Credit Cards

I got Denied for a Credit Card. Now What?

November 14, 2018 By Ian Thomas 1 Comment

You had it all planned out. The trip to Europe in the spring. Which friends you’d ask to go with you. How you’d ask your boss for the time off work. And which credit card would help get you there. So you apply for the card… and get a “pending” or “denied” message. And you start to cry. Because your dreams are crushed.

No wait, don’t get too upset yet! Maybe get on the Googles and search “What to do when I get denied for a credit card” and end up here. And from here, you start to get that little glimmer of hope back.

Let me first start off by saying that I have gotten that “denied” and “pending” message before. And it’s no fun, because what would be really nice to see on the screen is “approved”. BUT all is not lost, even if you are denied. 3/4 times I’ve gotten that message, I’ve been able to call the reconsideration hotline (it’s a real thing folks) and talk them into giving me the card.

And by talk them into it, I literally mean talk them into it. Sometimes it takes a couple different calls and different reps. But if there is a great reason to get that credit card and it will be used – stick to your story.

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Our Top 3 Travel Credit Cards

September 18, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

So, last week I went over how great credit cards are at making travel accessible – check it out here – and today I’m going to run down my favorite travel credit cards. These are by no means the only cards out there, and they aren’t even the only travel cards I have. The combination of rewards, minimum spend and annual fee make these some of my favorites. Let’s do this thing!

Best Airline Card

If you are flying domestically, chances are that Southwest can get you where you need to go. And that’s not to say they always have the best prices – sometimes that award goes to the ultra-low airlines like Frontier or Spirit. But out of all of the airlines that I know of, Southwest has by far the best reward program. There are no blackout dates, which means every flight and every destination is points-eligible.

Southwest has a couple different credit cards, but their Plus card and Priority card are relatively similar. Currently, the sign-up bonus is for 40,000 points after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months. There is an annual fee of $69, but that is basically offset by the anniversary bonus of 3,000 points. For some perspective, 5,000 points are worth a little under $100. AKA 40,000 points are almost $800 in value!

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Credit Cards: The Gateway to Free Travel

September 12, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

Credit cards mean different things to different people, and most of it has to do with your experience. For some, credit cards represent high-interest rates and a gateway to mountains of debt. For others, credit cards are some mysterious and forbidden last-resort option. And for some people, like me, credit cards are a gateway to free travel.

Surely it can’t be as simple as that, though, right? I mean, can you have the best of those three options without falling into any of the other options along the way? It is actually pretty easy to manage, and it all comes down to educating yourself on how they work and making a game-plan for your usage of them.

The Basics

Credit cards are relatively straightforward. You use them to pay for bills and expenses and instead of the money being pulled directly from your account, it gets stacked up against your “credit limit”. Aka the amount that the bank decided it could trust you to pay back when you applied for the card. Then, after a month of using it, the bank will ask for a minimum payment that goes towards your entire balance. Ideally, you pay off the entire balance so you do not have to deal with interest (which is usually pretty high for credit cards).

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Barclay’s Arrival Card and Airbnb (or Disney)

July 19, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

We have been taking a little bit of a break from our “Summer of Renovations” the past week and a half with Sarah’s parents in town. However, any chill time that we got in over the evenings was well-earned because they helped paint all of our doors and trim to go along with some deep cleaning! It was again just a joy to put time and energy (…and to watch them put their time and energy 😉 ) into some of the little things around the house.

For example, the doors in our house all seemed to be a different shade of beige with mismatched yellow doorknobs and yellow-rusty hinges (not rustIC, rustY). And with painting the doors, it seemed like the perfect time to bring all of this random hardware onto the same page with a nice simple black. So next time you stop by, check out our matte black doorknobs (that all match) and our sweet $.99 matte black hinges (thanks eBay)….

Tips for Staying on Top of Your Credit Score

June 19, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

Credit scores are funny little beasts, and it’s important to stay on top of your score. Knowing what your score is and keeping an eye on it for changes will give you a lot more ownership over the whole credit thing in general. And a credit score is essentially a numerical representation of your credit report, so knowing your score and watching it for changes makes it easy to see and understand over time how your credit is impacted by decisions you make. Open a new card? Your credit will drop by 5-10 points. A couple months later, back to normal.

So for today’s post, I’m going to run down some of my favorite options for staying on top of your credit score, what to watch out for and what to do if you notice a mistake. It’s important to note that checking your score in this way is considered a soft pull and will not impact your credit. This is unlike a hard pull that lenders perform, which will show up on your credit report and drop your score slightly.

Before diving into this post, it’s probably a good idea to head here to get a quick 101 in Credit and here to disperse some common myths about credit.

All good? Then let’s go!

