Looking for Credit Card "Perks"

The newest program I have registered for is uPromise. It's a 529 savings plan to save for school expenses. These expenses could include college tuition, room and board, books and other materials, training and certifications, etc. You log into upromise.com and register your credit cards, pharmacy cards, and grocery cards. A percentage of each expenditure goes into the 529 plan. You can change the beneficiary to multiple children or anyone in the family up to grandparents, grandchildren, cousins, aunts, uncles, or yourself. And... it's free of charge. No montly fees.

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WOW, have you been in a cave? lol, kidding aside...there are thousands of cards giving you all kinds of choices in points, gifts, and cash back. I don't know why anyone ever pays an annual fee for a credit card, their bonuses are no better than the free options out there. I have looked for the best deals.
CitiCard offers cashback on all purchases in a variety of ways as does Discover Card. Visa has some options.
Do you want to save for kid's college? Go with the UPromise card where you get extra money back from partners and for shopping online and stuff like that. FutureTrust has a similar card but they list of partners isn't as big.

Almost all department stores have credit incentives but not usually cash back. Most gas stations have some sort of reward for using their credi card or a rewards card (you get double from speedway if you use the rewards car AND their credit card).

So, I guess the question is, what are you looking for in a rewards card? Feel free to PM me for more specific info on your options :)

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I have a Upromise credit card and an Amazon.com credit card. My husband carries the GMC credit card. He's had it for years. When we bought our current vehicle (EnvoyXL) new 5 years ago, we had an additional $3000 off the negotiated price because of the credit card. I've had the amazon.com card for about 3 years. You get a $25 gift certificate for amazon.com after you spend so much money. I think it works out to 1%. Not the best out there sicne many have rebates/rewards equal to 2-5% but it's useful for us because we can buy alot of different things on amazon. I just got the Upromise card a few months ago and haven't used the amazon one much since. In just a few months we've had about $50 added to our Upromise account. The percentage varies depending on what you buy... somethings are as high as 10-12%! You also get paid double on some things... for instance - you get a certain percentage for buying a specific food item at the grocery store (like 1%) and then you get additional money because you get a percentage of the total charged amount at that store.

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Two words... AMERICAN EXPRESS. Go to their website and look at the rewards page. You earn points with whatever you spend. You can then use the points to earn gift cards to a bunch of different stores or redeem your points at ticketmaster.com or hundreds of stores at the American Express mall online. You can also set up and pay your other bills with American Express through their website so that you can really rack up the points. We cash out our points right before Christmas and give the gift cards as presents. My best idea yet!

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I have the Starbucks Visa card...it's good if you like their coffee. I mainly use my Starbucks Visa card, and then I get 1% in Starbucks "money", so when I go to starbucks, I basically get my coffee for free. No annual fee.

The American Express Blue Cash card is also good...they give you cash back, and there's no annual fee.

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I have 3 different cards that give different rewards. Our citi rewards card gives back 1% on all purchases that you can then redeem for all types of gift cards or airline miles or what have you. I also have my discover card which is simply cash back, or you can redeem for giftcards as well if you so choose. I really only use it for the 5% back promos that they have every month. The 3rd one we have is a CHase mastercard that gives back 5% on all gas purchases. We only use it for gas purchases, but it's nice to be credited with $15+/month on our bill for all of our gas purchases.

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if you're interested in saving for college, citibank does a upromise card and if you have an account with fidelity investments they also offer a card that will save money to an educational account.

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J.,

We don't use "store" credit cards except for Kohls or Old Navy/Gap and that's only when they have a special sale. As for our other credit cards, we use Discover only to pay for daycare and they offer a Cash Back. This is great. Since daycare is so expensive ($500/week), we get 1% back a year on it. So, about $230. They allow you to double it for some options, too. I really like it and there is no annual maximum.

Our Citibank Master Card offers 1% cash back (2% on gas, groceries, utilities, cable bills) and we put everything on there and pay it off every month. Once you get $50, you can request a check. We usually wait until it's about $100 or so and we deposit the cash back check in our sons bank accounts. There is a $300 annual maximum on cash back.

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Hi J.,

I have a Disney visa that gives you $1 per $100 spent. Not a whole lot but since I go to Disney World every year, I usually use the "perks" as our souvenier money. That way I don't spend any money that has been budgeted in. Last year, I had $200 to spend, you can spend it anywhere Disney, food, merchandise, etc.

Good luck
C.

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If you buy your cars new, GM has a card that you can earn money towards a new car purchase. (Doesn't work for used cars though.) I think we have over $3000 on ours right now. Good luck!

