As a reminder the Chase Freedom Categories will be changing January 1, 2015 and the double sign up bonus is good through December 17th where you can earn a $200 Bonus after you spend $500 on purchases in your first 3 months from account opening!

5% Cash Back Categories

The Chase Freedom® card rotates the categories for the extra 4 points/$ spent within those quarterly categories. I have been a long time user of this card because it is free and even though the rotating of the categories is a tad more complicated than a flat 5x points; the categories are so broad that it is pretty easy to max out on Chase points with this card.

For example, the current categories for Q4 2014 are department stores (awesome!), Amazon.com and Zappos.com. We have been putting all our holiday shopping on the Chase Freedom card for this reason. We buy from Amazon.com often and of course department stores such as Bloomingdales and Nordstrom offer great options for gifts for the holidays. Make sure to register before December 14th if you haven’t already!

The rumored categories for Q1 2015 are grocery stores, Starbucks, and movie theaters. This is awesome, because again grocery stores is such an easy category to spend in. For example, you could simply buy gift cards totaling $1,500 at a grocery store to max out on your extra 4x points/$.

If you max out every quarter ($1,500 spend per quarter) you will earn an additional 6,000 points per quarter or a whopping 24,000 Chase bonus points per year on this card (which has no fee!)

Bottom Line

I personally really like this card and find it super easy to register for and use the category spends each quarter to maximize Chase points. They are also offering a double sign up bonus for a limited time, earn a $200 Bonus after you spend $500 on purchases in your first 3 months from account opening!