Credit Card Problems

Never in my life have I had credit card problems. Perhaps I’ve been lucky, but it’s my frugal nature having the ability save and only use credit in emergencies or when short of cash. But with the economy in the toilet, Credit Card Companies are cutting back credit lines – even if you have great credit.

Some cards I just keep on hand for that occasional purchase, but my Chase Gold MasterCard was tucked away in a safe place and forgotten about over the years. Chase of course decided to cancel the account regardless of my outstanding history with them.

I was fond of that MasterCard. It was my first Gold Card which 25 years ago actually meant you were special. It had an annual fee of $25 that was quite reasonable for the time since most Gold Cards required a fee upwards in the $100 range. The interest rate never changed over the years and held steady at under 10% despite the interest fluctuations.

Eventually I tried to cancel the card due to the annual fee, but the Bank of NY – before they were bought out by Chase – convinced me to hold onto the card without any annual fees. Of course I decided to stay with them as a customer.

Time goes by and with one of the hundreds of credit card offers I’ve received over the years I picked up an airmiles card from FirstUSA and regularly use it to rack up miles on United for some nice domestic travel deals.

Between Discover and my FirstUSA card, my Gold MasterCard gets shelved without being used for years. Needless to say this, you need to make a purchase once and awhile to keep your account active even if you charge a Latte at StarBucks. Do this once or twice a year and the issuer will keep happy.

Eventually, Bank of NY and FirstUSA became Chase as a result of mergers and acquisitions and Chase forgot that I was a long time customer. My credit card problems could be worse, but for me my FICO went down and the price of credit went up if I never need it again.

Airmiles Credit Card Takes Us to S.F.

We had a wonderful weekend trip to the Bay area with complements from our airmiles credit card. Even though the trip was relatively short, it was nice to get away for the weekend and not worry about the economy and just focus on the good things in life: love, eating, eating and more eating.

The free airline tickets saved us lots of money so we splurged on shopping without feeling too guilty. Plus we saved 5% on our rental and hotel by using Discover. However, it took a day to get over guilt of not working on our "save money online" site which getting close to launch, but it will get done when it's good and done.

It must have been over 20 years since we've been to China Town and the Wharf. The food was delicious and even the sand in the Clam chowder was good.

Now that most of the United Air miles are gone, I'm either going switch over to Delta or just use my cash back card more often. It's really hard to justify using United since we hardly fly them.

It will take a couple of more years before we accumulate enough frequent flier miles before we can take another free trip. With the bad economy, we had a sense of urgency to take this trip sooner than later. (Who knows if our miles will still be around or what shape the airline industry will be in a couple of years from now.) But it was a good trip to San Fransisco with thanks to our airmiles credit card.

Use Your Discover as an Airmiles Card

This quarter (January - March), remember to sign up for your 5% bonus at the Discover website and your card will be better than an Airmiles Card for purchases in the travel industry.

Every three months, Discover promotes different types of industries where you can increase your cashback bonus from 1% to 5%. If you book any hotel rooms, flights, car rentals using your card, you get a huge discount.

Typical discounts using your airmiles credit card are about 1%, but during the first three months of the year, your Discover card will pay you back 5x the amount.

The only catch is that you have to sign up for the bonus once you login to your account or just call the 1-800 number on the back of your card and ask for the bonus for January - March.

We're Using Our Airmiles Card for Vacation

It's time for a vacation and the accumulated miles on our Airmiles Credit Card has enough to get us two round-trip tickets anywhere in the lower 48. Since we're planning a trip in February, we don't have much to worry about blackout dates.

I've often considered switching over to Delta for our airmiles card but I've been using the United Mileage Plus card for quite some time; hence, long enough to accumulate two tickets for vacation. I really like Delta Air and tend to use them as our choice air carrier.

Sometimes you don't have a choice of airlines and for a while I was flying United at least once a month and eventually they offered a card through Chase. The card had no annual fee, which is unheard of for airmiles cards so I grabbed one up. Delta and the other airlines have cards, but they're fee free the first year and the $75 thereafter. Not worth it if it takes 5 years to accumulate enough frequent flyer miles on purchases alone.

So for now we're stuck with United for our airmiels card until someone offers a better deal.

To really exploit your card, you need to use it whenever you book hotel or rent a car. You get 1 mile for every dollar you spend plus 500+ ff miles for your hotel stay. Our last trip to ATL, we used our Mileage Plus card to rent a Jeep Cherokee. Since it was a driving trip, we booked our hotel rooms with Hilton and got miles just about every night we checked-in.

We've never been to NYC and that should be a nice trip to take to spend on Valentines day or on our wedding anniversary. Now if I can keep it a suprise from my Wife...

Until next time, remember to pay off your credit cards each month to avoid those hefty interest rates those companys charge use to keep us in debt.