what's your favorite credit card

[alison]

I figure since we're all pretty much in the same financial boat (hey, is that a hole over there in the bottom?), I'd ask what card you use.

We travel with Alaska quite often, but the annual fee is $75. AmEx is great, but I'm finding that it's accepted less frequently in CA than in Chicago.

Which card do you like for accumulating whatever points you like to accumulate (or not like to accumulate)?

[civilspouse]

Dh loves our Schwab card. I have liked it so far. Instead of the points like other cards you just get 2% cash back. The part I didn't like about it is you have to open up a money market account with them that the 2% is deposited into. I think that you had to have a min of $1000 to open it, but after we did that it's been great. I don't think there are any fee that you have to pay and you can make investments with the account. We also have an IRA with them so it's worked out well for us.

[migirl]

We use a Citibank Mastercard. Depending on the purchase, you can get 1% - 5% cash back. We pay the balance every month and there's no annual fee, so it's essentially free money. I think there's a limit of $300 cash back per year, and we hit that every time by November.

[alison]

We use a Citibank Mastercard. Depending on the purchase, you can get 1% - 5% cash back. We pay the balance every month and there's no annual fee, so it's essentially free money. I think there's a limit of $300 cash back per year, and we hit that every time by November.

Thanks! AmEx Blue is like this too. No annual fee, and no limit on how much you can get back, I believe. Mastercards are accepted more widely, so I'll look into this.

[MarissaNicole]

I love our discover card. I enjoy the 1% back on everything, and then 5% back on certain categories (ex: travel, groceries, entertainment, etc.) for 3 month periods at a time.

We charge EVERYTHING we possibly can, and rack up the cash back. We then try and redeem for gift card to go out to eat or shop. Certain stores allow you to redeem $20 of rewards for $25.

And of course no annual fee.

[DCJenn]

We have an AmEX that is empty and only used for emergencies and is paid off monthly. We have a USAA MasterCard that also is never used. It is listed as the back up to the savings account for bounce protection on the checking account, too. The AmEx gives one point for every dollar charged, I have no idea what the USAA MC does because we never use that one, either.

99% of the time we use our USAA debit MasterCard and we get 1% cash back.

Discover remains on my list of people we will never use again. Citibank is on that list, too.

Jenn

[JaneDoe]

Dh loves our Schwab card. I have liked it so far. Instead of the points like other cards you just get 2% cash back. The part I didn't like about it is you have to open up a money market account with them that the 2% is deposited into. I think that you had to have a min of $1000 to open it, but after we did that it's been great. I don't think there are any fee that you have to pay and you can make investments with the account. We also have an IRA with them so it's worked out well for us.

We have this one too; however, we were not required to have any kind of minimum to open the money market account. In fact, the only money sitting the account is our cash rewards. We also have AmEx which gives us 5% cash back on gas and grocery after you spend an annual amount of $6500. We think the Schwab card is better, though because 2% is a decent return on a credit card and we recieve it monthly as cash (rather than a credit to our account). We also pay our cards off each month.

[poky]

We used to mostly use our united miles plus cards, and we got free business class tickets to europe with them, but we now have a ridiculous number of miles and no time to go to europe with them, so we keep the cards and put a little on them every so often so the miles don't expire, but we mostly use our southwest card (all of these are chase cards, btw). With the southwest card, we're on track for two free roundtrip tickets per year, which *more* than makes up for the annual fee, which is something like $60.

[ladymoreta]

I really should get a card that does something for me... (points, cash back, anything) When I was in college, I decided I needed a card for emergencies and to build some kind of credit, and Capital One was the only one that would approve me. So that's my credit card! Low limit, terrible rate, no perks, but I've had it for years, so eventually that will be good, right? I occasionally carry a balance for a month or so, but I try to keep it paid off.

I've opened some store cards to get the 10% off or no interest period if I am making a really large purchase, but I close those pretty quickly. So yeah, I should be paying attention to this thread!

[SuzySunshine]

I have an American card, we use the miles for small trips - I know I should save them up for bigger trips but it will be many years before we take one of those.

[NYCHoosier]

Re: what's your favorite credit card

I love love love AmEx. I have both a blue (high limit, no annual fee) and a gold rewards plus (unlimited, $100 annual fee, pay balance within the month).

In addition to the rewards (which are there but I don't really take advantage of...), they have the best customer service I've experienced with any company and they have a good overseas rate.

With the abundance of corporate AmEx's in NYC, I've only run into difficulties using it twice: once ordering LSAT prep books from a small California based company and when ordering a bridesmaid dress from a bridal shop in Arkansas. A shop owner in India asked if I had another, but when I said no, he let me use it.


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[medpedspouse]

We used the USAA Visa for everything to rack up points. This is how I bought my Kindle and I just bought tix to visit DH's dad from those points. BUT since we are flying SW more where we now live, and SW is not part of the USAA program, I got the SW Visa Card (Chase) and get at least 3 flights a year which makes the annual fee worth it. We pay the ccards off each month...we will see who we keep if they begin penalizing us. Oh and I have the USAA Amex but we rarely use that one.

A friend told me to consider Capital One because it is the only ccard that does not charge you a percentage when you use it in other countries to convert the currency. Sounds nice but I gave Capital One the boot almost 8-9 years ago for their poor customer service. Anyone know if they have changed their ways?

[Vishenka69]

Our gold Amex is the go-to card (with 1% cash back MasterCard as a back up). I love their pre-sale ticket specials, various coupon codes for online merchants and the rewards program. We can use the points for any airline or get a gift card to a number of stores. The also have amazing customer service and I feel safe using the card for all kinds of online purchases and overseas. We also used their car buying program with our last car and had a great experience.

I only keep the MasterCard for the instances when Amex isn't accepted, which is rarely.

[alison]

There are tons of shops where I am currently living that don't accept AmEx. Even in the mall here! And sometimes when i pay with the Blue card, I often get a "where's the strip on this?". Or, "now that's a fancy card!". . I didn't know California could be so Podunk, USA. )))

[GrayMatterWife]

We have an Amex Gold charge card that I've had for years. We have a BoA Mastercard credit card that DH has had since his sophomore year of college. And, we have debit cards to our two bank accounts. We use cash as much as possible. We charge only those items that can't be paid for in cash, and we pay off our CC bills every month in full. I have no idea what the Mastercard APR even is, since we never pay the financing fee. If we can't afford it (or, can't afford to pay it off in full when the CC bill comes in), we don't buy it.

We've always been like this--when money was scarce back when we were both in school, and when I was working at Big Firm with Big Salary. Our finances seemed to have little impact on my willingness to accrue debt. I just really, really, really hate personal debt. Back when I was paying off my law school loans, I used to wake up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, short of breath, stressed out over the debt.

It's not a very sophisticated approach to debt-management. I realize that. I know that there is no reason that an employed attorney with a decent paycheck should wake up at night with panic attacks over school (not consumer) debt. It's not that I can't intellectually appreciate how you can use debt in a responsible way. I just have this almost irrational fear of being in debt. I watched close relatives (not my family, but close) go through bankruptcy and asset seizure when I was six (note to everyone: do NOT allow a six-year-old to show up at a close relative's house when furniture is being repossessed--it has a deep and lasting effect). To this day, I still can't believe we bought our apartment, since we had to take out a note for it. The only reason I could swallow it was because it was financially imprudent to pay the high rents here and we had enough for 20-down on a 15-fixed. Ideally, I would like to pay cash-only for our next place.

This is how nearly unreasonable I am about debt.

So, we have CCs, but--back to the original question--my favorite CC is the one on which I have no debt.