You've got some good advice in this thread, and I think the best to take away might be that you should consider a rewards card. I use a Chase Freedom card for my purchases, and I've probably received a couple hundred dollars back so far. When it comes to reward cards, you want to make the card work for you, so make sure to choose the one that works best for you. For example, if Discover covers the most of where you shop and for the highest percentage, you may want to consider that. To give you an idea, I'm waiting for Q4 2013 when Chase Freedom has Amazon on their 5% list. :awe:
As for balance transfers, they can be quite useful if you've gotten yourself in a bit of a debt pickle. I've been considering trying to get one recently. I was a bit of a dumbass as a kid, and I put a bunch of stuff on a card. Now, I'll admit that I should be smarter now and try to push more money toward it to pay it off. However, an even smarter move may be to attempt a balance transfer to a card with a low fee (~3%) and a long no-interest period (12+ months). 3% is actually not far off of what I pay in interest since the card in question is absolutely terrible... 27% APR with a yearly fee. Since monthly interest is calculated by (APR / 12) * current balance, the APR figure for a single month is about 2.25% vs. the one-time balance transfer fee of 3%.
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