I have a confession to make.... I recently got a new credit card.
Hear me out though - we learned last month that my Sister-in-Law is getting married this coming summer. She asked us to attend the wedding. By that time, we will be out of debt so we plan on heading to New England for the ceremony. Right after learning about the wedding, I received an email from SouthWest offering me a special bonus of 50,000 miles if I apply for their credit card.
I was nervous at first and thought, no way! The last thing I want to do is put myself at risk for more debt. Plus, there's even a $69 annual fee that I would NOT be interested in paying. I'm fundamentally against annual fees and have never paid one. But, over a couple of days, I started to warm up to the idea. 50,000 equals about 2 round trip flights or $800 in travel. I started to do the math and realized that it may be a great way for us to save some money on our trip back East. Even with the annual fee, we are still making out on what the flight would have cost us. Plus, we do plan to travel more once we are out of debt so this could be a great way to get some free flights.
I applied for the card and was approved. It came in the mail recently and we had to make one charge on it to get the 50,000 points. I went ahead and paid a bill that we normally would have paid cash for. When the credit card bill comes in, I'll pay it in full. I do not plan on using the card much at all and DEFINITELY don't plan on having a balance on it. The days of me paying interest on a credit card are quickly coming to an end! I may even cancel the card after our trip (before the next annual fee comes up in 2013), depending on if we find that it's useful or not.
Question : Do you pay an annual fee for a credit card with rewards? Have you found it useful? Would you recommend for or against it?
