Credit Cards

What primary credit card do you use? I used to use a regular Citi Platinum Select card, with no rewards, due to it’s incredibly low APR.

I’ve now started using the Citi/American Express Dividends card with a pretty low APR, rewards, and AmEx benefits like retail/flight protection(reimbursement if price goes down). What do you all use?

I’ve got at least one of each and switch off between them. Pay them off every month, don’t carry a balance.

I use AmEx because of its insane protection (my favorite is the +1 year warranty on most things you buy). I try to pay everything off every month so the APR doesn’t matter for me. As long as you do that, credit cards become more of a delayed payment than loans.

Amex Blue for most charges for an awesome cash back, and I pay it off 99.9% every month to retain the “bonus” cash back. My primary alternate card is a Discover for small purchases, or a CharterOne-issued Mastercard with a 5.99% fixed rate for purchases I have to carry a balance with.

BTW - Avoid Capital One like the plague. Their reporting methods drag down your credit rating.

Bank of America Visa, Chase Visa. Only one ever carries a balance, the other has a retarded limit for emergencies.

BoA Visa and MC, plus recently applied for a Capital One Visa. I only got the MC after the Visa because I wanted a card with rewards (my first card contributes money to my college instead of giving me rewards) and a bigger credit limit, but it ended up increasing my credit limit only a little because they decreased the limit on my first card when I got the second. Grr.

Why do I want a bigger limit? When I applied for an Amazon.com Visa I was denied for not having a big enough limit.

Why did they decrease the limit on another card after you got a second? I’ve never heard of companies doing that.

Amex keeps upping my limit. I started out with a $4500 limit in 2004, and my current limit is $22500. They’re crazy.

USAA MC. Low rate, plus the +1 year on warranties, plus a retarded high limit, plus 1% cashback rewards.

Good customer service too.

Shame you have to have military connections to qualify though :(

Visa because I can use it in 99.9% of stores without paying any fees.

I just got a Mastercard Gold which it seems I shall now use for evety major purchase since it offers 2 years additional warranty (making it 4 years total) and travel insurance.

Amazon Visa. The rewards are pretty sweet even if the interest rate sucks. If you pay it off every month, the interest rate doesn’t matter.

I hadn’t even thought of getting their VISA. It’s taken me four years to get around to switching my insurance to them, but I suppose the credit card is the next logical step. Their customer service really is second to none.

None. I have a Visa check card and an American Express for work. I use no personal credit cards.

You have to learn what you’re bad with. 10 years ago I was bad with credit. Solution for me … stay the hell away from it. I have a mortgage, but no other debt. Car, furniture, everything-I-own … paid for, no credit.

Travel bookings and whatnot are done on the work card and paid back on my checkcard upon billing. If needed, I would get my own American Express for the same reason, travel only.

Probably because I’m still a student. I graduated from college in May and made 18 grand last year while in school (really about 21k but the last 3k was not subject to taxes kekekeke) so I’m getting cards now cuz I won’t work my first year in law school.

I am also on the No Credit Cards bandwagon. Back before debit cards were common, credit cards made sense, because that was how you bought things without cash. Now, though, the main function of a credit card is to permit you to buy things that you don’t actually have money for, on a regular basis; i.e. as a lifestyle. Doesn’t seem like a very good thing for me.

Royal Bank Visa. No idea what the APR or bonuses are, as I pay it off each month. I originally got it just to make online purchases easier, though I’m deliberately trying to build a credit history now by sticking a bunch of automated bills on it.

My mother’s never had a credit card, and she’s starting to regret it now. She was looking at buying a house last year, after a lifetime of renting and taking care of her parents’ house, and the banks wouldn’t even give her time time of day without a credit history unless she could scrape up a huge down payment.

Amex. I do not trust myself with an actual credit card any more. Having to pay it off every month keeps me on the straight and narrow, and the rewards and protections are pretty nice too.

They did that with my dad and his wife, too. They kept upping their credit limit even though they were unemployed and living in a cabin in the woods. Meanwhile Visa hasn’t upped my limit without me asking once, in over a decade.

Visa isn’t responsible for that. It’s up to the issuer (like, the actual bank, Citi, BofA, et al).

Bank of America Visa, never carry a balance.

Were both cards through the same bank/provider?

If you get a second card through the same provider, they’ll often lower the limit on your first card around the amount of the limit on the new one, because otherwise they just massively upped your effectivel credit limit.

I had an air miles reward card, and then got a nice balance transfer offer for what I thought was a totally unrelated card. I sent in the application, got the card, and saw the credit limit shifts, and that was what I was told when I called to ask what happened. This was like 10 years ago when I’d use balance transfers to keep the debt at 0% (minus the transfer fees, which were trivial then and less so now). I didn’t read the fine print enough to realize that the two cards were from the same bank conglomerate.