Cash Back Rewards Credit Cards

Cash back reward credit cards are a wonderful thing, if you use the credit card wisely. It is a great to earn points that can be redeemed for cash, travel vouchers or others types of merchandise just for using your credit card.

Not all credit cards give back, so be careful and do your research and read the fine print on the credit card application. The cards that do offer cash back do not all give back the same amount, each card offers different incentives when rewarding the purchaser.

Here are some guidelines for choosing the best rewards credit card for you.

Credit Score

Each card company will have different qualifications for their cards. Know your credit score and check with the card company to see what their average approved credit score is for their rewards card. If you have a medium or low credit score then most likely you will have a hard time getting approved for a rewards credit card.

High Cash Back Rewards

Not all rewards cards offer the same cash back. Some credit cards only offer 1 percent cash back on purchases, while other card companies will offer a higher cash back reward. Again do your research and try to get approved for one that offers higher cash back rewards.

Unlimited Cash Back

Again not all cards are the same even when it comes to the amount of cash back they will award you. Some companies put a cap on the amount of money they will reward you, while others have no cap on their cash back rewards.

Sign Up Bonus

Several of the rewards cards offer great bonuses if you spend $500 dollars within the first 90 days of having the rewards credit card. This is a great way to maximize the cash back benefits right in the beginning. Some card companies offer different types of promotions from time to time, check with your card company and see what types of promotions they offer.

Annual Fee’s

Check around, you should be able to find a rewards card that does not have an annual fee tied to it. Some cards may have an annual fee but the cash back rewards outweigh the annual fee being charged so in this case the fee is worth it.

Remember these rewards cards are credit cards, so if you want the best from the rewards then you need to pay off the balance every month so you don’t start acquiring interest. Having interest charges on these cards negates the cash back rewards, Another thing to remember is just because you are getting cash back rewards does not mean you can go out and overspend and ruin your budget. It can be tempting to overspend and purchase items you really don’t need. These cash back rewards cards are great if used responsibly and used sensibly.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Credit Karma

I have been using and recommending Credit Karma for years. There are a lot of advantages to using this service to get a good look at your credit. One of the real nice advantage is that Credit Karma is a free service. They have large paid advertisers base that cover the cost of this service. What that means to you is that you will never have to give Credit Karma a credit card number to use this service. Some of the other credit services offer free credit information but you have to supply them with a credit card, some of these services only give you thirty days of free service and then they charge you a fee. With Credit Karma you do not have to worry about ever getting charged for the service they provide.

Here are a few of the services that Credit Karma offers you:

Credit Karma gives you a report card of credit. This is an analysis of your open credit card utilization, average age of open credit lines, hard credit inquiries, total debt, and of course the big debt to income ration.  This report is awesome because it shows you a grade of A through F for each area. If you use this information correctly you can fix these areas that you are scoring a C or worse to help improve your overall credit score.

You also receive for free is a snapshot of your credit score from TransUnion which can be updated as much as you like. Credit Karma keeps track of your score over a period of time and lets you know how you are coming along hopefully fixing any credit issues. The snapshot is a view of how lenders are viewing your credit as compared to the national scores.

A great tool that Credit Karma offers is a credit simulator. This tool gives you fourteen different simulations that you can run to see how they will affect your personal credit. One example I tried was, how raising my credit limits affected my overall score. The fourteen options are broken down into three categories: credit limit, payments, and records.

Other feature that Credit Karma offers are news articles dealing with finances, financial tools, financial calculators and forums and feeds pertaining to finances.

The only disadvantage of Credit Karma is that they don't give you a true "FICO Score". They do offer a real close to true score which is very helpful. This is the only thing I found to be a little disadvantage, but I can live with it since they do offer so many other beneficial tools to help a person with there credit issues.