Many commenters seem bewildered that some people cash out their Chase Ultimate Rewards points at 1.25% per point with Pay Yourself Back instead of using travel partners or using Chase Travel at 1.5%. And so I thought to share why I use the 1.25% cashout option.
Two responses which came up in the comments:
- 1.25% cash redemption is relevant for those on Team Cash Back, i.e. those who don’t travel much.
- 1.25% cash redemption is relevant for those who generate vast amounts of Ultimate Rewards points and couldn’t possibly use them all on travel.
Personally, I somewhat fall into the first camp. While I do travel multiple times per year, it’s usually domestic. I also never got into the whole luxury travel thing. If I’m flying Spirit economy, my points don’t help me much. And my flights are typically very specific, e.g. I need a non-stop flight departing Tuesday between 2pm and 9pm.
The counter-argument is that you can still book any flight with Chase Travel at 1.5 cents per points, so why cash them out at 1.25%?
My experience has been that when booking through Chase Travel the prices are often a bit higher. I also find it easier to book directly with the airline, especially when there are things like paying for luggage add-on, etc.
For this reason, people like myself find it simplest to just cash out points using Pay Yourself Back. We took a big hit when Chase lowered the Pay Yourself Back from 1.5 to 1.25, and now we’re taking another hit with the dwindling options for 1.25% cashout. For now, I’ll use up my points when the annual fee posts or I’ll try to find a gift card vendor who codes as Gas to cash out my points.
(Full Disclosure: I’m a complete novice at travel booking.)
Anyone know if Chase PYB 1.25x @ Costco is temporary till end of this month? Or should stay as an option For Q4 and Q1 2025? TYIA.
We won’t know until either late this month or early-October.
I just got back from a week in europe staying in 5 star hotels and flying united polaris. I have never been able to justify the CSR $550 annual fee when there are so many other credit cards to get. I get a new one every 3-4 weeks.
The portal gave me higher prices than direct booking last two times I tried it
This might sound dumb and it might just be in my head but have you tried logging onto chase’s portal in a incognito/private window?
I mean, you have to be logged in, so I think that’d override any cookies or anything.
Hi Xavier, what was the average price difference in % ?
Honestly the chase travel portal matches what I’m quoted for on an airline site for the trips I’ve booked in the last year.
PYB might make sense for most people who don’t travel much but as someone who was traveling all over the US last year I saw that the 1.5 redemption made the most sense for me. Personally speaking most of the trips I was going to last year had different prices per airline for the same departure and arrival. That was verified on travel portals, chase, and the airlines themselves. I had one flight to Ohio on United that cost like $400 but then the same flight a few weeks later costed a lot more but Delta was close to $400. The fact you can use UR points to book tickets for airlines that are not transfer partners is pretty good in my opinion. Even spirit’s website for booking matched Chase more or less (~ $20 on a $300 ticket); the problem arises, like you said, with adding carry-ons but if you do that then, at least for Spirit, you can add it after you book once you have the confirmation number (IIRC).
The notion that you should transfer Chase points to airline partners makes sense IF you use only that airline either because you have loyalty status with them already or you travel out of an airport that is a major hub for a specific airline.
I haven’t stayed in enough hotels operated by Hyatt.
The tl;dr is there really doesn’t seem like a wrong way to use UR points, it all depends on your circumstance. If you travel a lot to places with Hyatt hotels then use that. If you travel a lot in general with a specific airline transfer the points. If you travel a lot with differing airlines use the portal. If you’re on team cashback then well, you know what you need to do with PYB.
Agree there are higher earning cash back cards, but Chase points are fairly easy to earn and …gasp, one should never earn 1point per $1 charged sooooo…hypothetical: if every $1 charged on a Chase card earns 3x-5x points then using the points for pyb on everything is like a 3%/5% cash back card?
There’s no category where any card earns more than 1x and is eligible for PYB at >1cpp.
Only way to hack the system is wait for a quarterly 5x category on a Freedom that is also a PYB category on the CSR (like grocery was up to 2 days ago), the charge to the Freedom at 5x, PC, then PYB at 1.25x. One can redeem at most 120000 UR like that (over $1500 CF/CFF earns 1x, PYB has 90 days limit so you’d need 2 consecutive grocery category to do more than that) which is.. well.. not nothing, but 7-8 digits like other posts suggest.
Thanks for continuing the conversation. Hypothetical: my Reserve earns 3x for all travel so if I use PYB on these charges isn’t it a 3% cash back which is better than 2.625% BA or same as RobinHood 3% etc.?
This article falls in the “cool story bro” category. Nobody has so many points that 1.25 is the best option. You can easily sell them for more than that. You can transfer to Hyatt and use them if you don’t need airline tickets. Simply put pub is the lazy or uneducated route. But hey, Chase loves not paying 5 cpp or more.
Plenty of people earning 8 figures of UR per annum. Hard to sell that many without being shut down by Chase. And way too many to use at Hyatts.
Uh 8 figures? 7 figures of UR/yr, sure, I bet there are a bunch of people doing that. 8 figures with Chase would be rather difficult though, it’s not like MR, I’m sure someone’s doing it but I can’t imagine there are many.
I do 7 figures chase and I’m on many groups I’m a small fish
Can ya’ll please tell me how you are getting 8 figure UR points? Honestly!
Inks. Just watch out with your velocity and frequency. Sole proprietor and EIN. Also don’t self refer unless you want to get banned.
