Chase Freedom Unlimited: Review
Welcome to another Credit card review of the Chase Freedom Unlimited. I recently signed up for this credit card and I had been waiting for the right time to apply considering I already had the Chase Sapphire Reserve. The Chase Freedom Unlimited is known for being one of the best credit cards on standard cash back values due to its linkage to Chase Ultimate Rewards and its flat out rate of 1.5% cash back.
Key Features
- Earn a $200 Bonus (this is a new offer!) after you spend $500 in your first 3 months of opening the card.
- Earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases.
- 0% intro APR for 15 months from account opening on purchases and balance transfers.
- No annual fee
- No minimum to redeem for cash back and no expiration as long as the account is open
Basics
Although technically a cash back card, you earn points rather than dollars. Each dollar earns 1.5 points and each point is worth a cent when you redeem for cash back. So you redeem 100 points, you get a dollar. There is no annual fee so keeping the card costs nothing and you can use its abroad but there is a 3% foreign transaction fee.
Pros
Sign Up Bonus
With a simple sign up bonus and with transfer partner perks, you can utilize the 200 dollar bonus as 20,000 bonus points if you have a credit card with Chase Ultimate Rewards access (think the Sapphire cards). I knew I had some big necessary purchases coming up (all of which did not come under travel, dining, gas, groceries and online shopping which are the categories when I use my other credit cards) and I could hit the bonus simply and quickly without spending more than I needed to. The bonus comes in the form of points and these can be used at the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal for travel, shopping and other things OR for an even better redemption you can transfer to partner loyalty programs such as United miles and Hyatt points. This makes this sign up even better when you have travel plans coming up.
Simplicity
It’s just one rule, 1.5% cash back on everything! There was a brief period where it was 3% on everything (but you would forego the sign up bonus), but now it is 1.5% for everything which makes it simple, however, it does mean that you could be earning more with other cards both Chase and non- Chase. We will discuss that later.
No Minimum Redemptions
1 cent or 50 dollars it is up to you, most cards want a minimum to be met before you can redeem and therefore this is very liberal.
Transfer To Maximize Value
Chase allows you to use its other cards to get maximum value out of every dollar you spend with the Chase Freedom Unlimited. You can do this by splitting your spending between other cards like the Freedom and Sapphire Cards. With my Sapphire Reserve I only ever use travel and dining purchases with Sapphire. I don’t have the Freedom just yet, but when they release their categories for the first quarter of 2020 and it suits me, I will be signing up.
With the Freedom Unlimited each point earned is worth 1 cent. But several Chase cards give you more value through Chase’s online portal. For example Sapphire Preferred and Ink Business Preferred allow a point to be worth 1.25 cents when redeeming through this portal and the Reserve allows it to be worth 1.5 cents.
Through the same portal as mentioned above, you can transfer the points (usually 1:1, although there are exceptions, which we can talk about later) to other loyal programs and through those programs get some great deals. Chase is great for having that flexibility due to having so many affiliated transfer partners.
Cons/Alternatives to consider
Why wouldn’t you select this card? Well it only earns 1.5% at its highest rate, compared to say the Citi Double Cash Card which offers unlimited 2% cash back (assuming you will pay it off on time). It can also make sense to get a card with categories (usually 3-5% cash back) but you have to plan your spending and make a decision. For example for groceries you can consider the American Express Blue Cash Preferred which would give you 6% back (note annual fee), for travel you could do another card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve (or any travel credit card) for dining the American Express Gold Card gives 4% back. Then there are the categories which can be pre-selected to give 3% like the Bank of America Cash Rewards and cards with rotating categories like Discover It Cash Back and Chase Freedom which change their categories every quarter but give 5% back (and with Discover it will be 10% in the first year).
The other thing to note is to keep this credit card in USA It shouldn’t be used abroad due to its foreign transaction fee.
How does The Penny Pinching Doc use it?
I have to pay a lot of membership dues (and thankfully I can use a credit card!) and recently I have had to pay for a lot of exams. Although these categories come under “personal” or “bills and utilities” they wouldn’t get me as much points when using my other credit cards. I needed a flat rate cash back card for those categories where I had no good credit card to utilize points. So unless you have big purchases which you can use on a sign on bonus (like 4000 dollars in 3 months with the Sapphire Reserve) I wanted to use a credit card like the Freedom Unlimited for occasions like that. Now I use the Freedom Unlimited for categories like “personal”, “health and wellbeing”, “entertainment” and “bills and utilities”.
There is also the problem of Chase’s 5/24 rule. Chase doesn’t let you apply for their cards if you have applied for 5 credit cards in the last 24 months. So I wanted to obtain the Chase Credit Cards quickly as I like their transfer partners. For this reason I was keen to get the Chase freedom unlimited rather than another one like American Express.
Conclusion
This is one of the best cash back cards I have when it comes to purchases with the “other” categories. I like the transfer partners with Chase and like how I can combine it with Chase Sapphire Reserve to maximize my redemptions. This is also a strong credit card which can be used by people new to credit scores and students.
This is brilliant! Thanks for always keeping up in the loop about these great offers! Definitely living up to your title of the penny pinching doc!