I have a Chase card (Sapphire Preferred) and I used to only redeem the points for travel, but having not needed to book any travel for a long time, I looked to see if there was another way to redeem my points that were building up. Lo and behold, I found “Pay Yourself Back,” which was introduced a few months ago and lets you pay yourself back (in statement credits) for recent purchases in certain categories (most useful to me are groceries, restaurants, delivery, coffee/tea), at a higher value (1.25x for me, same as redeeming through the Travel Portal, so I’m happy with that). They’ve always had the option to redeem points for statement credits, but at the non-optimal value of 1x. This gives you a 25% or 50% boost, depending on which card you have.
It was like finding nearly $500 just lying around. What could be better (and on a Monday no less)! I spent all my points and paid for a significant chunk of my food and boba for the past 3 months. Thanks, Chase!
It works for several types of cards and a few more spending categories, so it’s worth looking into if you have a Chase card.
