Limited Time Offer: Earn $250 (25,000 Bonus Points) On The Excellent No Annual Fee Chase Freedom Flex Card, Now With No Foreign Transaction Fees And Points Boost!

Limited Time Offer: Earn $250 (25,000 Bonus Points) On The Excellent No Annual Fee Chase Freedom Flex Card!

Chase has refreshed the Freedom Flex card, removing foreign transaction fees, adding Points Boost, and promising to reveal upcoming quarterly 5x categories a quarter in advance. It’s not all good news, though, as the card will lose cell phone insurance.

Limited Time Signup bonus

You can earn $250 cash back, in the form of 25,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, for opening a Chase Freedom Flex Card and spending $500 in 3 months. Those points are worth a minimum of $250 cash back, but they can be worth much more, as shown below.

Officially, this card offers 1% cash back, 3% cash back, and 5% cash back categories, but you’ll actually receive 1, 3, or 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar. Those points can be used for cash back, but they can also be used for travel, where they can be worth much more than that.

Annual fee

None

Card signup bonus terms

1. You won’t get approved for this card if you have received a signup bonus on a Freedom Flex card within the past 24 months. You can call Chase to find out when you last earned a bonus on those cards or you can pull up your old statements online to check when you last got a bonus. You can also send Chase a secure message with your old card number to ask when you got the signup bonus on it.
2. You won’t get approved for this card if you currently have an active Freedom Flex card. However, you can call Chase to change that to a Freedom Unlimited, Freedom, or Sapphire family card, wait 2-4 days, and then apply for a Freedom Flex card!
3. You will get the bonus for this card even if you are an authorized user on another person’s Freedom Flex card.
4. If you are approved, that means you will get the bonus for this card as long as you spend $500 in 3 months.

5/24

Some Chase cards are subject to 5/24 restrictions, meaning that you might not be approved if you have been approved for 5 or more consumer credit cards in the past 24 months. Enforcement of 5/24 has been patchy of late and the only way to know if you can get approved is by trying to apply.

Note that the Chase system automatically counts cards like authorized user cards and store cards as cards that count towards 5/24, but if you explain to Chase that those cards are merely authorized user cards or store cards they can manually approve you for a new card.

You can check your credit report for free at the federally authorized annualcreditreport.com to check how many accounts are shown as being open in the past 24 months.

Card earnings

The Chase Freedom Flex Card has fantastic bonus categories. It’s marketed as earning up to 5% cash back, but it actually earns up to 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar. As each point can be worth up to 2 cents with Points Boost, or even more via transfers to miles, that’s like earning up to 10% back everywhere, or more!

• 5 points per dollar on up to $1,500 in quarterly spending in rotating categories, marketed as 5% cash back. Categories include gas stations and EV charging, grocery stores, restaurants, home improvement stores, wholesale clubs, internet, streaming, Amazon, Walmart, PayPal,  live entertainment, public transport, and much more. You can register for the quarterly 5x categories here.
• 5 points per dollar on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, marketed as 5% cash back.
• 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on drugstore purchases, marketed as 3% cash back.
• 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on dining purchases, marketed as 3% cash back. This includes dining-in, takeout, and restaurant delivery apps.
• 1 Ultimate Rewards point per dollar everywhere, marketed as 1% cash back.

No foreign transaction fees

This card no longer has any foreign transaction fees. Previously, using this card abroad incurred a 3% foreign transaction fee.

That makes it an excellent card to use when abroad for gas, dining, drugstore, and rotating category purchases!

0% APR

0% intro APR on purchases and balance transfers within 15 months of account opening. After that, reg_apr,reg_apr_type APR.

Potentially, that means you can stick your payments aside from the minimum payment into a high-interest savings account and pay the card back after a year with no penalties or interest.

Card benefits

• Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption Insurance
• Purchase protection for items damaged or stolen within 120 days
• Extended warranty protection
• 6 months of complimentary DoorDash DashPass if you activate the membership by 12/31/27, plus $10 off one non-restaurant DoorDash order each month after you activate.

Points Boost Redemption Value

Cardholders receive a value of 1.1 cents per point on select airlines and hotels through Chase Travel.

Increased points value

You can cash out your points for 1% cash back. I hope that you won’t do that.

If you or someone in your household has an Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card or Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points earned from any card into airline miles and hotel points, and you can redeem points via Chase Travel with a Points Boost value of up to 1.75 cents per point on select flights and hotels.

If you or someone in your household has a Chase Sapphire Reserve® or Sapphire Reserve for Business℠ card, you can redeem points with a Points Boost value of up to 2 or 2.5 cents per point on select flights and hotels.

The Freedom Flex card can’t transfer points directly into miles, but Chase allows you to combine points onto cards where they can be transferred into miles or redeemed for a greater value. My aim is to receive a value of 2 cents per point via transfers to miles, meaning you can earn up to 3-10% back on your purchases.

Airline and hotel points transferability

If you or someone in your household has a Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Reserve for Business, or Ink Business Preferred card, you can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points into valuable airline and hotel mileage currencies.

Card convertibility

You can call Chase to convert this card or any of the following cards into another card from this list:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card ($95 annual fee)
• Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card ($795 annual fee)
• Chase Freedom Unlimited® Card ($0 annual fee)
• Chase Freedom Flex Mastercard ($0 annual fee)
• Chase Freedom Card ($0 annual fee)

Note that in general, reps will only allow card conversions after you have had the card for 12 months.

