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Useful Links Newbie Personal Finance thread How to Create a Budget thread Goon Credit Card random referral page:  https://goo.gl/aA5mzHReferral page courtesy of Jerk McJerkface. Referrals may not always apply to the best offer available, do your research first. Dedicated credit card churning thread Doctor of Credit: A mostly crowd-sourced repository of knowledge with tons of very specific information about credit card issuers, rewards, bonuses, and other related things. While it's mostly focuses on churning, it's an excellent source of information that isn't just trying to push cards with profitable affiliate offers like almost any other credit card review you will find. Below is a list of cards that offer rewards that goons in general like. You should only use a rewards credit card if you are paying off the full statement balance every month. You can ask general credit card questions in this thread, but it is mostly focused on discussing credit card rewards. The Newbie Personal Finance thread may be better. No annual fee Cards Citi Double Cash Card Simple 2% cash back on everything. Good general purpose card but does not have a sign-up bonus. Nearly all of the additional benefits from this card have been removed so it's notable only for its simple 2% cash back rate. Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature Simple 2% Cash Back on Everything with no foreign transaction fee. Previously this was an American Express but recently was changed to a Visa Card. Rewards must be redeemed into a Fidelity account. If you don't have a brokerage or IRA with Fidelity you can open a 0 minimum balance checking account with them. Chase Freedom Flex or Discover IT Rotating 5% cash back on different categories. Both cards rotating categories are frequently very useful, not the best card for purchases outside of the current 5% categories. The Freedom Flex additionally earns 3% on dining and drugstores year round which are both decent categories at a higher than average rate. Bank Americard Travel Rewards or Bank of America Unlimited Cash Rewards 1.5% cash back on all purchases. You can earn a bonus to your cashback by having other accounts and investments with Bank of America, up to 2.6%. The travel rewards has no foreign transaction fee but rewards must been redeemed against travel or tourism expenses. Capital One Quicksilver 1.5% cash back on everything, no foreign transaction fee. Good general use card, automatic reward redemption makes it one of the simplest cards to manage rewards for. Capital One also has a $39 annual fee version of this card called the QuicksilverOne for people without a great credit score, make sure you're applying for the correct one. Amazon.com Rewards Visa 5% back on Amazon/Whole Foods if you have prime. Without prime it offers 3% cash back on Amazon/Whole Foods. Besides Amazon purchases it's a alright card too with 2% at Gas Stations, Drugstores, and Restaurants, 1% everywhere else. Extra year of manufacturer warranty on items with a warranty of less than 3 years. Occasionally has offered additional deals. If you are the type of person who only wants 1 single card for everything than this isn't too bad, or you could leave it at home and use it exclusively for Amazon purchases. It also is fairly easy to qualify for and is a good candidate for a "starter" credit card. Amazon Store Card 5% cashback at Amazon, and nowhere else. OK if you do a lot of shopping at Amazon. To get the 5% cashback your account must have a prime subscription. You will not get 5% cashback with this card if someone is sharing their Prime benefits with you. The card doesn't give 5% cash back on Prime membership and digital purchases (games/software, and newspapers, possibly music?) but you can get around this buy buying Amazon gift cards and using that instead. You can also choose to get interest free financing for a certain time period instead of 5% cash back, but I don't recommend this. If you use the interest free financing be sure to pay the entire purchase off before the interest free period ends or you will be charged interest retroactively. Discover Secured Card The absolute best secured card available. A secured card is useful for people with bad credit or no credit history at all. Discover's is the best because it has no annual fee, earns rewards, and graduates to the standard version of the card after ~7 months of on time payments. A secured card is NOT the same as a prepaid debit card, you need to pay the card off every month. Your deposit is only returned when you close the account or the card graduates. Alliant Visa Signature 2.5% Cashback with no annual fee, but it requires some hoops to jump through. You must have a checking account with them, maintain an average balance of $1000, and have direct deposit setup into that account. Alliant's has an excellent checking account however with refunded ATM fees, no overdraft fees at all, and decent interest rates for checking/savings. This card also offers no