In the Chase app, there is showing a “birthday surprise category” on the Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex cards. In celebration of the 15th birthday of the Chase Freedom, the Freedom cards will earn 5%/5x on Insurance payments and on Tax Preparation Services during the month of March.
It’s not clear in the fine print whether these will be combined for the regular quarterly $1,500 limit or whether this will be separate. Also not clear whether that will have a separate activation page. I expect we’ll find out more as the promo timeframe gets closer.
Tax prep isn’t a huge spend category for most people, I’d guess. Insurance, on the other hand, can be a really nice category at 5x as someone can max out their insurance payments for the year (life, health, auto, home, etc). But again, it’s not clear what the limits will be on this of if it’ll combine with the other Freedom 5% $1,500 limit.
Hat tip to reader mangorunner
Does anyone else feel that
Chuck is really fortunate to only have at most $1500 in yearly expenses for the bolded categories below?
“as someone can max out their insurance payments for the year (life, health, auto, home, etc). “?
Why are you worried about someone else’s expenses?
How am I worried? I am envious of him for having such low insurance expenses. Why are you worried about a comment that I made that wasn’t about you?
I reduced my insurance to less than $1500. I get life/health through work. P2 and I are down to one car since we both work from home(this reduced our car insurance by 50%).
Many of us have multiple Freedom cards. You have no way of inferring what his expenses are or how many cards he has. Also, I read his statement as saying that maxing out your insurance payments is the limit for how much potential 5x category expenses can be created… not that he or anyone else will have low enough expenses to max it out and still get 5x on all of it.
He wrote “as someone can max out their insurance payments for the year”, NOT “as someone can max out their $1500 quarterly limit by paying for insurance”.
With grocery in the $1500 I expect I will use most, if not all, on grocery for VGC to make tax payments. Now if taxes were qualified and not tax prep, that would be really helpful but also really unlikely.
Which Visa GCs consistently work to pay taxes nowadays?
Insurance, next time they’re sponsored by United Health
Nothing says happy birthday like taxes and insurance.
Luigi has entered the chat
how to find it in app??
It’s in the fine print on the page where you learn about the q1 category
If Sapphire continues Insurance then it will either 5x points on Freedom or 1x points and 25% redemption discount on CSR. Wile the redemption discount is certainly better, if travel is on the horizon, might be worth saving that up for the 50% travel but if not, I guess CSR would be the better option.
I would do a dual scenario. For example, if the payment is for $1000, spend $952.38 on Freedom and $47.62 on CSR to use all the points earned from Freedom to offset the insurance costs.
Essentially a 6.012% discount off insurance premium
In the same screenshot after the red circle it says the surprise category is included in the 1500 limit.
I’m not necessarily reading it the same way
I just looked at the screenshot. I agree with
frank. It’s quite clear to me that the surprise category is part of the $1500 quarterly limit.
Am I the only one reading this as “[tax] insurance”?
The “&” is what’s making me suspect that.
So this is 5% on the surprise category + 5% on the quarterly categories?
They probably combined for 1500 top.
My CPA usually doesn’t send me a bill until after taxes are filed. March won’t help much.
They will have no problem issuing a bill in advance if you ask them, come on now.
I was thinking I try to do mine earlier, and I wonder if I’ll wait this year.