I was just approved yesterday for my first Chase card in over 10 years as I’m looking to get back in their good graces after a bankruptcy. I’ve never done any credit card churning or manufactured spend and have no interest in doing so now.

That said, I got the Chase Freedom Flex and because the current quarter is for grocery stores and because they have the 5x points at grocery stores for the first year you have that card that means I can currently get 9x points on the first $1500 I spend at grocery stores this quarter. I was prepared to resist the sirens call of pushing the category limits for just 5x points, but 9x points may be too tempting to pass up.

With that in mind I have a question about gift cards. I’ve been reading the forums a lot lately and it does seem like they can tell the difference between gift card and non-gift card purchases. To be clear, I have no interest in anything that even smells like manufactured spend. I’m not going to buy any Visa gift cards or anything else like that. For the most part I am planning to buy cards for the store I am in (e.g. Vons gift cards from a Vons store, Sprouts gift cards from a Sprouts store, etc.). I suppose if it won’t cause problems I wouldn’t mind buying an Amazon gift card or two if it definitely won’t cause trouble. Truth is what I really want are Costco gift cards since that is where I buy almost all my groceries, but I doubt any grocery store sells Costco gift cards.

My plan was to go to grocery stores a dozen or so times over the next 3 months and purchase $100 in gift cards along with some grocery items each time until I have spent $1500 at grocery stores.

So I have a couple of questions. The first is, do gift cards count toward minimum spend for the Chase Freedom Flex? I read about some cards from some issuers updating their terms to say that gift cards don’t count. I know the goal was to prevent manufactured spend but if it is means a Vons gift card purchased from a Vons will not be counted, then buying gift cards is pointless. The most important thing is that I spend $500 to get the first 20k rewards points. It would be a huge waste if I only spent $400 on non-gift card purchases over the next 3 months and didn’t get the 20k because the gift cards didn’t count.

For clarity, under normal circumstances I spend less than $500 in a 3 month time period, so it would be better if some of the $500 for the intro bonus could be gift cards, but if it is a risk then I may want to make sure I get at least $500 in non-gift card purchases.

My second question, similar to the first, is do gift cards count toward the 5x (or 9x in my case) rewards category? After all, the only reason I would even consider spending $1500 over the next 3 months (or slightly over as there are a couple of non-grocery store expenses I am likely to make as well) is to get the 9x points.

Ideally gift cards for a grocery store (and possibly Amazon/Costco) purchased from a grocery store would count both as minimum spend and rewards category spend without causing any problems. I know the crack down on gift card purchases has generally been focused on something much more serious than what I propose here, but I am trying to tread lightly with Chase since this is my first time back with them in over a decade (after declaring bankruptcy on them during the 2008/2009 financial crisis and leaving them with $50k in unpaid credit card debt).

If the advice people here recommend is to avoid all gift cards then I will just push to spend $500 over the next three months and just accept the small 9x rewards bonus on whatever I manage to spend at grocery stores. If buying $1200 in gift cards won’t be a problem at all then I may do that (though it will probably take me years to use them all up if they are not for Costco). If a small gift card balance is a better choice than I can do that instead (i.e. buying $200 in gift cards over 3 months rather than $1200). It mostly comes down to whether they will know that a $146 purchase from Vons was only $46 in grocery items and $100 in a Vons gift card and whether they will care and the purchase will count toward rewards/minimum spend if they do know.