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If you've been a loyal customer for quite some time, especially once who carries a revolving balance, call up the company and ask what they have to offer.

Say something to the effect of "I've really enjoyed doing business with you, but I feel that I could get more perks/better interest rate/etc. if I went with another card company. It's too bad that you don't have anything enticing to offer me to stay."

That should sound the warning bells right away. If you carry a balance, even if it is a small one, the card company is making money from having you as a customer. Loyalty is VERY important to them and they might be able to sweeten the deal if they know you are going to drop them. Case in point: We knew we were going to buy a house, so we paid off and closed a few of our lingering 'college days' cards. When we called to close them we were offered so many things, lower interest rates, no annual fees, no interest on transfers for up to 2 years, etc. But, since we were buying a house and wanting to have clean, stellar credit we turned down everything.

You'd be surprised at what a company might be willing to do if they know you're taking their business elsewhere. Don't approach it as 'accusatory', just as an "I've enjoyed being a customer, you've always treated me well, but I have better options". You always catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar!

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With the cash back ones, you have to be careful about the limit for the year, that it's not too low for you. We use our credit card a LOT, as my husband uses it for work and gets reimbursed too, so the decent percentage cash back ones didn't work for us nearly as well as the points to get gift cards. Gift cards is usually where you get the most back (though we too don't travel a lot so we don't look at those benefits). Cash back is usually a less percentage back. Items are usually a lot more points than if you were to get a gift card and buy the item yourself at the store. Also, looking for incentives, I assume you pay your credit card off monthly, as the incentive cards usually have significantly higher interest rates from what I understand. Also, incentives seem to be a lot less than they used to be. All that said,
the best I've found is Citibank and Chase Mastercards (we use the Citibank Mastercard and have for several years). We recently got a letter saying that instead of 5 points for gas, grocery, and pharmacy along with 1 point on every other dollar, we'd get 2 points for gas, grocery, pharmacy, and some utilities along with the 1 point for every other dollar spent. When I got the letter, I compared to other companies and seems as though they've all decreased similarly. Chase Mastercard seems a little better as it's more variety in categories they offer bonus points in and the categories used are like the top 3 you spent on that month...something like that. So it seems slightly better than Citibank at the moment. Though I don't recommend Chase as a bank, but rather a local credit union. Hope this helps. I'll be interested in what others say too if others have found more than what my research found. :)

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I would agree with previous post and call up your cc company and ask what they can do for you. Quite honestly, there are TONS out there - gas, cash rebates, airlines, toys, donations, etc. But typically the more perks a CC offers, the higher interest rate. So be careful. We have a visa/mc Toys R Us card that is nice. We also have Discover but honeslty don't use it much. I would check out bankrate.com or similiar sites... it compiles many cc's/apr/fee/incentives.

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Personally, I like the amazon.com card at the moment. Works like a regular credit card and then builds up points that can be used online at their site. You get more points if you buy at their site, but aren't limited to it.

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Personally, I like cash back. My favorite is probably the original Discover Card (1% back + monthly special purchase categories that give you 5% back). They also let you cash out at any time in $20 increments. I also like the Blue Cash American Express, which gives you up to 5% back once you reach a certain spending amount. They do a yearly "cashout" as a credit to your account.

Here is a great site that lets you sort by rewards offered and gives info on different cards: http://momswallet.ecreditdirectory.com

Hope this helps!

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Actually, someone mentioned only using "store cards" for special sales, etc. But, the GAP actually has a new GAP Visa... it can be obviously be used at GAP/Old Navy/Banana Republic (you get 5 points per dollar spent... and right now it's double rewards points!). However, it can be used anywhere Visa is accepted and you earn 1 point per dollar spent. You'll get $10 in rewards dollars everytime you get to 1,000 points (and if you hit more than that in a month, your rewards go up). With growing kids... there's no reason not to have it!!! :)

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Here is another one. I don't think anyone mentioned this yet.
Do you use a debit/credit card that accesses your checking when you shop? It's not a credit card, you are using your own money...
Anyways, the Chase bank has a program called Visa Extras. Not sure if visa also does it, or if it's only a chase incentive.
There are two versions, a free one that gives you 1 point per dollar when you shop. The second is $25/year and gives 4 points per dollar.
Some of the rewards include Disney park passes.
I believe you can sign up for the free one at www.chase.com/visaextras. The second one, you have to go to the bank, and they issue you a new/special card, and enroll you.

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