Credit Karma

You’ve probably seen a commercial for this website at some point – it really started to gain steam a couple years ago and now you can even file your taxes through them. Credit Karma pulls your reports using the last couple digits of your social security card and runs them through a credit scoring tool. Based on the information in your reports, like recent accounts or missed payments, it spits out a number. This is what mine looks like….

Friday Five Episode 4

May 25, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

We are kicking off a brief Friday Five with some flight sales, a dream home competition, and a credit card FYI! Let’s dive in.

1. HGTV Smart Home Giveaway

HGTV is having a sweepstakes with a grand prize of over $1.6 million. Sure, the odds are low, but hey someone has to win! Check in out here.

2. APR Poll

This was an interesting poll I ran across that has some scary numbers: almost half of the people with credit cards don’t know what their APR is. As a reminder, APR, or annual percentage rate, is basically the interest rate that banks charge consumers for carrying a balance. This is reason number 1 why I recommend paying off your card each month if you can, and getting a card with a low APR if you can’t! Read more about APR and how it is calculated here….

Planning Trips with Points and Miles

May 1, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

This past weekend, Sarah and I headed down to the beach for a relaxing weekend full of sand, sun, and friends. It has been a while since we have been to the beach – and it feels like it’s been even longer since we had a chill vacation trip; usually, we are all about the exploring and adventuring. This trip came at the perfect time for us, though, because our life has felt like a whirlwind ever since we got back from our Aus / NZ trip – buying a house and starting reno jobs adds a whole extra dimension to our definition of “free time”. Kinda what I imagine having a kid will be like, though usually, our house doesn’t wake us up in the middle of the night, except for the random I-think-someone-is-in-our-house kind of wake up that happens occasionally.

On our way down to the beach, we had a solid 4.5 hours of drive time that was full of podcasts and discussions about what our next year looked like. Sarah and I have lots of plans for our house, and that is going to keep us incredibly busy, but we want to make sure we have space for travel as well. We have a good number of trips in the pipeline – Canada, Maryland, and D.C. – but all of those have some connection to either family or work. And don’t get me wrong, we looove those trips and are incredibly thankful that we are able to visit family so much, but we are kind of itching to have another adventure trip in the works….

7 Tips to Raise Your Credit Score

March 20, 2018 By Ian Thomas 10 Comments

Having a good credit score is an important financial goal because attaining and maintaining a good credit score will set you up for long-term success. When you work with banks to obtain credit or a loan, whether it be for a car, house or credit card, having a good score means lower interest rates and friendlier terms. Over time, this can save big bucks, especially when it comes to larger purchases like vehicles and homes.

Improving your credit score is not something that happens overnight, though. It is the result of an intentional effort to be a good steward of the money you are loaned and make choices that reflect positively on you. So, here are some tips and tricks that, over time, will result in your credit score increasing.

Make payments on time

This is a big one! Every time you miss a payment or a due date, think of it as a letter that your bank sends to the credit bureaus that will go on your report, and eventually be reflected in your credit score. Equifax notes that a 30-day delinquency could damage your credit by dropping it over 100 points – which takes a credit score from attractive loanee to questionable. I use a financial tool called Mint to track all of my different accounts. So, in light of how important it is to make payments on time, that leads to tip #2……

Financial Review – Three Weeks in Australia & New Zealand

March 13, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

The dust has settled, the jet lag has been beaten back (well, for me – Sarah might still be working on it) and we are adjusting to life-as-normal back in Birmingham. Our trip was a great adventure and a grand success – we kept waiting for something to go wrong – the rental car tire to go flat, missing a flight, losing a passport – but nothing on this trek went bottom up, and I am super thankful for that.

This trip was planned on a relatively skinny budget, and one of the reasons I am doing this financial recap is because I want everyone to fully understand just how attainable travel is, especially when you use handy-dandy points! I’m going to dive into the finances of our trip – specifically, everything we paid as it related to 3 different categories – flights, accommodation and car rental. These three categories contain the three biggest costs of (probably) any trip and the ones that can be most easily offset by either using points or strategic maneuvering.

I did not include food, excursions or any random costs, like the Pride & Prejudice book I bought at a Salvation Army in Queenstown for a good flight read (Update: watched movies the whole time, didn’t even touch the book). Costs like these can fluctuate situationally for people – Sarah and I tend to run to a grocery store as soon as we get somewhere and stock up on bread, cold cuts, and fruit + veggies for meals. Sometimes this is difficult, like instant-coffee-every-morning kind of hard, but we were gone for 21 days, so either Hobbiton or eating out was going to get the boot, and I like to think I made the right decision 🙂

Alright, so let’s get ready to dive in. Three categories – flights, accommodations and rentals – and I’ll be including a running tab of what our actual cost would have been, so you can compare how well points worked out for us on this trip.…