foreign transaction fee and the vanishingly hard to find benefit of extended warranty protection. Citi Custom Cash 5% Cash back on your highest spend category each spending period. Decent sign up bonus. Best used as a dedicated gas or grocery card if you spend a lot in one of those categories. Annual Fee Cards Cards with an annual fee tend to be travel focused cards with benefits focused mostly on redeeming or earning based on travel or hotels. Used properly and often enough they usually offset their annual fee, but can be especially lucrative for their high sign up bonuses. These change more frequently than I update the thread, I recommend checking out doctor of credit's Best Current Credit Card Sign Up Bonuses for up to date information on these or other available offers. American Express Blue Cash Preferred 6% cash back on groceries, 3% on gas and department stores. Extremely large cash back rewards on groceries and gas makes this card great for family expenses. $95 annual fee. Chase Sapphire Preferred Chase's midtier travel focused card. Earns extra points on travel and dining plus many additional benefits for travelers. Points can be transferred 1:1 to many airline or hotel partners. No foreign exchange fee and a big sign up bonus. $95 annual fee. Chase has some pretty specific rules in general to restrict people from churning sign up bonuses with extra specific rules for their Sapphire family of cards. Look these up and make sure you meet them before applying. Chase Sapphire Reserve Chase's premiere travel focused card. $300 in travel purchases a calendar year refunded and other high end perks. Has a $550 annual fee. Chase has some pretty specific rules in general to restrict people from churning sign up bonuses with extra specific rules for their Sapphire family of cards. Look these up and make sure you meet them before applying. American Express Platinum/Gold American Express' two high spend cards with annual fees of $695 and $250. Signup bonuses for these are once per lifetime so wait for a good one! Frequently asked questions I have bad or no credit. Try a student card if you're a student, a secured card if you're not. Check the nerdwallet recommendations link at the top of the thread. Discover's secured credit card in particular is excellent. Should I keep a balance to build up credit? NEVER. Pay the full statement balance every month before the due date. If you are unable to pay the full statement balance you shouldn’t be using the cards recommended in this thread as they typically have very high APRs. Should I pay off the full balance or the full statement balance? Does not really matter. There is no reason to pay more than the full statement balance, but no real downside to paying the full balance either. Can I use a credit card to pay for things a month later if I don't have money now? Don’t do this. You should treat any purchases made on credit card as if you were paying for them immediately. Any emergency or unexpected expense can leave you unable to make the payment in time and leave you paying high interest. I'm extremely far behind on credit card bills, help! See the Newbie Personal Finance thread and the How to Create a Budget thread. I don't believe in credit cards, they are all just a scam. When used responsibly credit cards can earn you cash back on purchases or other rewards, make tracking expenses easier, and protect you from fraud. What are some other features credit cards offer that are actually useful
THF13 fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Bisty Q. posted:You probably should include Chase Sapphire Preferred; it has a nice signup bonus and Ultimate Rewards points are great to redeem for travel. I'd also mention Blue Cash Everyday as a companion to BCP, and that the cutoff for where it is worth it to pay the AF is $2500 a year in grocery spending (or lots more on gas/dept stores.) I added the Chase Sapphire Preferred, but I'm not sure about the Blue Cash Everyday. If you're below the break even point for the Blue Cash Preferred I think you would be better off with the Sallie Mae Card.
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Nov 7, 2014 20:14
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GreyPowerVan posted:I did google around, and theirs was the only one I could find that looked halfway decent. There's one with no fee but I think it requires you to physically come to their branch and sign up. Discover has a pretty obscure secured offer that is pretty good. You can't apply for it directly but are sometimes offered it if you appply for and are denied for a regular Discover it or Discover it student card. It has no annual/monthly fee, gets the same rewards as the regular card and automatically gets upgraded into the regular version after a year. Discover is also supposed to be one of the easier cards to qualify for so you may get lucky and not need the secured card at all. Googling around some people have had success with calling their reconsideration line if they don't get approved, 888-676-3695.
