2015 5% Categories for Freedom and Discover

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Discover IT and Chase Freedom both offer 5% cash-back categories, on up to $1,500 of spend. These categories switch quarterly.

They recently released the details of the coming 2015 year categories.

Discover

Here’s the Discover categories:

Direct Link

discover categories

 

Let’s compare that to the 2014 categories:

 

 

discover 2014 2

Q1 2015 is “Gas and Ground Transportation”. I’m excited about the gas, since you can often find gift cards at gas stations and at 7-Eleven, see Does Discover Count 7-Eleven as a Gas Station. They also added ground transportation to the category, which should mean things like Amtrak and Greyhound tickets, and possibly taxis/Uber.

Q2 2015 is “Food and Fun”, which will probably include restaurants and some entertainment venues. Q2 2014 was home improvement and furniture.

Q3 2015 is “Summer Spruce” which will mean things like home-improvement and the like. Q3 2014 was gas stations.

Q4 2015 is “Holiday Shopping”, which sounds the same as its been in the past. This will probably include online shopping and department stores, as in 2014.

Chase Freedom

We only have info on Q1 Freedom. I haven’t found a direct link, but from what I’ve read (link, link)  Q1 will include:

  • Grocery stores (excluding Walmart and Target)
  • Starbucks
  • Movie theaters

This is great news, since in 2014 Chase did not have grocery stores as a category. Grocery stores are places we go anyway, and a great place to stock up on $500 Visa gift cards.

Here’s a look at what we had with Freedom in 2014:

freedom 2014

 

Basically, Chase kept the movie theaters and Starbucks the same in Q1 2015 as in 2014, and they just changed the gas for groceries. Both of these are great categories, but grocery stores are a little easier to cash out on.

Citi Dividend

Citi Dividend also has rotating categories, but they haven’t released their 2015 categories. Hopefully, they’ll have drugstores for Q1 2015 like they had for Q1 2014. Drugstores, of course, are stocked with gift cards, which makes it an easy category to cash out on.

Benificial note: Citi Dividend caps us at $300 reward dollars per year, but they don’t give the quarterly cap of $1,500 spend/$75 rewards per quarter. So if you find a particularly useful quarter, such as drugstores, you can spend a full $6,000 in that category during that quarter, and you’ll get a full $300 from that quarter alone.

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9 Comments
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Gene
Gene (@guest_61616)
January 16, 2015 20:36

@doctorofcredit
any suggestion for buying GCs at gas stations please?

-no paypal… received warning letter.
-VRs are discontinued.
-greendots are discontinued.
-OVs not accepted at WM?

thanks!

William Charles
Admin
January 16, 2015 22:15

It depends on the gas stations you have around you, just go to the ones close by and experiment.

Sam
Sam (@guest_40993)
November 22, 2014 22:48

Though groceries made it to Q1 for freedom, a big grocery chain that used to carry $500 visa GCs discontinued to accept credit cards. This is a big blow and I am having mixed feelings now….

Sam
Sam (@guest_40992)
November 22, 2014 22:46

Though having groceries made it to Q1

Michael B
Michael B (@guest_40250)
November 19, 2014 22:26

Love your blog, it’s quickly becoming one of my favs. Two questions, both of which can probably only be answered with speculation at this point. I’m wondering if WM Supercenter/Target will be included with Freedom Q1 – many of these stores post MCC as grocery but one of the other bloggers said they will not be included. Also, this hasn’t been talked about much, but the Citi Dividend is no longer advertised on their website anymore – which leads me to wonder if a year down the road us Dividend cardholders will be converted to Double Cash (which isn’t a bad card in and of itself, but doesn’t really offer any MS potential).

William Charles
Admin
November 20, 2014 03:55

It’s still possible to be downgraded to the Citi Dividend, so not sure what their plans are in regards to this card at the moment. We asked them in an interview we were supposed to have, but they cancelled the interview so we never got any answers.