Get a chip card. I travel internationally extensively, and have been in several places in the past two years in places as varied as Shanghai, Guadalajara, a couple places in Munich, and a cafe in Ottawa, where I ended up picking up expenses for coworkers because I do have a chipped card, they didn’t, and the vendor only accepted cards with chips.
Since you applied for a new card, that’s a “hard pull” on your credit score. If you pay everything off (or down a lot) quickly, and have lower than 25% utilization across all of your credit cards, it’ll drop in 3 months, and again in ~6. You could potentially end up with an even higher score within a year than you had going in, if you’re careful about usage.
Very–Overseas requires credit cards with chips in them. They are soon required in US also but not everybody has them yet. Some places also require PIN numbers in addition to the chip.
Even here too. I was at a store in AZ and if you had a chip card, it had to go in the machine vertically, just over the chip. Swiping wouldn’t work for it.
I would check my credit score, with a service like Credit Karma to verify that it was in fact lower. That sounds like a BS story to me just so they can slap a higher rate on your card, especially because they approved such a high credit limit. I have kept one card for years because it has a $30k credit limit. I used it to pay college tuition, and hey, you never know when I might want to charge a small car or something like that.
Oh, and addition to the chip, you want a credit card that does not charge a 3% foreign transaction fee on every purchase. That’s a little harder to find, but they exist.
NJres, thanks for the tip. I did use credit karma and as you suspected my credit score was higher than the one reported when I applied yesterday. It was lower than the credit score that was reported by the mortgage company but not by much. I suspect the lower score was because we did refinance the mortgage and the hard pull yesterday.
Very interesting…
I think I am going to have my H apply for a card and I think we will do credit karma for him also before he applies.
You can get a Discover card pretty easily. The new ones have chips and every single statement tells you your credit score. It was a good starter card for our kids as it began with a very low maximum balance, $750 I think. You can use your cash back bonus (2%?) for many things but we’ve always just rolled it back into the balance.
The credit card company will lower your limit for you. I’ve just recently applying for another American Express, they send me a letter that the reduce my Costco card and apply to the new card. I didn’t ask for it. You can have up to 4 American Express cards.
The credit karma score could very well be (and most likely will be) different from the actual score the bank uses to approve a credit card. The score the bank uses to approve a credit card is also different from the score they use for a mortgage or for a car loan. There are many different models for scores, and depending on what you are applying for, you could likely have a different score. You can use credit karma to get an idea of your score and also to verify that all of the information used to create your score is correct, but that is it.
If you apply for a different card and get denied because they say you have applied for too much new credit recently you can call for a manual review. Explain your situation and the story with the 30k card you closed and hopefully someone in the executive office can look it over manually and approve you.
@deb922 - I don’t think Discover cards are as widely accepted either in Europe or here. They are useful for establishing credit for beginners though. My D2 recently moved into an apartment with three others who were all a bit older than her and they had trouble passing the financial check because only 2 of them had established credit. The others had no credit cards because they thought it would be fiscally irresponsible to have them. But with no credit score, they were a liability in the apartment search process.
“I brought cash that I purchased from my bank but when I ran out I went to a bank ATM. They had three ATM machines, two were for chip and pin which did not work for me, one had an “American” type reader and it worked no problem. I wasn’t even charged anything to use it. You just have to find the right bank ATM.”
This is why I continue to say, as a frequent international traveler, you obtain your foreign currency in the US and bring it with you so you don’t have to stress about being unable to find an ATM or access an ATM in a land where you don’t know the language and where you might be a sitting duck
What banks are NOT offering chip cards these days? Apologies if I missed it. Because the simplest solution would seem to be call your bank and ask for a chip card.
I have chip and signature cards from most of our issues, including Chase. Everyone in our household does as well.
I’ve asked for our credit limit to be lower on a few of the cards we don’t use much. We see no reason we should have 5 digit limits on numerous cards, especially if some are mainly for groceries and Amazon and the ones I have with D that she is the one doing all the charging. H and my credit limits remain near the highest they cab get.
We have a 6 figure HELOC that we’ve never drawn against, so I guess that shows us using only a miniscule portion of our available credit and always paying everything on time and in full.
Our Amex has switched to chip, but we don’t have a PIN. I’m still unclear if Amex is accepted in Europe though. I’m fairly certain it isn’t, based on some experiences my daughter has had trying to use it.
We will have to make sure we have another credit care with a chip and PIN when we travel to Europe next year. Our daughter, who lives in Denmark, has a credit card with a chip and PIN, and when we visited her last year, noticed how slick her payments were. I really wish we would go that route her in the US.
Years ago when we went to Japan we were able to get a listing of where ATM machines were - now the issue is apparently that many places there won’t take Maestro cards with chips, but the Post Office and 7-Elevens do - who knew!
I agree that Discover is the one card I wouldn’t get as it’s not available many places. I regularly run into places here that won’t take it. There was also one restaurant when we were in Munich that only took American Express, but it was more common that they’d take everything but AE. That was all long enough ago things may have changed.
I find Amex is accepted in hotels and the like - just not small proprietors. I take a work MC, a personal Visa and a personal Amex so I have all bases covered.
