Credit Cards With Good Sign-Up Incentives
Use credit wisely. I don’t pay interest on consumer debt, and I never apply for a credit card unless I get something out of it! They still make tons of money from charging merchant fees, so those with good credit should expect a cut of the action…
Up to $250 from Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card American Express
Earn 10,000 Starpoints with your first purchase, and another 15,000 Starpoints when you spend $5,000 in 6 months, for a potential total of 25,000 Starpoints. You can exchange 10,000 Starpoints for a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate. (I ended up using my points to stay at the Westin Palace Hotel in Madrid.) No annual fee the first year, $65 after that if you don’t cancel.
$100 from American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card
Earn 10,000 Membership Rewards points when you spend $500 in 3 months of Card membership- redeemable for a $100 gift card at places like Home Depot or Banana Republic. No annual fee the first year, $125 after that if you don’t cancel.
Find more in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 4/14/09, 1:34am | Trackback
April 14th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Citi has a new card called “Citi Forward”. You get 11,000 Thank You points after purchasing $50 and signing up for paperless statements within 3 months. You also get 100 points per month for paying the min payment or more, on time and staying under your limit.
Five ThankYou Points for every dollar you spend on books, music, restaurants (including fast food), movies and video rentals.
April 14th, 2009 at 6:40 am
I have good credit and a BankofAmerica AmEx card that has no annual fee. I am curious to know how high fee cards compare to their benefits. Is it really worth it to pay a higher fee on a card given the benefits or not?
April 14th, 2009 at 8:23 am
I use a card that gives my favorite charity the rewards. This keeps me from being enthusiastic about raising my level of spending, and it helps those that I think deserve my support.
And, it’s paid in full each month.
Clair
April 14th, 2009 at 9:15 am
I have to agree I been looking at the CITI Forward card, I think 5 points on food would be great, we recently cashed in a $25 dollar gift card with them.
HS
April 14th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Do you know the best card I could use to get cash back or credit when putting my daughter’s day care/preschool on the card? We can auto pay with credit card and I thought it would be a good way to get back some extra cash. Unfortunately they don’t accept AMEX or I would put it on my cashback blue card.
Any suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated.
April 14th, 2009 at 10:25 am
So, I have opened many credit cards to get the incentives, but I have found that doing so hurts my credit score. How do you avoid this?
April 14th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Note that the CostcoTrueEarnings card has an annual fee of sorts– it requires a Costco membership. A great deal if you already want to have a Costco membership, but probably not worth it otherwise.
April 14th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I have been waiting a long time for the AE costco card to give a cash insentive to join, thanks!
April 14th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Can anyone comment on their experience with the Discover cashback program? I’m wondering how worthwhile it is. Thanks
April 14th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Discover recently (e.g. a week ago or so) changed their terms of service on me to make it inferior to the American Express Costco card. (They now only give a cashback of 0.25% on the first $1500, and 0.5% on the second $1500 vs. at least 1% on every dollar for the AMEX.) You must be logged in to your Discover account to view the cash rewards details, so this might vary from person to person.
I suspect that Discover’s days in my wallet are numbered. We’ll see how much I use the 5% program since that’s all that’s going on the card now…
April 14th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I work at a gift shop and we just stopped accepting AE as payment because their commission is too high for us.
April 14th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
We spend about 4-5k a month on our Discover, and get around twenty bucks cash back. Not great. We make a lot more on our rewards checking account, which requires us to use our debit cards ten times each (for two accounts).
April 15th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Thanks for the Citi Forward note, I have added it to the list. The 0.25% APR reduction isn’t very attractive, but the regular rewards don’t look bad for those who eat out a lot.
The Discover 5% program isn’t the greatest ever, but it does provide about an extra $20 every quarter or so (up to $80 a year) if you max it out. I basically only use it for the 5% rewards. The cashback on everything else is tiered so it’s not very good.
April 15th, 2009 at 10:00 am
When you apply for a credit card, your credit score will be lowered by about 5-10 points. The actual number varies based on your current credit history. However, the effect from the number of “recent request for credit” drops off after about 6 months, so the hit is only temporary.
Thus, if you have a good credit score with some “buffer”, you can basically apply for a certain number of credit cards every six months, and pocket the incentives as profit.
April 15th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Every new account also lowers your “Average Account Age.” If you only have a handful of items on your credit report, this can be significant. Less troublesome if you have multiple old lines.
April 15th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
link for $25 bonus on the Costco AMEX seems to be broken?
April 16th, 2009 at 11:24 am
KFN – Yes, but if you just cancel the cards you end up not wanting to keep (like the ones with annual fees before the end of 1st year), then they drop off. The average account age is just for open accounts. Also reduces clutter.
This is the same reason why they say to try and keep your oldest account open. If it’s closed then it drops off.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Costco Amex – Apply for the business card and the gas rebate rises from 3% to 5%. No other difference in fee or other rewards (3% dining, 2% travel, 1% all other) from the regular Costco Amex card.
Discover Rewards – This is our all-purpose rewards card. Yes, there’s a tiering, but once that’s met, the *unlimited 1%* reward, the broad acceptance of the card (less than Visa or MC, but better than Amex) , and $0 fee are all advantages. Most importantly, though is the ability to expand the reward by 20% or more by taking it in the form of merchant gift cards, not cash. For example, we can trade $20 in reward bucks for a $25 LLBean gift card. (Buy a $26 shirt at Bean, with the $25 card and $1 on the Barclay’s Bean Visa–gives us free monogramming and shipping–and we end up with $40 of value for only $21!!! Some other Discover offers are for 50% premiums or greater, but more esoteric products (cruise lines, for example.)
Beware the rotating quarterly 5% “bonus rewards” though. Each has a dollar cap per quarter that limits its value to only about $20 each quarter.
Discover customer service, web site and billing statements all are superior.
June 21st, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Can you really just cancel right after recieving the sign up reward?
Does it hurt your credit having gone through all these credit cards?