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Nov 8, 2014 08:08
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Any thoughts on this, guys? Would you need to get an Australian credit card or an American one? A very popular signup bonus right now is the Southwest airlines cards. They are currently offering 50,000 points after opening a new card and spending $2,000. The reason it is so popular is that they have multiple versions of the card so you can get the bonus multiple times, and they offer a companion pass which allows you to bring an extra person along for free every time you fly for up to 2 years. Only the premiere version of the card has no foreign transaction fee though, and you will want to wait until at least January 1st to earn the pass so it will last until December 2016. You earn the pass by earning 110,000 points in a calendar year. More traditionally both the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the BarclayCard Arrival+ have no foreign transaction fee and good sign up bonuses. The flyertalk forums might be a better place to find sign up bonus offers like this though. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credit-card-programs-599/
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Nov 12, 2014 17:16
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turbomoose posted:I have a American Express Blue Cash Preferred, can I call them to change which one it is, preferably without a yearly fee? I've been current with all my payments, I just wanted to change and use the Citi double cash back card as my every day one and therefore don't want to pay the fee on the amex. You should be able to do this no problem, though you may pay part of the monthly fee depending on how into the year you are on the Blue Cash Preferred.
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Nov 25, 2014 17:30
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hbf posted:I'm trying to build credit after having basically avoided credit my entire life. I currently have 1 card, a basic wells fargo visa cash back card (~$3k limit), which I have had for 10 months. I've always paid it in full every month. I have no other credit lines or anything on my credit report, positive or negative, except for a hard pull a few months ago for a loan that I ended up not going through with. I don't think you need to worry too much about this. The appathon you describe is really only necessary if you are constantly opening new credit card lines. A lot of information on credit cards in various blogs is designed to appeal to those people who may have 15-30 hard credit pulls on their credit report at a time. The credit report and credit score system expects you to apply for a few credit cards or loan offers while you are shopping around so a few won't affect you too much. Figure out 5 or so credit cards you think you want to apply for, then stop when you have what you need. I would see if you can find the cards reconsideration lines to call and see if they will accept you if your online application is automatically turned down.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:43
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There's not a lot you can do to protect yourself from having your card compromised, so it's important to always monitor your credit cards, even the ones you aren't using that are still active. When the US switches to chip and sig it should help pretty dramatically but you will still need to worry about people stealing your credit card number and using it online.Rurutia posted:I'm really annoyed at my credit score. It's inexplicably going down and it's hit the lowest it's been since I was 19 (720). I've pulled two of my credit reports and nothing's awry. The only bad thing on my credit report is one late payment 4 years ago. Other than that, I have 11 accounts that are always paid in full every month. I just don't get it. But it's annoying as poo poo because I've gotten declined from so many rewards credit cards, and the only credit card offers are balance transfers or low APR. And I've never carried a balance even, so what the gently caress man.
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Dec 9, 2014 16:25
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Teeter posted:Cross-posting from newbie finance thread because I realize this may be a better fit: Call the number on the back of your credit card. You'll be able to speak with a real person who can answer who can help you answer any questions about your account.
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Dec 9, 2014 21:19
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Virtue posted:I'm a recent grad with almost no credit who got approved for a Citi double rewards card that I've been using for all of my expenses for the past 2 months. The card limit is very low so I end up hitting 80% or more each month. I tried to get the limit increased but they told me I had to hold the card for a minimum of 6 months before any increase would be approved. Anything I should know to avoid tanking my credit score? You don't need to worry about this yet. Credit utilization is only based on the last reported month, previous months do not affect your score in any way. Assuming you do not need to apply for anything new in the next 4 months just use the card at 80% utilization until the 6 month mark. At this point either avoid using the card whenever possible to keep your balance low, or pay off the balance multiple times during the month before the statement is generated to prevent the utilization from ever getting above 30%. Do that for about a month and a half to make sure it's reported to the credit bureaus and then apply for a credit limit increase, another card altogether, or both. Avoid having a $0 balance though. Bisty Q. posted:Having a high number of open accounts is a positive factor. Utilization is not taken into account on individual accounts for FICO scores. Do you even have any idea what you're talking about? Pryor on Fire posted:Nope, number of accounts open is one of the factors. It's generally not a huge factor unless you regularly have balances on a large number of accounts but it still holds your score down. And the utilization is calculated on each individual line as well as across all cards. Having multiple credit cards does have an indirect affect though. Opening an account lowers the average age of accounts and results in a hard inquiry, both lowering your credit score. On the positive side having many open credit lines means opening another credit line in the future reduces the impact on your age of accounts. Someone with only 1 credit card will have their average age of accounts halved if they open a new line. Plus the person with many credit lines will almost certainly have a higher available credit limit, lowering their utilization.
