Best Credit/Debit card to carry in your wallet.
I know this topic has been covered countless times, but I recently found a new pair of card you need to carry in your wallet.
Debit Card: Fidelity My smart cash, The card will automatically reimburse all ATM fees charged by other financial institution in United States without limit and will not charge you any fee on their side. For international ATM transaction, the card will not charge you any fees on their side. With this card in your wallet, you never have to worry about carrying a travel check, finding alliance bank ATM when travelling overseas.
Upon until earlier this year, you can open My smart Cash only account with Fidelity, but they changed the rule, you have to open my smart cash account with fidelity investment account together, but you don’t have to use the account to trade stock.
There also several openning bonus as well,
Earn up to 25000 miles with AA, or up to 25,000 miles with UA, or up to 25K with Delta and finally, up to 25K with Amex MR(must have MR account)
Flyertalk has a thread on how to get max bonus without too much deposit.
Credit Card: Fidelity Amex Card, you will earn 2 points for each dollar spent and each 5000 points can be converted to$50 into your Fidelity account. That’s equal to 2% cash back. The points are BOA world points program, that means, besides converting the points, you can also redeem for Fixed flight awards, 25000 points can be redeemed for a flight within US that less than $400.
The best part is, this card only has 1% foreign transaction fee, with min 2% cashback, you are getting at least 1% back even for foreign currency charges.
Both cards have no annual fees, so it doesn’t cost you anything to carry them.
Yi said,
The mysmart cash card issued by PNC bank has 1% foreign transaction fee and it is included in the exchange rate, so it appears there is no fee. Same story with fidelity AE, but it does have 2% for everything so still pretty good.
Schwab Invest first debit card has 0% foreign transaction fee nor atm fees so it is better than mysmart cash on this point. But mysmart is still a great account considering its power as both checking and brokerage account
Yi said,
BTW, I think schwab credit card offer by FIA also is better. It is the same credit card company with fidelity AE, it is 2% on everything, it is visa card(better acceptance), it is automatically deposited to your schwab account every month(no $50 limit), 0% foreign transaction fee. However, schwab discontinued the new application for this card since 04/2010
Troy said,
@Yi, As you already said, Schwab card is gone, too bad!
leonard said,
I thought you love SPG Amex better since you are such an expert on miles&points game that you can definitely do better than 2%.
Troy said,
@leonard, Yes, I love SPG, but when travel aboard, SPG AMEX is not a good value anymore, it has 2.7% transaction fee. If I use Fidelity card, which is 2% back with 1% transaction fee, I am making 1%, if use worldpoint fixed flight option, 1% can become max 1.6%, that’s more than 4% diff compare to SPG.
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