Anyone have any recommendations on credit cards? I saw someone mentioned it a few pages back. I'm looking into one that will serve basically as a debit card that I pay off after each purchase. Would love one with good reward points/travel points.
I like AmEx Gold w/ membership rewards: 3 points per dollar on airfare, 2x on gas and groceries, 1x on everything else. AmEx points are valuable because you can redeem them on virtually any airline (sometimes with transfer bonus: last year British Airways gave an extra 50% on miles transferred to their Avios program). You can exploit airline alliances to get some great deal (i.e. transfer points to Singapore Air to redeem on United domestic round-trip first class= only 40k miles).
The promotion when I signed up was 50k miles to start and no annual fee for the first year, thereafter $175.
i love my discover card. customer service is most excellent (real nice english speaking americans based in atlanta) and the 5% rotating categories is pretty damn good as well no apr for the first 12 months and no annual fee
also no bullshit like points. 5% saved is actually 5% instead of a point conversion of like 2 points to a cent. plus you can just use your cashback like cash isntead of buying giftcards and shit
5% cashback is excellent assuming you actually use the card in the current category and don't accrue more cashback than the max allowed during each period. Points are consistent, and can be leveraged for redemptions worth far more than an averaged 2% cashback.
Discover is almost as well-regarded as AmEx in customer service, though.