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Dec 11, 2014 09:56
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bonzibuddy64 posted:What card should I use if I have no income and want to just get a ton of free poo poo online? Uhh can you elaborate more on what you want to do with this card? You do still have to pay for any purchases with a credit card
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Dec 12, 2014 16:04
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spwrozek posted:You can pay it today and not really any reason to wait. Assuming you already budgeted all that money you already spent. I pay my card about twice a month and then when I get the statement because I am weird. Two situations where you might want to do this anyways. Your credit limit is lower than your monthly expenses you want to put on the card. You credit limit is low enough that you end up with high utilization at the end of the statement. Pay the statement balance after the statement arrives anytime before the due date is the simplest way to build credit reliably. TheEye posted:Thanks, I'll get one of those then. Some quick questions: Closing the Barclaycard after you move would be fine, you should be able to convert it to the fee-free version of the Arrival card instead which would be better though.
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Dec 20, 2014 17:49
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Argh I just got a Discover It a couple days ago. The offer has been going for at least the last month and is open to anyone so you should be able to get the bonus. Call/chat/send a message to discover and say you meant to sign up for the $175 bonus. The worse that can happen is they say no.
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Jan 5, 2015 16:35
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Richard M Nixon posted:If I open a card, use it for the sign-up bonus, then close it out (because gently caress fees), after a few months there won't be any net impact on my credit, right? The average age, utilization, etc will all be where they were because the card is closed? It will affect your recent inquiries and average age of accounts. Opening the card will result in a hard inquiry which will drop your credit score a very small amount. This stays on your credit report for 2 years but doesn't affect your score after the first few months so I wouldn't worry about it. It will age and continue to affect your average age of accounts for 10 years until it drops off your credit report.
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Jan 12, 2015 17:58
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Revitalized posted:Okay I understand now. Whoops, I think I messed up my first month.... (I paid a little less than the statement balance but more than the minimum) but at least I've got 0% APR for like six months. Time to make a statement balance payment! Thanks for the clarification. Normally when you pay less than the statement balance you no longer get a grace period, purchases start earning interest as soon as you make them. To reset the grace period you need to pay off the full amount owed. Depending on the credit card company it might get restored as soon as you make the payment or the next time your statement is generated. You still have a few months of 0% APR so I'm not sure how this affects you, I would call the support line on the back of your credit card and find out specifically if what if anything you need to do to make sure you have a grace period at the end of your 0% APR period.
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Jan 14, 2015 16:04
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Honey Badger posted:I've got a quick question about secured credit cards. Right now, I've got no credit history. I'm a student with no debts and low monthly income, so from what I understand, I'm basically a ghost and there's no chance in hell that I'll get approved for a decent credit card (no annual fee, 0% APR early on, rewards). I want to start building my credit, but I'm not sure if secured credit is the way to go. Student cards are made exactly for your situation, I would look into those before a secured card. The student version of Discover It is a great one, but there are plenty of options. http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/top-credit-cards/nerdwallets-best-college-student-credit-cards/ I wouldn't worry about the hard inquries unless you are planning on applying for 6+.
