Credit Card Resolutions For 2011

By: Mr Credit Card

01/01/2011

How time flies! We are now at the last day of 2010. I would not be surprised that if you are an avid blog reader, you will be reading lots of “resolution type post”! The truth is that many resolutions are made and most are broken. Most folks want to lose weight and end up signing up for a gym membership now and stop working out in February! So here is another resolution type post, but this time, it is about credit cards (surprise). Here are some credit card resolutions that you can make to either simply your life, improve your credit or simply get more bonus miles. They should be relatively easy to accomplish.

Get a Free Airline Ticket

True hardcore frequent fliers do this day in and day out. They are always on the watch out for bonus miles deals that help them get free airline tickets. For those of you who pay your bills in full, try to make this your resolution this year. It could be for a family vacation, business trips etc. But make an effort to get a free airline ticket this year from frequent flier miles. There are several ways to do this. They include:

Sign Up For One New Card For Bonus Miles – most reward credit cards and frequent flier credit cards offer bonus points or miles when you sign up. Make an effort to sign up one card this year. Those bonus miles might just be enough for a free airline ticket or hotel room stay>

Get Your Partner To Sign Up For A New Credit Card For Bonus Miles – Why stop at yourself. Get your partner or spouse to sign up for a similar card and you can instantly double the number of bonus miles.

Sign Up for Business Airline Credit Cards – While you can get a new airline credit card, you might as well get the business version as well.

Simplify Your Credit Card Payment and Statements

Sign Up For AutoPay – How many bills do you have at the end of the month? 10 or more. Do they pile up on your kitchen table? Do yourself a favor and sign up for autopay whereby your credit card bills will be paid in full every month and the money will be taken from your bank account. Just make sure you have enough money in your bank!

Sign Up for s-statements – Once again, do you keep your bills in a file? Are they in a mess? Why not save some space at home by simply getting e-statements and filing them in a separate email folder. Or save it in the cloud with a service like dropbox or carbonite.

Pay Off Credit Card Debt

If you have credit card debt, your goal should be to pay off debt as soon as possible so you can reap the benefits of rewards without being eroded by the interest you pay on the card.

Transfer your balance a 0% Balance Transfer Card – the first thing you want to do is to transfer your balance to a 0% balance transfer credit card. Issuers are always enticing customers to switch companies by offering such deals. If you have credit card debt, do yourself a favor by paying 0%. Use the extra interest savings to pay down principal (aka debt snowball method).

Checking Your Credit Score

Get a Copy of your Credit Report – If you have never checked your credit report or credit score, make an effort to at least check your credit report to make sure there are no errors. Go to www.annualcreditreport.com and get a free copy from Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Under federal regulations, you can entitled to one free credit report every year. Best to get one copy from each bureau every 4 months. That way, you can see what are in your files (for free) throughout the year.

Check Your Credit Score – If you have never checked your credit score, you might want to just find out what they are. They only way to get your FICO score is to them from FICO. Yes, they are sites like CreditKarma.com that claim to let your see your “free credit score from TransUnion”. But those aren’t the FICO score but are instead another version of credit score that lenders do not use! Credit Sesame is another site that lets you see your “Experian Score”. But once again, it is not the FICO score.

Better Utilize Your Credit Card

Use Your Cards’ Shopping Portal – Many credit cards have shopping portals that are not utilized by cardholders. For example, Discover More Card has their shopdiscover.com portal whereby you can make 5% to 20% when you shop with their online partners (with the card obviously). Chase and Ultimate Rewards also have their shopping portal. If you have cards that have this feature, check them out before you something from the internet. You may just end up saving some money in the process.

Sign Up for Rotating Categories – Many cash back credit cards like the Chase Freedom Visa, Discover More Card and the Citi&#174 Dividend Platinum Select&#174 MasterCard have rotating categories that lets you earn 5% when you spend on certain categories. These categories rotate every three months. But to earn these 5% rebates, you have to activate them. This normally takes a phone call or simply signing up on the web when you log into your account.

Do Not Let Your Reward Points or Frequent Flier Miles Expire

Sign Up for A Service like Awardwallet.com – It is difficult to keep track of reward points and frequent flier miles. Sign up for a service like Award Wallet and get alerts when your miles are about to expire. Don’t lose miles to expiration date unnecessarily.

So have a HAPPY NEW YEAR AND A GREAT 2011 and do these things. You’ll have an easier time managing your cards and save money as well.

Credit Card Resolutions For 2011

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