New Financial Plan

Back when I was getting my first credit cards all I needed to know was what I got as a bonus when I signed up.  At that time it was shirts and hats.  If I liked the little prize I was happy to sign up.  When I went to the store I pulled a card out.  If they didn’t take that one I just pulled out a different one.  Eventually I realized that you only need so many cards, and there are problems with having too many.

Next I realized that not only could you put off paying for something for a month, but some companies even rewarded you for using their card.  I had a discover card so it became my card of choice.  I used it for everything.  When I went to get my rewards they seemed low.  It turns out that up to 2% back was hard to get to, and probably impossible for me at the time since I wasn’t spending all that much money.

With my spending increasing each year my rewards were building up.  Good news for me when they had the double your reward program in place.  A friend of mine had a mastercard earning a steady 1% on everything and thought I should switch.  I never stopped to crunch the numbers, but I figured that since I was reaching 2% at the end of the year, and doubling all of it, I was probably coming out a bit ahead of 1%.

Then discover started removing the rewards I liked.  The double rewards were in things I didn’t want.  I still had reward money sitting in my account, so I chose the best rewards and cashed out.  Then I got one of the 1% mastercards.  When the 5% gas/grocery rewards cards got popular I got one of them.  When they changed my account to a 2% version they changed my account numbers.  Since I had to update my account numbers everywhere I moved on again to the chase freedom 3% on top three select categories.