Killer Combos

Stacking multiple Ultimate Rewards cards together can supercharge your earnings by getting you more points per dollar while increasing the value of all your points.

Read more about this strategy in depth in this post.

A Chase Bifecta would consist of a household that has the Sapphire Preferred and the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card or Chase Freedom Unlimited® Card. The total effective annual fees would be just $95. With the Sapphire Preferred+Freedom Unlimited you would earn 1.5 points per dollar everywhere, 2 points per dollar on all travel, 3 points per dollar on drugstores, dining, streaming, gas, EV charging, vacation rentals, and online grocery shopping, and 5 points per dollar on travel booked via Chase. You’ll be able to transfer all of your points into airline miles or hotel points.

If you earn 1.5-5 points per dollar and redeem at a value of 1.75 cents each, you’ll be earning between 2.625%-8.75% back!

A Chase Trifecta adds a no annual fee card like the Ink Business Cash® Credit Card or Chase Freedom Flex into the mix, so your total effective annual fee will still be $95. Both of those cards give options to earn a whopping 5 points per dollar in various categories on top of the up to 8 points per dollar that the Sapphire cards offer and the 1.5-5 points per dollar everywhere else with a Freedom, Ink Cash, or Ink Unlimited card.

A Chase Quadfecta would add both the Ink Cash and Chase Freedom Flex on top of a Sapphire card and an Unlimited card, so your total effective annual fee will still be just $95. The Quadfecta is the sweet spot and allows you to really supercharge your spending everywhere.

A Chase Quinfecta could add the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card to that mix, adding $95 to the annual fee total. This makes sense if you spend money on shipping, social media advertising, or search engine advertising, or if you want free cell phone insurance.

Again, all of these cards don’t need to be in one person’s name. 2 people from the same household can split up the requisite cards that make up the Quinfecta, as they can transfer the Ultimate Rewards points back and forth between themselves freely and they can add each other as an authorized user on their cards!

Airline transfer partners

Combined with a Sapphire or Ink Business Preferred card, you can transfer points at a 1:1 ratio to:

• United (Star Alliance)
• Air Canada Aeroplan (Star Alliance)
• Singapore (Star Alliance)
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue (Skyteam)
• Virgin Atlantic (Skyteam)
• British Airways (OneWorld)
• Aer Lingus (OneWorld)
• Finnair (OneWorld, via British Airways)
• Iberia (OneWorld)
• Qatar (OneWorld, via British Airways)
• JetBlue
• Southwest

Hotel transfer partners

Combined with a Sapphire or Ink Business Preferred card, you can transfer points at a 1:1 ratio to:

• Hyatt
• IHG
• Marriott
• You can also transfer points to Hilton at a 1:1.5 ratio via Virgin Atlantic.

Note that if you apply for a Sapphire Preferred card as of today, transfers to Hyatt will be at a 1,000:750 ratio. As of 10/1, you will need The Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card or The Sapphire Reserve for Business℠ Card for 1:1 transfers to Hyatt.

The great thing about Chase Ultimate Rewards is how versatile and valuable they are

The Ink Preferred Card and Sapphire Preferred cards allow you and anyone in your household to transfer Chase points into miles and earns a Points Boost redemption value up to 1.75 cents per point.

The Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Reserve for Business cards also allow you and anyone in your household to transfer Chase points into miles and earn a Points Boost redemption value up to 2.5 cents per point.

The Points Boost value is excellent and can mean that a $500 hotel room will cost just 25K points or a $1,000 business class redemption will cost just 50K points. Or you can make your points potentially even more valuable by transferring them into airline miles or hotel points.

• If I want to stay in a 5 star Park Hyatt in the Maldives, Melbourne, NYC, Paris, Sydney, or Tokyo that would cost over $1,000/night, I can instantly transfer 25-40K points to Hyatt to do that, a value of up to 6 cents per point.
• If I need a one-way flight from Cleveland (or Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Montreal, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Toronto, etc) to NYC that can cost $500 each way, I can instantly transfer 9.5K points to Avios to book a short-haul on American with no last minute booking fees. Or if American doesn’t have availability I can instantly transfer 10K points to United for their short-haul award. That’s a value of up to 7 cents per point.
• Air Canada offers one-way short haul awards for just 6K miles. You can also get stopover awards for 5K miles, build round-the-world awards, and get free lap child awards in the US/Canada and bring lap children to anywhere else in the world for just C$25!
• United offers excellent award availability, especially to their cardholders, and awards can be changed or canceled for free.
• Flying Blue has award flights to Israel for 25K miles for adults or 18,750 miles for kids.
• If I want to fly in a $25,000 ANA First Class Suite round-trip from the US to Tokyo, I can instantly transfer 145K or 160K points to Virgin Atlantic. That’s a value of up to 23 cents per point. You can now redeem one-way awards for half the price as well!
• And thousands of other possibilities from Singapore couples suites to booking Southwest awards with 2 free bags and free cancellations, to stealing 2nd base in middle of an MLB game.

Dan’s quick thoughts

The Freedom Flex is one of the best no annual fee cards out there thanks to awesome spending categories and the removal of foreign transaction fees.

Those points can be combined with a household member’s Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or Ink Business Preferred card and transferred into airline miles and hotel points.

Will you signup for the Chase Freedom Flex?