Because of this, there will inevitably be quarters where you are unable to take advantage of earning 5% cash back.
This card may perhaps be best used in combination with one or more alternative cash back credit cards, but the sign-up bonus alone may be enough to convince you to apply for it.
You can apply for the Chase Freedom Flex cash back credit card on Chase’s website.
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