Buy Gift Cards To Boost Chase Ultimate Rewards
Having a business provides access to the Chase Ink Business Cash and can be advantageous way to boost Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points balance, especially, if you are in a phase of award travel accumulation where you don’t have an option to sign-up for big credit cards bonuses. If you are looking to start-up or continuously maximize points/miles with your normal spend, buy gift cards at office supply stores with the Chase Ink Business Cash credit card.
Ultimate Rewards Points
UR points are great because they are flexible and typically worth about ¢0.01 each. They can be used either on Chase Ultimate Rewards portal, or for cashback, or transferred, often at 1:1 ratio, to several airline and hotel loyalty programs only if you have Chase Sapphire Preferred (points transfer at ¢0.0125) or Chase Sapphire Reserve (points transfer at ¢0.015) to compliment your Ink Business Cash. In our hustle to get the best value for our dollars spent, knowing what card to use and when is valuable information. Check out the current offer by Chase for this credit card:
Office Supply Store Gift Cards Options
Chase Ink Business Cash gives 5X UR points/5% cashback on the first $25,000 spent annually at office supply stores, and on cellular phone, landline, internet, and cable TV services. We want to focus on office supply stores like Staples or Office Depot that fit in this category. I know you might be thinking, “I don’t have anything really to buy there all the time”. However, you do if you frequently use services or shop at some of the following stores:
- Home Depot
- Lowe’s
- Whole Foods
- Chipotle
- Starbucks
- Subway
- Amazon
- Macy’s
- Kohl’s
- Target
- Nordstrom
- Ulta
- Uber
- Visa
- American Express
- … and so on
What do all these have in common? You can purchase a gift card and add a balance to it for various dollar amounts and boost Chase Ultimate Rewards by 5X or get 5% cashback. Contrast that by the fact that you usually receive 1X – 3X UR points per dollar if you purchased items directly at those stores with Chase UR eligible credit cards.
5X Example
For example, I go to Starbucks a bit these days and I usually put $25 at a time on my mobile app using my Chase Sapphire Preferred card. In this case, I would get 2X UR points for every dollar spent. So, $25.00 for coffee would result in 50 UR points. It dawned on me I was passing up an opportunity to get additional points by not using office supply stores to purchase gift cards for these brands. As an experiment, I then went Office Depot and purchased a $25.00 Applebee’s and a $20 Wendy’s gift card and you can see below the point breakout. 5X the reward!
When I get the gift card, I activate and load the balance onto my mobile app or I can just use the gift card like a debit card. Easy-peasy!
In the interest of optimization, if you have some savings, you can stock up on select gift cards in advance of planned spending. In addition, this can be a way to help meet required minimum spend, if say, for credit card sign up bonus. I know I shop at these stores often, so I probably would get a $200 Starbucks card, or $500 Home Depot card.
You can often plan how much you need to add balance-wise beforehand and either go in-store or online, depending on your urgency, and get gift cards in advance to a trip to Nordstrom or Ulta ladies. Then biggup yourself for getting your shopping and makeup and 5X UR points/5% cashback in the process.
In Closing
If you maximize these opportunities, particularly for gift cards, a business of some kind can get you some pretty nice perks to boost Chase Ultimate Rewards 5X or receive 5% cashback on select categories. This is pretty flexible strategy where you can do online and/or walk-in to a store and feel pretty good about the utilization of your dollars especially when you get 5% cashback or 5X UR points on your purchases. Also, it directly benefits towards award travel in near future which is what I advocate here on The World of Os blog.
