re: Another Credit Card?

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Money board people will hate this idea.

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I considered that too. Dad always told me to never get your cash savings really low because things like rent can't be paid for with a CC. Not that I have ever had a "rainy day rent" situation, but YOU NEVER KNOW! LOL. I live in financial fear if you can't tell. Terrified of making the wrong choice and hurting myself.

You can do both. Sign up for Chase Slate - 0% APR and free balance transfer in the 1st few months

Then find the other card you want to use as a primary card with points and charge it to that

you would probably get a similar line. even if you did get a fairly low line, you can pay it off as many times a month as you want to.

Chase Freedom is a perfect starter card for you. 0% interest for 15 months and you start earning points towards rewards. As your credit history gets stronger you can move up to the premium cards in the Chase library.

I ended up going with the American Express Blue Cash card. From my research, Freedom is a great starter card and I may try to get it later, but they approve people for far lower lines of credit than others. Which is fine, just not in the case of booking a vacation.

So I took a chance and did Blue Cash and was approved for plenty more than I'll even use. Plus $100 cash back bonus for spending $1k in your first 3 months. No balance currently on my 23% APR card, so going to leave that one alone beyond small things.

First- don't buy something you can't pay off/afford
Second- if you have to use a CC and know you won't be able to pay it off before the interest hits, yes, find one with 0%
Third- only use a CC if you pay the entire balance every month

It can be. I've said that. I just prefer to pay it off in 2-3 payments instead of taking a chunk of my saved cash out of my hands.

My entire dilemma was: pay with my cash vs pay with a card for rewards and more time to pay off.

My crossroads was whether I use the card I already have which is 23% apr or get a card with an intro 0% since it'll be paid off within a few weeks anyway.

That's the important thing. There's nothing wrong with using someone else's money (for free) for as long as you can, as long as you can pay it off without being charged interest - and as long as you're not continually buying things that you wouldn't otherwise buy. Just don't let 0% offers lead you into debt temptation - that's what they're designed to do. If it's a twelve month deal, set up an automatic 1/12th monthly payment in online checking. Easy squeezy.

The only other thing she said that caught my eye was that she doesn't really pay attention to her statements, only the statement balance. I would suggest that, rather than just paying whatever the balance shows, she get in the habit of looking at her statement line by line. Sooner or later, an error will be made or she'll be the victim of an overcharge, if not fraud. Better to catch things like that sooner than later. I know iOS devices have the feature, and possibly other mobile platforms too, but I get alerts every time a charge is made against the cards I have loaded in the system.

It varies greatly chase will give me $3000 and Barclays citi and cap one will give me 8-10k

Only had one Amex and they started me out at 1.5k back when I first started now it's over 20k 4 years later