Early last month, I decided to switch my Blue Cash back up card from the Chase PerfectCard MasterCard over to the Chase Freedom Cash card. I just happened to be on Chase’s website yesterday, and I noticed that my first statement as a Freedom Cash card holder was available for viewing. Naturally, curiosity got the best of me as I wanted to see what my cash back total ending up being. I was pleasantly surprised with what I found overall.

The first thing I wanted to see was if Chase got the same top 3 categories that I thought it was going to find. My strategy going into the Freedom Cash card was to automatically pay my cable, internet service, telephone and cell phone bills with this card in addition to using it at fast food restaurants. So when I looked at the statement, I expected my top three to be “Cable/Satellite & ISP”, “Telecommunications” and “Fast Food Restauarants”.

As you can see from the screenshot of my statement above, I was 2-for-3 on that guess. It turned out that Utilities and not Fast Food was my third highest category. I was initially surprised by this, but after looking at my statement, I saw my wife and I put our $250 electricity deposit for a rental property on the Freedom Cash card. This is an anomaly that shouldn’t repeat, so I expect the fast food category to come in the top 3 next month.

The next surprise was that I managed to hit the $600 spending cap for the 3% rebate … so I got the max I could earn here, $12. Pretty cool. Again here, the utility deposit helped bring me over the top. I’ll see what next month brings when the fast food purchases are in the picture instead.

The last thing that caught my attention was the line at the bottom: “$0.85 rewards will expire on statement in September 2010″. Well, that means there’s a 3 year expiration period on the cash back you earn. I dug out out my Terms and Conditions from the filing cabinet, and sure enough, here was the line that explained it:

Expiration: Rebates or points will expire on a first-earned, first-expired basis. Rebates will expire 36 months from the month in which the rebates were earned and points will expire 60 months from the month in which the points were earned.

In my case, the expiration should be a non-issue given my level of monthly rebate accumulation. At this rate, I should be redeeming $200 in cash back (for a $250 check) about every 6 to 9 months. I can’t imagine a 3-year expiration period will be much of a problem for most others as well.

Got a strategy for using the Chase Freedom Cash card? Feel free to chime in with your $0.02 below. I’d love to hear others’ experience with this card.

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