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Jan 31, 2015 21:19
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I believe the US Bank Cash+ card Restaurant category was lowered from 5% to just 2%, so there's no real point in getting it just for restaurants if you have the double cash. There aren't a lot of good options for no annual fee Restaurant cards, Sam's Club has a card that is 3%. I don't think 3 cards is too many, I have a very similar setup using the no longer available Citi Forward card for eating out.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:07
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jon joe posted:I currently have two cards, one mastercard through my credit union and an amazon credit card. I'm looking to get one more card so my "spend under 10%" limit between cards isn't so low. Is there a card that offers a high starting limit in place of rewards? Failing that, what's your favorite card for online purchases in general? According to this article American Express will allow you to triple your credit limit after using the card for 60 days, assuming you haven't made any late payments. You already have the Amazon credit card for Amazon purchases, so I would say to get a flat rate cashback card unless most of your online purchases are going to fit into a particular category. The Fidelity American Express is 2% cashback but the cashback has to be deposited into a Fidelity Account.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:07
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Just a quick note about credit card churning and manufactured spend, I think it's fine to talk about here but I want to emphasize that it's not important for 99% of credit card users. You also shouldn't bother with it unless you already have a long and positive established credit history. Someone applying for many credit cards to get the sign up bonus needs to keep track of things like what credit bureaus each credit card company reports to, if they will allow you to get the same card twice, how long after cancelling a card before you can reapply and get another sign up bonus, if having 20+ credit inquiries will cause them to be automatically rejected, if certain purchases on certain cards will be classified as cash advances and many other potential issues. I have an Amex Serve card which I haven't actually used. Using the card I could fund $500/day up to $1500 month using a credit card and use that money for a full featured online bill pay system and pay rent, utilities, or even other credit card bills. There are a few catches though, the card has a $1 monthly fee (waived for me because I live in NY), the limit you can fund with a credit card is much lower if you don't apply for the card using the "softcard" mobile payment app, only available on a few phones. I haven't used it because I haven't needed it to meet any credit card minimum spend requirements and I don't want to worry about it being changed one day to classify funding the card as a cash advance.
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Feb 15, 2015 18:15
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You can pay your balance before the statement arrives, but I think it over-complicates things. The easiest way to establish a credit history without paying any interest is to wait for the statement to arrive and then pay the statement balance before the due date, every month. If you pay before the statement, or immediately after each purchase the credit card company might report a balance of $0, which doesn't hurt your credit score but also doesn't help. An exception to this is if you have high credit utilization and are applying for some type of loan or line of credit in the next month, you may want to prepay early to bring down your credit utilization. Once you have good credit though this usually becomes a non-issue.
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Feb 21, 2015 03:46
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If the 1% card has an annual fee I would call and see if it is possible to downgrade it to a card without one. If it has an annual fee and you can't downgrade it I would just cancel it. Cancelling your oldest credit card should be avoided, but it's not really a big deal. Cards in good standing will remain on your credit report for ~10 years after closing so the length of your credit history doesn't just disappear. You will lose the available credit on the card which will lower your utilization though.
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Feb 22, 2015 21:30
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nickutz posted:It is kind-of credit score gaming but closing an account will immediately affect your average age of accounts. Closing a credit card in good standing does not affect your average age of accounts. It remains on your credit report and continues to age and contribute to your average age of accounts for 10+ years. Essentially all of the credit score gaming stuff people do is entirely unnecessary.
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Feb 23, 2015 15:58
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The new Amazon Store Credit Card is going to be 5% cashback on all Amazon.com purchases, but only if you are an Amazon Prime member. It doesn't seem to earn rewards at all on purchases outside of Amazon. Planning on adding it to the OP soon but I'm curious what's happening to the old Amazon credit card. Is it staying the same, being closed, or being converted?
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Mar 17, 2015 16:36
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Blinky2099 posted:Thoughts on Amazon's store card? I was planning to add it to the OP with some caveats, if I had the card I would leave it in a drawer at home and use it exclusively for Amazon purchases. You need to have your own Amazon Prime account, it won't give you cash back if you are linked to someone else's Prime account. I can't find anything about them charging interest immediately, if that were the case I would think there would be a much bigger uproar about it. Synchrony Bank is relatively new, they used to be GE Capital Retail Bank and most of the impressions people have with them are negative. They are a legitimate bank but their site/interface/support is not the best. Finally you can get 5% cashback on Amazon through the Sallie Mae Credit Card as an alternative option, limited to $750/month.
