What’s in my Wallet for MAXIMIZING CASH BACK – February 2021 – The Credit Shifu

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So first I want to draw your attention to two of the same card in my wallet and that is the Chase Freedom. So I have two Chase Freedoms, you might think that is weird, but there is a strategy behind this. Now they are almost the same, one is the Chase freedom and one is the Freedom Flex, but they both have the same rotating quarterly categories, which this quarter are:

Streaming services, phone, cable & internet, and wholesale clubs

You earn 5% cash back on $1500 worth of spending in the quarter in those categories, so together that is 5% on $3000 of spending.Now for me Wholesale clubs have been particularly useful, I am a member of Sam’s Club so I have been taking my freedom there to buy stuff. You can see I am about 40% of the way through the $1500 on the freedom flex and on the freedom I haven’t used it there yet, but I need to remember to go, it is such an easy way to earn points.

Then there is another bonus just in february for the freedom cards and that is 5% back on $150 worth of gas spending on each card! So for my two cards that is a total of $300 that you get 5% back on. You do need to activate this bonus though. They sent me an email recently where you can click through to activate it, so look out for that if you have the card, or you can just go to chase.com/mybonus and enter the last four digits of your card number to activate.

So I have been carrying around these two cards to use both for gas spending, here is a screenshot where you can see bonus points being earned at a gas station, and wholesale club spending. And in addition to that because I am still in my first year of freedom flex membership I am still getting the 5% back at grocery stores on $12,000 worth of spending in the first year.

So in one year, if I max out all the quarterly categories, the 5% on gas on both cards and the 5% at grocery stores on the Freedom Flax and the $200 sign up bonus on the flex which I already got. I would end up with 141,500 points or $1415 in cash back. If I transfer the points to the Sapphire Reserve and use the pay yourself back feature at 1.5 cents per point it would be $2122.50 in statement credits for charges on the card!

I am giving you the cash back and statement credit options because I am not really travelling right now, I know most of you aren’t either, so I am definitely going to be doing some cash back style redemptions. And that brings me to our next card, because this is a card I will earn a load of cash back off of too.

The Charles Schwab Amex Platinum. So I got this card less than a month ago and if you don’t know the charles schwab amex platinum is the same as the regular Amex Platinum in that it gets you into all the cool airport lounges, gives you the Uber credit, the airline credit, earns 5 points per dollar on flights, its also good for scraping the ice off your car

but in addition to all that you can cash out the points into your Charles Schwab brokerage account at 1.25 cents per point. This turns the 60,000 sign up bonus into $750, that’s one huge pile of cash:

So when I get the 60,000 point welcome bonus I will convert it to $750 cash back in my Charles Schwab account, and I’ll then go all in on Game Stop! No just kidding, I will buy safe long term investments. Like Dogecoin…

If you add another 750 each year you will have 40,000 after 20 years.

So you can see that welcome bonus is a great way to kick start an investment portfolio. Or for me currently I am saving my cash for other things like buying property so its a cool way to keep some money flowing into my portfolio.

Alright let’s get back to credit cards. The final credit card in my wallet is the Amex Gold, or rose gold to be precise. And you can get the rose gold color now, I got it when it was limited addition, now anyone can get it. Here is how I feel about that.

Only a leg shot but you know, it still hurts. But anyway if you want it, and it does have a great welcome bonus now, I’ll put the link below for you to learn more. So I primarily carry this card around for restaurant spending, since it earns 4x points per dollar at restaurants world wide. And now I have the Schwab platinum, that becomes 5% cash back in my Schwab account.

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