Credit cards

[SCNCY]

If you travel even just a decent amount you gotta get an expensive card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve. The travel perks and points are just too good and will pay for the annual fee and then some. You can transfer the points to a bunch of airlines or hotels. I was very anti-annual fee but this card has made me money.

The Capital One Venture X is a newer card in this category as well. There are also AmEx options.

Agree with travel. My wife had a heavy travel job where she was gone quite often. The hotel rewards add up quickly. The points added up so quickly that I think we got enough points for 5-8 nights free at a hotel, with one of the hotels being fairly nice for 3 or 4 nights.

So if you travel a decent amount, definitely get a credit card to put your travel on.

 

[JP4CY]

Sam's Credit:

• 5% cash back on gas anywhere that Mastercard is accepted (for the first $6,000 a year, then 1% after)
• 3% cash back on Sam’s Club purchases for Plus Members
• 3% cash back on dining and takeout
• 1% cash back on other purchases wherever Mastercard is accepted

(I think the 3% back @ Sams for Plus is now actually 5%)

 

[mkadl]

One question for those who pay their CC off every month, We pay the amount that keeps us from paying interest every month, is,: do you pay off the total balance or just the amount that keeps you from paying interest. The one thing many people forget is that if you pay that part that keeps you from paying interest, you still have a months of charges on the credit card. My wife is nearly full time with her debit card (as a former loan officer, the debit card has protection, you can set limits to only allow so much per day and three day period, you can also only be hit for what is in your account, if the bank okays the OD, they are on the hook) Banks also get paid a different rate for credit and debit, they will push whatever they get a better kickback for, I was incharge of setting things up for our debit cards when I was a loan officer.

We pay almost daily. It has become a habit.

 

[ianoconnor]

Mostly use a discover but the wife has a capital one and probably switching over to that. Discover is supposed to be 1% everywhere but they now consider box stores something different and you only get 0.25% so I'm thinking of bouncing that and using the capital one where it's 1.5% everywhere. I prefer cash so that is what I do.

Look at Citi Double Cash. It's 2% cash back on everything.

 

[mcblogerson]

Wife and I use Southwest Visa, so we can rack up free miles. Originally we set it up by opening 4 cards and if you spend 3k on each card, you get a companion pass so every ticket you buy comes with another free one for 2 years. That combined with all the free points you get, we basically flew for free for 2 years as a family of four. It was a great deal overall. We’ll probably do it again in another year now that travel is going back to normal.

We pay them off every month, so theres no interest involved.

 

[benman82]

If you want to compare different credit cards, The Points Guy https://thepointsguy.com/ is a good place to do some research. So is Nerd Wallet https://www.nerdwallet.com/the-best-credit-cards

It depends how you plan to use it (what purchases) and what you want it for (points? cash back? airline miles?). With some cards (like American Express) you can covert your AE points to other points - like Delta or Marriott.

The points guy is a bad place to do research. His point value comparison chart is good, but he gets paid to shill cards so his recommendations are biased towards making himself money and not to providing the reader with the best information.

doctorofcredit.com is a smaller site, but it is the most trusted place to get unbiased reviews about all things credit cards.


In general the most valuable thing is to constantly sign up for new cards and get the new card spending bonuses. This page has that info: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/best-current-credit-card-sign-bonuses/

For everyday cards you should get no less than 2% back. I use both the citi double cash and capital 1 venture x for 2% back on everything. I also use the costco card for gas at 4%.

The most valuable perk to any credit card is easily the southwest companion pass. It's basically unlimited buy seat one and take another person free flights for 1-2 years. There's no blackout dates, and you can use the companion pass both on cash flights or flights booked with points. It's not exactly a perk just for having the cards, and you do have to get the signup bonus from two cards (with one being a personal card and one being a business card) to earn the 125,000 points in one calendar year to get the companion pass. It's best to get the cards signup bonuses in January because the pass expiration is also based on calendar years.