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Mar 30, 2015 19:36
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Blinky2099 posted:Oh... that's an important distinction. Sallie Mae and Amazon is a bit hard to figure out. Any digital purchases like books for your Kindle or digital download games do not qualify for the 5%. Any physical items sold by Amazon you do get the 5%. Items sold by other sellers through Amazon are where it gets tricky, I think officially items fulfilled by Amazon will get the 5%, but I have heard a lot of conflicting information on this. If you really want to min/max though you could buy Amazon gift cards through Amazon which do get the 5% bonus and then buy whatever you want without worry.
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Mar 30, 2015 20:24
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I would recommend doing it and doing it quickly, your credit utilization is over 100% so that will probably drop you out of "Excellent" credit once they report it to the credit bureaus. I don't know too much about cards for balance transfers. The Chase Slate is very popular because it doesn't have a balance transfer fee for 60 days. One thing to look for is cards retroactively charging you interest if you don't have the full balance paid off by the end of the intro period, this is most common on crappy store credit cards though. The hard pull from your mortgage is basically a non-factor. 1 or 2 or even 8 credit inquiries is not really unusual and has a minimal effect on your score. Your credit utilization is a much more important factor.
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Apr 2, 2015 21:32
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Oh that's too bad. They in the past actually used to be more generous and would backdate Authorized Users to the date of the account opening, which meant the credit card my parents gave me for emergencies while I was in High School gave me a credit history older than I am.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:33
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Disco Salmon posted:We are looking for another credit card, either Visa or MC. We need it to have low or no foreign transactions fees, since we would be using it when we go back to the UK to visit his family. Capital One Quicksilver or Bank Americard Travel Rewards are your best bets. Both now have a EMV chip, no foreign transaction fee, no annual fee, and 1.5% cashback. You need to redeem the Bank Americard towards travel expenses but that shouldn't be an issue.
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May 4, 2015 00:38
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FunOne posted:BofA Travel is 1.5% default, 1.5% + 10% bonus if you have checking, +25% if you have 20k, +50% if you have 50k, +75% if you have 100k with the bank / investments. I added a note about this to the OP, thanks. hbf posted:Cap1 quicksilver has an annual fee after the first year ($59). Just fyi.
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May 4, 2015 18:21
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For the Amazon store card you must have Prime on your account. If you're doing the family sharing of Amazon Prime to get free shipping you won't get the 5% cashback. It's rumored that it will switch from 5% cashback to 5% store credit at some point but that shouldn't be a big deal for most people. I also don't think the 5% cashback applies to everything, some digital purchases like games and music are exempt but you should be able to get around this by buying a giftcard and then buying them.
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May 10, 2015 22:16
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For the Sallie Mae Card the Gas and Groceries are separate categories each with their own independent $250 limit. Discover is a decent card but if are just looking at rewards it probably makes sense to wait until it offers a signup bonus. They have offered $100 and $150 for pretty low amounts of spending in the past.
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May 14, 2015 19:37
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A couple of things. The best place to get your credit reports are from annualcreditreport.com. You can by law get a free copy of your credit report from each credit reporting bureau once a year. They do ask questions to verify your identity but they will often be nonsense questions to which the correct answer is something like "none of the above". If you have no credit history at all though you simply won't have a credit report though. Your husband does not necessarily need to switch credit cards when he switches banks. There's only a handful of cards that give you a bonus for banking with them. You will be able to pay any credit card bill from a checking account at any US bank without any problems. You can also see if you can be added to your husband's credit card, either as a joint account holder or an authorized user which will allow you to establish your own credit history.
