Chase pay yourself back expansion

expansion of participating cards, extension of dates for existing cards. I don’t see the point of adding it to cards like freedom (where you either get cash at 1cpp or now a credit against a purchase at 1cpp), but I guess their cost is zero to add this new “benefit”.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/chase-pay-yourself-back-program/amp/

“Chase Sapphire Reserve and Preferred cardmembers’ points will continue to be worth 50% and 25% more, respectively, for purchases made at grocery stores, home improvement stores and dining establishments, including take-out and delivery services, through April 30, 2021.”

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Good to know. But I’m not impressed with this type of redemption for Freedom cards. 1.25% cashback on charitable contributions is not a good deal when you could have made the donation on another card paying higher cashback.

You misunderstood, it’s not 1.25% cash back, it’s a 1.25x redemption rate. I.e., make a $125 donation with your Freedom CC, earn the usual 1-1.5% CB on that $125, plus you can now redeem 10000 UR points for a $125 credit back to the card.

You can think of it as a 20% discount for your UR donation (you’re not actually donating UR points, but redeeming UR points is what gets you the discount).

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Since charitable contributions earn you 1% cashback, say I make a $10000 donation. That’s 10000 UR points if using regular Freedom or Freedom Flex. After pay yourself back bonus, I can then turn these into $125 for $10000 spending on charitable contributions. Hence it’s equivalent to 1.25% cashback on the transaction alone.

It gets better if I used Freedom Unlimited since I’d get 15000 UR which would convert to $187.50. But that’s only 1.87% and thus short of your every day 2% cashback card.

But beside missing out on some cashback on the donation transaction itself, redeeming UR points at 1 pt = 1.25c does not seem like a great deal either when transferring to partners usually yields more than that.

It’s good if you would otherwise redeem those UR points for cash but not in any other scenario unless I’m missing something.

Really for large amounts of points, the CSR is the only useful option in the discussion. That’s 2.25% in your example using freedom unlimited. I have no unlimited though, just 2 classic freedoms. Will be $3k paypal this quarter, for 15k points ($225).

I also will get higher than 1.5X cash value (it was 150% the last time I ran the numbers and the marginal rate will likely be much higher this year). making donations of appreciated stocks this year. So I would not be putting any charitable on credit card.

no, not missing much on that point. At 1.5cpp, it’s a fairly good redemption value. Better value than southwest rapid rewards for example. Most of the best transfer partners have devalued the best redemption options over the last year or so. And it seems likely that many more devaluations will occur soon.
1.5cpp cash is also much better than the 1.5cpp redemption in the chase travel portal (where most things cost more to begin with).

I’ve converted about $2000 of points so far myself against home improvement, restaurants, and grocery store deliveries (which includes Costco instacart) purchases.

I agree that the CSR redemption is fine plus the points earned on it are also better, along with the type of transactions covered by the redemption.

1.5 cpp for URs would be acceptable. But even after devaluation from partners, 1.25 cpp is too low IMO which makes most options except CSR not really too exciting. That said, it’s an option that was not there before and that costs nothing to cardholders so it’s better than nothing.

Last I checked, Freedom doesn’t allow you to transfer to partners, you need CSP/CSR for that. Of course the 1.25x redemption from Freedom makes no sense if you have CSR.

Correct. You need some kind of Chase Sapphire to transfer to partners. Even the (downgrade) no AF Chase Sapphire works for that though if you don’t think the regular CSP/CSR are worth their annual fees.

I’ve been draining UR points to pay taxes. Even with the $5.95 gift card fee and 2.22% fee to pay property taxes I still get 1.45 cents per UR value on CSR. The net $250 fee was worth the price of admission to drain, since they were just sitting there.

I don’t think regular Chase Sapphire allows transfers, though, unless you had a paid Ink card. I ditched the Ink Plus for CSR since I don’t spend $50,000 on office supplies a year like I used to.

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Did you know there’s a no-annual-fee Ink card? 5x on office supplies.

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And internet and cell phone. Big regular recurring bills for many

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Yes, I ended up trading down to that. Still don’t think I will have $25,000 of expenses for this though but it could happen.

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