After the companion pass, I would just follow doctor of credit to see the next best card signups. One thing to keep in mind if you get really into it is that Chase will not give you any new cards if you've signed up for 5+ cards in the last 24 months across all banks. Chase also has a lot of the best bonuses, so it's best to get theirs first if you are going to really get into it.

 

[ForbinsAscynt]

Amex Delta card.

 

[BCClone]

The points guy is a bad place to do research. His point value comparison chart is good, but he gets paid to shill cards so his recommendations are biased towards making himself money and not to providing the reader with the best information.

doctorofcredit.com is a smaller site, but it is the most trusted place to get unbiased reviews about all things credit cards.


In general the most valuable thing is to constantly sign up for new cards and get the new card spending bonuses. This page has that info: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/best-current-credit-card-sign-bonuses/

For everyday cards you should get no less than 2% back. I use both the citi double cash and capital 1 venture x for 2% back on everything. I also use the costco card for gas at 4%.

The most valuable perk to any credit card is easily the southwest companion pass. It's basically unlimited buy seat one and take another person free flights for 1-2 years. There's no blackout dates, and you can use the companion pass both on cash flights or flights booked with points. It's not exactly a perk just for having the cards, and you do have to get the signup bonus from two cards (with one being a personal card and one being a business card) to earn the 125,000 points in one calendar year to get the companion pass. It's best to get the cards signup bonuses in January because the pass expiration is also based on calendar years.

After the companion pass, I would just follow doctor of credit to see the next best card signups. One thing to keep in mind if you get really into it is that Chase will not give you any new cards if you've signed up for 5+ cards in the last 24 months across all banks. Chase also has a lot of the best bonuses, so it's best to get theirs first if you are going to really get into it.

Doesn't changing credit cards, 1) Doesn't it kill you credit score over time and limit you and 2) be a PITA with changing information all the time?

 

[conmebol]

I will say your groceries are capped at $6000/year to get 6% cash back. Then it drops to 1%, I believe.

before purchasing it, i did some math to see if we would hit that 6K in a year at the store and its close. depends on the month- it also helps we get our beef/pork from a locker so were not spending money on that at the store.

If you spend less than 3166.5/year you're better off getting No Annual Fee Blue Cash at 3% Cash Back up to 6000.

 

[ISUCyclones2015]

At one point I had 11-12 when they had that big points boom in 2015-17 and now down to 5-6 and rotate in and out more as I track the bonuses.

I would see what you spend on each category like entertainment, food, gas, groceries etc and go from there. Like the gas and groceries one would be fairly useless to me but entertainment and food hell yea.

 

[BryceC]

Wife and I use Southwest Visa, so we can rack up free miles. Originally we set it up by opening 4 cards and if you spend 3k on each card, you get a companion pass so every ticket you buy comes with another free one for 2 years. That combined with all the free points you get, we basically flew for free for 2 years as a family of four. It was a great deal overall. We’ll probably do it again in another year now that travel is going back to normal.

We pay them off every month, so theres no interest involved.

The SW companion pass is the best deal in travel. We've done this several times. I'm not super wealthy but it's allowed me to be able to go a lot of places and do a lot of things.

I think when anybody is giving a recommendation on these things though you need to find out what you want out of it. If you just want cash back, go with a no brainer card like Discover or something. I want to treat the bonuses from credit card purchases as just funny money we use to do special things. I don't buy much stuff anyway so when I buy something it's because I actually need it.

Doesn't changing credit cards, 1) Doesn't it kill you credit score over time and limit you and 2) be a PITA with changing information all the time?

Depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. If you want to make it take a lot of time but get crazy rewards you can. If you want to spend a little bit of time and focus on 1 or 2 cards you can.

We've gone a little crazy on it at times and gotten a lot of different cards but that was basically just for certain special trips. But honestly my credit score hasn't really been effected at all. We don't do much borrowing anyway though so it really doesn't have much effect on me.

For the record and I've said this before my family of 5 went to the Maui invitational and we spent like 200.00 total on hotel/plane travel. Yeah it might have dropped my credit score 10 points but we saved literally thousands of dollars.

