Chase Sapphire Preferred Review
A powerful combination of bonus rewards, annual credits and travel perks.
Courtney Mihocik is a NACCC Certified Credit Counselor™ and a former senior editor for the Bankrate credit cards team. She specialized in helping people with limited or no credit understand their options for improving their credit scores. She focused on the subprime category and provided guidance to people on their credit-building journeys.
Courtney is passionate about creating a space where people can learn more about managing their personal finances, specifically helping her peers achieve their credit card and credit score goals. She believes that public education fails to teach the essentials of personal finance to students and wants to make up for it in her editorial work.
Previously, she led insurance content at Reviews.com and worked as the loans editor at The Simple Dollar, where she produced daily personal finance articles from founder Trent Hamm in addition to student, personal, business and bad credit loan articles. Before entering the digital media space, Courtney worked in hyper-local print journalism, covering arts, culture, food, news and more for publications in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Courtney graduated college with a 750 credit score, which quickly plummeted to the 500s when she nearly defaulted on her high student loan payments she couldn’t afford. After applying for an income-driven repayment plan and six years of careful budgeting, hustling and responsible credit use, she’s happy to report her credit score is back hovering around 720 and she can qualify for better financial products.
Achieving a good credit score takes time and patience. But as long as you pay bills on time and manage your credit wisely, you will watch your score climb. As someone who went from a 500 score to a 750 score, I can tell you it’s worth the effort.
— Courtney Mihocik, CCC
Self’s credit card is easily accessible, but the fees and restrictions with the added credit-builder loan might make traditional secured cards better choices.
The Costco Anywhere Visa Card by Citi offers one of the industry’s highest payouts at the pump.
A great choice for grocery delivery fans, but markups and fees could take a chunk of your earnings. See our full Instacart Mastercard review.
The Mission Lane Cash Back Visa card for fair credit could be a great fit if you’re eager to earn rewards and avoid putting down a security deposit or paying a high annual fee.
Tailored to Amazon Prime business owners, this American Express lets you earn 5 percent cash back on all Amazon purchases.
The Home Depot Credit Card is one of a few big brand-name home improvement credit cards out there. Read a full review here.
For those in the market for a credit-building card, the First Access Visa Credit Card is a possible option, but it comes with lots of fees.
Next Millennium is a catalog credit card offering 0 percent interest on purchases made at My Unique Outlet. But because you can’t use it to shop anywhere else, it’s only worth it if you’re a fan of the store.
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