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Details Of The Citi Gold AAdvantage World MasterCard Application
If you fly American Airlines, have good credit and are looking to open a new MasterCard account, using the Citi Gold AAdvantage World MasterCard application may fit the bill. It is one of several cards that Citibank offers that is designed for people who fly on American.
For each dollar you spend on the Citi Gold AAdvantage World MasterCard, you earn one mile of travel on American Airlines. You can also use earned miles toward hotel accommodations and rental cars. The maximum amount of miles you can earn in any given year is 60,000, but those miles have no expiration date so long as there is some activity on the account once during a three year time frame.
Citicard offers several AAdvantage cards, so it is important to note that the Citi Gold AAdvantage World MasterCard offers 12,500 bonus miles for the first purchase on the card! Its annual fee of $50 is waived for the first year, as well, and this particular MasterCard has no pre-set spending limit. (All that means is that you can exceed your credit limit on occasion, based on your payment history.)
Currently, the APR for the Citi Gold AAdvantage World MasterCard is 17.99%. For cash advances, the variable APR goes up to 22.99%. If you happen to default on the card, the variable APR can be raised to 31.99%. There are, of course, finance charges for any purchases that are not paid for within the first 30 days, and there are charges for other services like cash advances, foreign purchase and balance transfers.
So, if you travel, want to earn much needed bonus miles, and like the flexibility of having no pre-set spending limit, the $50 annual fee shouldnt affect your decision about applying for this MasterCard. If you pay off your card each month, dont normally spend more than $60,000 on a card per year (which will be the maximum limit of bonus miles you can earn), and like that there are no black out dates for when you can travel with bonus miles earned, you will definitely appreciate the Citi Gold AAdvantage World MasterCard.
Cash Back Credit Cards – Solutions With "Catches" (Page 1 of 2)
Cash back credit cards are now being made available in a variety of new options. However, it is important for consumers not to skip over the process of researching all details of a card before applying. Cash back credit cards, although useful credit card solutions, also frequently carry with them several “catches” (targeted reward categories, high credit necessary to apply, potentially capped rewards) that consumers need to inform themselves about in order to maximize their effective use of the cards.
In a world of rising gas prices and falling employee compensation, it’s more true than ever that a small amount of cash can go a very long way. This, at least, is the logic behind the variety of new cash back credit cards that now flood the market from many major providers. These cards offer a number of different cash back plans for several types of purchases: cash back for retirement, for charity, for affiliate products. All are designed, at least in part, to encourage credit card use by returning some percentage of the purchase price to the consumer at the end of the year. It sounds like–and can be–a good deal, the literal truth of the classic adage “spend money to make money.”
But in addition to the good deal, cash back credit cards carry with them hidden hooks and lines. The card application always lists these plainly, but customers who just want to cash in on the promise of quick percentage rewards can often overlook the most crucial caveats of all. More savvy customers, however, should ask themselves maybe the most important question anyone can ask when considering a new credit card: what’s the catch?
The first catch is that the high-end cash back rewards don’t usually apply to entertainment, housing, or luxury items. Since these make up a large portion of most people’s paychecks, anyone who believes that a hypothetical 5% cash back guarantee will apply to everything purchased with that cash back credit card will be in for a rude surprise. The higher fees are typically targeted toward fundamental goods in our society: supermarket purchases, drugstore runs, gasoline. Most of the best cash back credit cards offer a flat 1% fee on other purchases, which can be substantial by the end of a year, but still possibly not what the customer who only glanced through the brochure expects.
Another big catch is the high credit rating necessary to get one’s hands on any of the best cash back credit cards. The most popular cards all require at least a good credit rating, with many asking for excellent. The effect of this is to push the target market of typical cash back credit card consumers toward two groups: first-time credit card applicants and the very financially prudent. And it is a nice bonus for people with good credit (or at least no bad credit) to be able to earn typically 1% of the purchase of price back on most goods, but for anyone in dire financial straits looking to put together some extra money through cash back rewards, it would be wise to look elsewhere.