A Credit Card without a fee? That’s what I’m talking about!!!

Many of you have been following along on our travel journey to Hawaii, which all began with points acquired by putting our normal, everyday expenses on credit cards, then paying them off each month.  Each swipe of a credit card can earn super-valuable points.  When you have earned enough points, you get to pick and choose what kind of adventure you’d like to have.  It’s literally THAT simple!  For the Benz Group, that adventure was two weeks on three Hawaiian Islands.  

If you too, would like to learn how to book an amazing family adventure using travel points, then feel free to join me here at www.letsgettothepoint.com, where our motto is “no more pointless travel”. 

Several of the Credit Cards that I have been sharing with you come with a nominal fee (usually around $95 per year) which, once you understand the tremendous value that the card provides, is really completely insignificant.  Still, some people are skeptical about paying a credit card company in order to use their credit card.  Well, I’ve got great news!

Today’s card, the Freedom Card from Chase, has NO fee.  That’s right. Absolutely free!  The Chase Freedom card has no annual fee, but still comes packed full of benefits.  First off, if you spend $500 in the first three months, you’ll receive a $150 signing bonus.  And if you’d rather just accumulate points instead, that $150 would translate to 15,000 points.  After that initial spend threshold of $500, you can spend as little or as much as you’d like.  Here’s the BEST thing about the Chase Freedom card though.  They have quarterly rotating categories where, after you activate the offer, you are able to earn 5 points for EVERY DOLLAR SPENT!  For example, this past quarter (April-June), the bonus categories were Home Improvement Stores and Grocery Stores. You can earn a maximum of 7,500 points for spending $1,500 over those three months in the designated category. Since we are building a deck in our backyard, spending $1,500 was super easy.  And because my daughter also has this card, we were able to earn a total of 15,000 points in a very short time.  Anything that you spend on this card outside of the quarterly bonus category will still earn one point per dollar.  

The Freedom Card from Chase is also the perfect card if you’re just trying to build credit.  If you’ve never had a credit card, or have had credit issues in the past, this card is a great choice to start rebuilding that good credit.  

Let’s Get to the Point!

I NEVER go out without my Freedom Card from Chase – it’s a critical part of our travel point arsenal. No annual fee and rotating bonus points categories allow you to rapidly accumulate points without additional costs. And here is ANOTHER amazing feature: Freedom points are completely transferrable to the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, where they have 150% more value when exchanged through the Chase Travel Portal. This points exchange feature makes the pairing of the Chase Freedom Card with the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card THE perfect duo. 

To apply for the NO FEE Chase Freedom Card, click HERE! I may get a few points if you do!

TODAY’S “POINTS OPTIMIZER”

From time to time, I will be sharing little “tricks” to help you optimize your accumulation of travel points – what we like to call a “points optimizer”.  Today’s example features the Chase Freedom’s Bonus Categories.  Remember that deck project I mentioned?  Well, it ran just a little over budget and over schedule.  Because we had already exceeded our maximum obtainable points, and were past the June 30 cutoff for the Home Improvement Store category, it looked like the rest of our deck project would be limited to an accumulation of 1 or 2 points per dollar. After all, one of the next quarterly bonus categories was gas stations and, while that is super helpful for summer travel, you can’t buy pressure treated deck lumber at the Speedway.  Or can you?  Well, no . . . but you can buy Home Depot gift cards.  That’s right, twenty gallons of unleaded and a $250 Home Depot gift card bought at the gas station and BOOM . . . 1500 more points toward our next travel adventure.  Sometimes you have think outside the box, but isn’t that what adventure is about in the first place?!?