 

[CoachHines3]

If you spend less than 3166.5/year you're better off getting No Annual Fee Blue Cash at 3% Cash Back up to 6000.

Yeah, i spend more than $263/month at the store, though

 

[ISUCyclones2015]

Doesn't changing credit cards, 1) Doesn't it kill you credit score over time and limit you and 2) be a PITA with changing information all the time?

My credit score has not been that affected, in fact it continues to go up. Minor changes for a month like opening a new credit card but that’s about it

 

[CoachHines3]

Doesn't changing credit cards, 1) Doesn't it kill you credit score over time and limit you and 2) be a PITA with changing information all the time?

i don' think its a terrible idea to do a credit card audit every once in a while.

I realized that my wells fargo credit card had a terrible cash back system (it was one of the old ones) so i switched to their active cash one that just a pure 2% cash back on anything.

 

[CloneGuy8]

I have cap one quicksilver. 1.5% cash back on all purchases. I'm sure there are better ones out there, but didnt want to deal with the bs of only some purchases getting cash back.

 

[cyclone4L]

I love the Apple Card. My wife and I have a spending problem and it helps to track everything. We realized that my wife spent $4,000 on coffee last year... we have made some changes.

 

[mred]

My main cards:

• Fidelity Rewards Visa -- 2% cash back on everything (cash must go into a fidelity account to get the 2% -- I have a Fidelity IRA so I put it there)
• Discover -- rotating 5% cash back
• Target Red Card -- 5% discount at Target
• Amex Blue Cash Everyday -- 3% cash back on first $6k of groceries (mainly have an amex for various amex offers and perks)

No annual fee on any of them.

 

[cowgirl836]

We use the citi double cash for almost everything and then use target card and have a couple others we use for 5%. Most of the year we have 5% on gas, groceries, restaurants, home improvement/Amazon. I think there's a new citi one where you can pick permanent 5% categories which we should look into. We always pay in full, nice way to get a few hundred a yr.

 

[throwittoblythe]

The Amazon one is one I think we should look into. Besides the Fareway and the hardware store, we buy most everything else on Amazon.

We make most purchases on the Mastercard account that came with my college checking account over 40 years ago. Since it is same bank as our checking account, we set it up to pay full amount of last statement from checking. We also have an Amex green card we use for large purchases that we want to move money around to pay off.

I am just relieved I have convinced all of my sons to finally quit using the debit for things like gas, although some places the technology has improved on preventing card information from being stolen. The son in FL had a streak of four times in six months getting someone using his Visa info but that’s pretty easy to fix and the card company caught it quick each time.

I wish they would allow you to out your rewards toward the card payment, that would be really nice.

Regardless, it’s nice to have that rewards balance come back every month because we have prime purchases pretty much weekly.

 

[simply1]

The SW companion pass is the best deal in travel. We've done this several times. I'm not super wealthy but it's allowed me to be able to go a lot of places and do a lot of things.

I think when anybody is giving a recommendation on these things though you need to find out what you want out of it. If you just want cash back, go with a no brainer card like Discover or something. I want to treat the bonuses from credit card purchases as just funny money we use to do special things. I don't buy much stuff anyway so when I buy something it's because I actually need it.



Depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. If you want to make it take a lot of time but get crazy rewards you can. If you want to spend a little bit of time and focus on 1 or 2 cards you can.

We've gone a little crazy on it at times and gotten a lot of different cards but that was basically just for certain special trips. But honestly my credit score hasn't really been effected at all. We don't do much borrowing anyway though so it really doesn't have much effect on me.

For the record and I've said this before my family of 5 went to the Maui invitational and we spent like 200.00 total on hotel/plane travel. Yeah it might have dropped my credit score 10 points but we saved literally thousands of dollars.

I’m not a Southwest fan so we use Alaska Airlines with a yearly companion fare and no fees for checked luggage. Great for going to Hawaii!