Managing credit cards

First note: although we have credit cards, we use them as "charge cards", that is, we pay them off in total each month. We only use them to simplify our purchases.

We have a number of credit cards, each with different benefits. One thing we do is make sure that we are never carrying the same credit cards. So, if Dwayne is carrying the Citibank Mastercard, then the Citibank Mastercard with Patti's name on it is not in Patti's wallet - it is stored away in a safe place. That way, if either of us loses a wallet, we won't have lost all of our credit cards. It is somewhat difficult to get cards replaced - they get mailed to our mailing address, and then need to be sent to us... so it is at least a week to get a new card, and that is if we are somewhere that we can get mail before we're heading off again.

Our credit cards also have different cash-back benefits that change each quarter. So... each quarter, some of our cards change what benefits are available. We don't expect ourselves to remember which card to use for which transactions, so instead, we have a note:

I make up a sticky note at the beginning of each quarter, indicating which card to use for which activity, based on the cash back we will receive. One of the other "special" categories that one of the cards gives extra cash back is "travel", but we don't really spend on what they consider travel (air travel, taxi fares, train tickets), so I don't make a notation for that.

The Sam's club card is our primary go-to card. Its categories don't change - generally fuel gives 5% back, dining gives 3% back, and 1% for everything else - except I got a new Sam's club card and it gives double cash back for the first 90 days (through February). The down side to the Sam's club cash back is that we get it back once a year (February, I think). The other cards allow you to claim the cash back based on having earned to a clip level (like $25 worth) - so if we've spent to that clip level, we can get the cash back each month. We just use the cash back to pay against the bill; a couple of the banks have deals where you can use it for shopping, but we haven't found that the items are things that we would want.

Something that we paid particular attention to this year was whether there was an additional fee for using the card for foreign currency transactions. BBVA, and I think, Chase, charged a 3% transaction fee. Sam's did not have a foreign currency transaction fee, and neither did Citi Mastercard. I have contacted Citi both of the last two years to cancel the card when it comes time to pay the yearly membership fee - because we don't use it anymore (it gives AAdvantage miles, but we really aren't using those anymore). Both years they have offered to credit back the membership fee as long as I use it to charge some amount (like $100) within the next 90 days. It turned out to be nice to have the Citi card this summer in Canada since it did not charge a transaction fee for the Canadian transactions.

Another thing that we have found varies from one card vendor to another is how long they can be placed on "travel" status. Sam's is just 30 days; I think BBVA is 90 days. When we stay somewhere for a while, the card will work just fine, even if we aren't at our "home" address (Livingston). But when we start moving, within the first few days, we'll have a refused charge, telling us that we need to call them and let them know that we're traveling. It is a good thing for them to check to make sure that we're still in possession of our cards, although it is annoying when we've just put $200+ of diesel into Miss Doozie and now the card doesn't work! We're getting a little smarter and putting reminders in our calendar to tell us to call the credit card company and let them know we're still traveling and which states we will be in to try to avoid the refused charges.

Funny story from last year: the credit card I tried to use got declined (so we used another one). As we headed off down the road, I called the credit card company. The lady I got transferred to said, "Yes, I've been tracking you across Louisiana and into Mississippi. I saw that you were at <city 1> and then <city 2>. I figured it was ok, but wanted to get in touch with you to be sure." I pictured a drone hovering over the bus tracking us as we traveled down the road. Some folks would probably be concerned about the invasion of privacy, but because it is a benefit to us (if we *did* lose the card), we are ok with it.

It is definitely worth shopping around to find the credit card(s) that match up to how you use them. However, if you aren't budgeting to know how much you can spend and controlling to that, I would not recommend using credit cards at all! Staying on budget is more important than cash back!!!