I haven't been here in so long--you all have been plugging right along! I gave up on ever figuring out how to take full advantage of credit cards--I just don't think I have it in me--but I have gotten some excellent advice here over the years and due to you all I think I currently am at least using the cards that are right for me.
I'm back because I need a new card.I am not going to follow the usual format because I have not gotten any new cards in well over two years. I currently have:
Chase Marriott Bonvoy
AmEx Blue Sapphire Preffered
I also have one or two store credit cards (J Jill and I think one other) that I haven't used in years and probably just need to close. I don't even have a physical card for these anymore.
I have excellent credit and I pay my balances in full every month.
My current needs are a little different. I have a daughter going off to college in August and she is going a somewhat non-traditional route. She wants to be a pilot, and she plans to attend community college and get her Associate of Science degree while she gets her pilot's license, and then transfer to a 4-year university to finish up her degree after that.
The catch is that she wants to do all of this waaaaay across the country from home. It would be much cheaper if she could live at home, but....
Anyway, that's not what this board is about. She's going, and it's going to be expensive. Between tuition for both schools, renting her an apartment (no dorms), furnishing and equipping the apartment, getting some necessary repairs done to her vehicle before she dries it a could thousand miles across the country, etc., I'll be spending a lot of money over the next few months.
While we have plenty of money "put away," we never earmarked anything as specifically for our children's education, and now is kind of a bad time to be withdrawing funds from any of our accounts. We also currently have a large discrepancy between our income and our expenses; after paying off our house and me going to full time work at a new job, we have a lot more money coming in than going out. It seems more financially sound to leave our investments intact and just pay "out of pocket" for our daughter's expenses.
Here's what I'm thinking...my income will NOT cover all the expenses I'm going to accrue over the next few months. I teach at a university and my summer session ends this week, so I won't even have any more paychecks coming in until mid-August, but easily within a few months I could pay off whatever balance accumulates. So for the first time ever I'm considering carrying a balance. Very temporarily!!!
Any advice on a card that would work well for me? I don't mind an annual fee if the rewards are good, and I don't mind a high initial spend because that will not be a problem at all. My biggest issue is that I will be carrying a balance probably through the end of the year. After that, there is no need for that to ever happen again.
Are there any cards with good rewards and little or no interest charged for the first 4-6 months? I think I could pay it off by the end of October if necessary. Honestly I may be able to pay it off much sooner, I just know that there are likely to be a lot of unanticipated expenses that I am not currently considering and I don't want to be caught in a bind and end up having to transfer money out of my investment accounts after all.
Any suggestions will be appreciated, and if anyone has a referral link let me know and I'll use it.