Credit cards Archives - Page 10 of 48 - Personal Finance Digest

The most popular hotel credit cards, as given by Google Trends

September 10, 2015 By pfdigest

I was curious about the relative popularity of various credit cards, but since banks don’t like to give out details on the performance of individual products, it’s not easy to tell how any given product is doing. There are some ways around this issue, though. One way is to pay ridiculous amounts of money to a market research company that specializes in this industry. Another way, which is not as good but which has the virtue of being free, is to use Google Trends.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Google Trends tells how popular a given search term is relative to total search traffic. Let’s take a look at some major hotel credit cards and see how things shake out, shall we? The search terms I entered were ‘marriott credit card’, ‘starwood credit card’, ‘hilton credit card’, ‘ihg credit card’, and ‘hyatt credit card’. I also tried ‘club carlson credit card’, but it was smaller than all the others and you’re limited to five entries on Trends.

Here’s what I got:

Observations:

Were there no hotel cards back in 2005? The credit card landscape was much different back then, but I have no idea what there was back then in the way of hotel cards. (On a related note, did you know Capital One launched a professional wrestling themed credit card in the late 90s?)
Amex’s credit card unit has been stumbling lately, and this graph exemplifies that trend as the Starwood card is currently bringing up the rear.
I’m thinking IHG may be low because it’s a new product and because I’m not sure how ingrained the IHG brand is in the public consciousness as compared to, say, Hilton or Marriott.
It looks like people are more interested in Marriott credit cards than Hilton credit cards even though Hilton is about the same size. Why is that?

Elan credit card list: what are your options?

September 8, 2015 By pfdigest

Widespread yet obscure, the Elan credit card division may be one of the biggest issuers you’ve never heard of. That’s because Elan, a division of US Bank, works behind the scenes as the credit card issuer for numerous smaller financial institutions. Some of the more prominent partners of Elan include Woodforest National Bank Credit Card (the one inside Walmart) and Associated Bank Credit Card. They offer several different types of credit cards, including a couple of Amexes, so let’s have a look and see if there’s anything of value here.

As per its website, Elan has five different credit cards aimed at the general consumer market:

Elan cards with no annual fee

Platinum: No rewards whatsoever! This card is aimed at people who don’t pay off their balances every month.

Bonus Rewards: One point per dollar spent, plus they give you an additional quarter point which they excitedly call a BONUS so that they can call this card the Bonus Rewards card. (This is how marketing departments handle low-information consumers.) Needless to say, if you’re earning 2% on your Citi DoubleCash or Fidelity Amex, you will want nothing to do with this card.

Bonus Rewards Plus: This one is actually even worse than the Bonus Rewards card. You get 1.5% on your purchases, but for some reason they charge you a $50 annual fee for the privilege of earning half a percent less than you can earn on your choice of no-annual-fee cards. Avoid this one like the plague.

You might be thinking at this point that you want nothing to do with an Elan credit card, and you’re probably correct to think so. But, the offerings at least get a little more interesting from here.

High-end Elan credit cards

Cash Rewards American Express

Now things get at least a little interesting. Did you know you could get an Amex from Elan? I didn’t. You get 3% cash back on gas (capped on $6K in purchases) and 2% cash back on supermarket purchases, and there’s no annual fee. If you’re one of those people who can never have enough Amex cards, then you may conceivably want one of these. Money Metagame had an interesting post on the value of an Amex recently and he came up with a value of $187 in his case. I had a similar post a little further back.

Travel Rewards American Express

This one gives you 3 points per dollar on airline spend and two points per dollar on hotel and restaurant expenses… but it’s got a nasty annual fee of $95. 25,000 points can be redeemed for a $325 plane ticket, giving you a theoretical maximum of 3.9% on your airline spend and 2.6% on hotels and restaurants. No thanks.

In addition to the cards above, Elan also offers business versions of the Platinum, Bonus Rewards, and Bonus Plus; college and secured cards; and a private banking product. Looking into the private banking offerings, it seems there are two different flavors: a Visa Signature and an Amex.

Looking at the Elan private bank offerings from Comerica, the Amex is the one that looks the most interesting (though still not interesting enough): 2 points per dollar on air, hotel, car rental, and restaurant purchases. But you can redeem 25,000 points for a $450 ticket, making those points worth as much as 3.6 cents on the dollar. I can’t figure out what the annual fee is, but a comparable offering from Webster Bank charges $175 per year. And this is interesting: looking into the terms and conditions on the private bank Amex, it seems that you can get get reimbursed for five lounge visits per year at $50 each. So, there’s a $250 annual benefit right there.

Overall though: not much to see here for most people. In all likelihood you’d be better off without an Elan credit card. The default option for consumers who don’t want to spend a lot of time messing around with credit card rewards is a simple no-annual-fee 2% cashback card, and no such product is offered by Elan.

Commerce Bank credit card list: which ones are any good?

August 18, 2015 By pfdigest

Good news, folks: it’s Commerce Bank credit card time! While it’s fun writing about the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Hawaiian Airlines World Elite MasterCard, it’s also fun to dig into more obscure cards. We thus turn now to Commerce Bank and its surprisingly diverse (for a smaller player) credit card portfolio. I’ve written about the Commerce Bank credit card portfolio twice before: once in reference to its Garfield credit card, which has apparently been discontinued, and once to review the Sustain:Green card.