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May 15, 2015 04:50
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I added the two Amazon credit cards to the OP. I want to add a small section of airline/hotel rewards cards as well but I don't think it's possible to give simple recommendations for most of them. For those cards you need to consider where you're going, how often, and if your work pays for it or not. What are some good travel rewards blogs/sites I can link to instead for people interested in them?
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Jun 20, 2015 13:27
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You can use the miles and get a straight statement credit but if you do that they are only worth half as much, so the 40,000 miles bonus would only be worth $200. When you make a purchase that counts as a travel expense you have the adoption to redeem miles against it, so if you have $400 of travel expenses you can use the bonus to get a $400 statement credit. You can though pay the $400 in travel expenses off normally from your bank account and get the $400 statement credit in a few months anyways, paying off the travel expense doesn't make it ineligible. You should never carry over a balance from month to month. It sounds more complicated than it is in practice, which is your cash back is worth double if you have travel expenses to redeem it towards.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:29
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You also need to take into account how much you will spend on the card. The Chase Freedom and Capital One Quicksilver both have no annual fee and beat out the higher cashback rate on the Doublecash until you've spent $20,000 because of their sign up bonus. For the Freedom that is assuming you never take advantage of the 5% cash back categories.
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Jun 23, 2015 18:51
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fyallm posted:drat ok. So the best straight cash back card with no international fees with chip and pin is? Seems like the other cards are way too complicated for what I want. No yearly fee would be nice, if the first year is waived and in 10months I have to downgrade with the same company no problemo. The Capital One Quicksilver is flat 1.5% cashback on everything, no categories or redemption requirements. It is also the only credit card I know to let you setup automatic rewards redemption. Mine is set to automatically redeem my cash back as a statement credit whenever the balance reaches $25. It's probably the simplest rewards system possible. Discover IT also has no foreign transaction fee and a simple rewards system. They are running a promotion where Cash Back is doubled for the next year at the moment. Discover isn't as widely accepted as Visa/Mastercard though. A few people really like the BankAmericard Travel Rewards, but I don't have that card so I'm not sure how simple the redemption options are. All three of those cards are chip and signature, not chip and pin but that should be fine. The Arrival plus is pretty unique among US cards in that it will fallback to chip and pin if chip and signature is not accepted, I don't know any recommended cards besides that one that offer this.
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Jun 24, 2015 21:45
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No Butt Stuff posted:I applied for the Citi Double Cash and didn't get instant approval, so now I'm nervous. Do you have another card with Citi? They might be hesitant to give you more credit if you already have a card with them with a high credit limit. This happened to me applying for a second Barclaycard, I just had to call and they were able to shuffle the credit limits around and then approved me. If you search for Citi's reconsideration line you should be able to find the number to call.
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Jul 1, 2015 15:00
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It looks like they are downgrading the Arrival+. It is currently unavailable to apply for, but it will apparently come back with 5% redemption bonus instead of 10%, as well as a $100 minimum for travel redemptions. If you already have the card the existing terms should last until the next time you pay the annual fee.
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Jul 2, 2015 18:58
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The credit score system is designed so that normal and responsible use of a credit card will result in good credit. The only real important thing is to make payments on time, all the time. You do not need to do any weird tricks to get a good credit score. The credit bureaus do not know or care how much of a balance you are carrying over from the previous month. If you pull your own credit report you can see that the balance reported is just going to be whatever the balance was on your credit card statement. It does not tell the credit bureaus if you pay it off in full every month, only pay the minimum, or intentionally leave a few dollars on it.
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Jul 6, 2015 22:24
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baram. posted:Are there ever promotional deals for signing up with the Citi Double Cash card? There was a $200 signup bonus for a few people when the card first launched, but nothing since.
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Aug 11, 2015 18:15
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Sonata Mused posted:Okay, cool. Thanks for the info. If you pay your entire statement balance before the due date you will always pay 0% interest, so the APR does not matter at all. This is how you should be using credit cards and the only reason why credit cards are worth bothering with. If you're in a situation where you need to carry debt on a credit card you might want to check out the Newbie Personal Finance thread or How to Create a Budget thread depending on your circumstances.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:45
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