Honestly it’s not hard to get 7 figures without *really* trying that hard but you will have to put in some effort. Those earning 8 figures likely are more involved with MSing.
I got 500k easily last year and I was mostly asleep with Inks, didn’t even need to MS.
This bro straight up argued for selling points lol
What do you use Hyatt points for if not traveling?
They can be redeemed for “experiences” at ~1.4 cpp
I now have two kids and rarely travel anywhere that’s not for work. When we travel together, we use Airbnb/VRBO as it’s far better to have rooms and a kitchen when you have kids on hand. So what would you recommend I do with my ~100k points?
Would you be willing to buy my chase points at 1.5cpp?
> Nobody has so many points that 1.25 is the best option.
I do, I cash out a few million a year. You can only travel so much.
How are you getting to 2 million? I have literally did 5 subs/5 referrals and thats still under 500k. What to do?
I’m guessing manufacture spending or they have large business expenses
Chase never pays 5cpp, that’s not how the transfer partners work at all.
When PYB is used for a transaction, do one still earn UR on the that transaction?
Yes. But these categories are all 1x, with better cards available, so you don’t really get 1.25 cpp at the end, only 1.19-1.22 (depending what casback you lose on other cards)
Can you explain how you arrived at the 1.19-1.22 figure?
I think he’s discounting it since you’d be better off using a CFF (q1) at grocery stores to earn 5X vs 1X on the CSR.
You might be correct. However, I still am curious at the math that
Lrdx used to come up with the 1.19-1.22 figure.
1.25 cpp is a 25% advantage over the cash back value, so if you had a card that earns say 3-6% back in cash, your advantage is reduced to 19-22% (off the top of my head)
I see. I misunderstood
Lrdx’s comment. I thought that they were saying that the purchases made on the CSR were earning 1.19-1.22X.
After seeing your comment, I now see that they were talking about the PYB value that we get from those purchases is actually 1.19-1.22X instead of 1.25X like I and others have stated the benefit is.
You buy $100 of stuff.
Pay with 3%/6% cashback card, net $97/$94.
Pay with CSR, get 100 UR, apply 8000 for PYB, net 7900 UR.
$97/7900 UR=1.22 cpp, $94/7900 UR=1.19 cpp
I see that you and I were typing our comments at the same time. I had just figured out what you meant and your math seems good to me.
1.19 X 5 still equals 5.95% CB. I am still waiting for
Aaron’s reply to my earlier question.
I think it would be a good idea for me not to hold my breath while waiting. What do you think?
Better question is why use Chase(other than their 5% quarterly deals) when other cards pay 2% everyday.
CSR + CFU at 1.5 cpp gets at least 2.25% cash back on everything (other spend categories are 4.5/7.5/15%) which is a no-brainer for anyone whose CSR has an effective annual fee of $0 or close to $0.
It’s more complicated at 1.25 cpp, or if you have $100k+ with Bank of America, but the Chase Trifecta can still beat flat 2% cards depending on how you go about things.
You said it–so long as you have $100k in bank or brokerage with BofA/Merrill, the Unlimited Rewards card is the way to go for general spend. 1.5% x 1.75 (preferred bonus) = 2.625% CB. Plus, it also qualifies you for the Custom Cash (formerly 1-2-3) card, which nets you 5.25% CB on “Online Shopping”
My Wells Fargo active is 2% on everythingor Alliant 2.5% (with requirements)
Discover Miles is 3% for first year.
Because essentially if you also have the Sapphire Reserve with the 50% bump the Freedom Unlimited is essentially 2.25%. If you’re in the Chase ecosystem it makes sense to accumulate UR points to use for travel.
You need to compare the value of the points. Similar to comparing international currencies. For example, compare CFU 1.5X vs C1VX 2X. Chase points have a higher value than Capital One. So are you earning more with CFU or C1VX? That depends on where you find the travel value, redemption, and convenience.
In the context of PYB, all of the previously mentioned cards give you a better return than 1x UR * 1.25 cent/UR.
Well, that’s the game. Use Chase for categories where you get a bunch of points, use a better cashback card for the rest.
The key is maximizing bonus categories. Here’s an example. Let’s say you have $10k burning a hole in your pocket. You can spend it via a 2% cashback card or a Chase Ink Cash, all at 5x office supply. So you either walk away with $200 cash from the 2% card or $625 cash (50k UR cashed out at 1.25 cpp) from the Ink. Even putting that $10k in a 3x category, you’d still earn $375. So bonus categories play a key role.
I’ve never seen a specific answer to this specific question. Other than the announced PYB categories (currently groceries, gas, charities, annual fee) can you use Chase points to cover other charges? If so, how and where does Chase address this?
Sorry, should have added, I’m already aware of the 1.5 for travel through the portal. I mean regular other charges.
You can do PYB on any charge, but only at 1.0 cpp, so it’s no better than just taking a deposit into a bank account or a regular statement credit.
Same here, Kim and I earn far more UR than we could possibly hope to burn. We hold a maximum of one trip’s worth at any time and cash out the rest.
For people that are building giant balances, if Chase goes full AA on you I have no sympathy!
Does AA mean American Airlines in this context? What does “if Chase goes full AA on you” mean exactly?
@eric AA in this context stands for adverse action (AA), such as freezing or shutting down your accounts or clawing back points earned.
Didn’t
William Charles or 
Chuck post an article a while ago stating that Chase allows a certain amount of time after shutdown to cash out all of your points? If that’s still the case, isn’t Saul’s warning unnecessary?