In a nutshell: there isn’t much to see here with the possible exception of the hotel card. You’d be better off with a simple 2% card like the DoubleCash or the Fidelity Amex than with any of these. But now that we’ve brought it up, let’s start with that hotel card:

The Drury Gold Key Club credit card: The Drury Hotels credit card only gives one point per dollar spent, but consider this:

No annual fee
Benefits include best room available within classand possible room upgrades
15,000-point sign-up bonus
Only one purchase is needed to get the sign-up bonus

These points make it the most intriguing Commerce Bank credit card I’ve seen, so I’m filing it away on my list of cards to apply for. Do any of you know anything about Drury Hotels or the Drury Hotels credit card? It seems like they’re mostly in the Midwest, though they do have a few here in the southeast. I checked one near me, and on TripAdvisor it was ranked #1 of 63 hotels in Greenville, SC. Redemptions are 7,500 to 15,000 points per room, so this one isn’t a way to rack up a lot of free rooms. But on the positive side, the Drury credit card is a hotel card that’s not issued by Chase.

Special Connections Visa with Rewards: 1 point per dollar spent. No sign-up bonus. There are rotating bonus categories of 2 and 3%, but then other cards have permanent categories of 2 and 3%, while others have rotating categories of 5%. Pass! Though I should point out that you can get a 0% introductory APR for 6 months if that floats your boat. There is also a Special Connections MasterCard with Rewards version of this card as well.

One thing I don’t like about this card is that it offers 3% cash back on interest charges. What’s not to like about cash back, you ask? It’s the fact that this is a sneaky way of enticing people into debt, and a sneaky way of getting people who are bad at math to think they’re getting a good deal on their interest. Think about it: if your interest rate is 10%, and you get 3% cash back on interest charges, your interest rate is actually 9.7%–NOT 7% as some would think.

And if you’re curious, here’s the Commerce Bank Rewards page.

Commerce Bank Miles and the Commerce Bank Visa Signature: 1 point per dollar spent. No sign-up bonus. Both of these have the same kind of bonuses as the Special Connections Visa, except these two are Visa Signatures, for whatever that’s worth, which is not much. Both have the 0% introductory APR as well. Pass!

Commerce Bank World Elite MasterCard: This card is puzzling. It’s got a $125 annual fee, which would suggest that it’s an elite travel card… but it’s not! It stinks. It has the same mediocre rewards as the no-fee cards above, plus you get 2% back for travel and restaurant purchases. There’s no sign-up bonus, either. So how do they justify the high annual fee? They do offer a Lounge Club membership, but big deal… I’ve had one of those for years through my Chase Ink (although it’s being discontinued for that card) and that card has much better rewards, a better sign-up bonus, and a lower annual fee. You can safely skip this card.

Sustain:Green: See my review here. As the headline says, it’s “for environmentally conscious types who don’t understand credit cards.” If you’re starting to think that I’m not a fan of the Commerce Bank credit card scene, you are absolutely right.

The Royals MasterCard and the Blues MasterCard: Can you guess the rewards earning rate with these cards? That’s right: one point per dollar spent. The St. Louis Blues card does give you two tickets when you sign up for it. Perhaps these cards could be used to console Missouri sports fans after the Rams move to Los Angeles? Otherwise, get a 2% card and use the rewards to buy tickets to support the Missouri sports team of your choice.

Kansas City Zoo Visa: Are you ready for a surprise? Here it is: this card earns one point per dollar spent! It does have four different designs, though. Unless you’re a huge fan of the Kansas City Zoo, you can pass on this one.

In conclusion: whatever your reasons for considering a Commerce Bank credit card, the odds are that you’ll do better with a credit card from somebody else. Remember: if you don’t know what you’re doing with credit cards, your best bet is to get a simple 2% cash back card and pay it off every month. Cheers!

commerce bank credit card

The great mystery of the 2016 presidential election cycle: why doesn’t Scott Walker get a 0% balance transfer?

August 15, 2015 By pfdigest

Here’s an interesting headline from National Journal a few weeks ago: Scott Walker Is Paying 27.24 Percent Interest on $10,000-Plus in Credit-Card Debt:

Gov. Scott Walker has two credit-card debts of more than $10,000 apiece on separate cards and is paying an eye-popping 27.24 percent interest rate on one of them, new federal financial documents disclosed on Monday show.
The Republican presidential candidate has cast himself as both a fiscal conservative leader and a penny-pinching everyman on the campaign trail, often touting his love of Kohl’s, the discount department store. His newly published financial disclosure shows that, like many Americans, Walker has few assets, some major debts (including more than $100,000 for student loans for his children), and a punishing interest rate on his credit-card obligations.
Walker incurred one credit-card debt with Barclays in 2014, according to the financial disclosure form, and owed between $10,000 and $15,000 at a 27.24 percent interest rate as of July 2015.

It’s not only Barclaycard, though:

One of Walker’s credit-card debts, to Bank of America, dates back to 2011, his first year as governor, according to the disclosure form. Walker currently owes between $10,000 and $15,000 on that one, with an interest rate of 11.99 percent.
…On the Wisconsin form, Walker also listed a $5,000 to $50,000 debt to Sears Master Card as of the end of 2014. That debt does not appear on Walker’s federal disclosure, suggesting he paid it off.

Seriously, what gives here? I know it’s hectic being governor and running for President, but c’mon, it takes five minutes to apply for a new card with a 0% promo rate. Isn’t there a campaign intern who could take care of this?

On a related note, here’s a cool graph from NPR that shows how likely people are to pay their credit card bill in full, broken out by FICO:

I know Americans have lots of credit card debt, but this is surprising. Even at the 700 level–which is not great but not terrible either–only one quarter of the population pays off their balance every month.

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