We have an American Express through Costco that has an annual fee of $50, but with it we don't have to pay for our Costco membership. Even cooler, they promise that if you don't earn at least $50 in rewards, they give you the $50 back. Last year we earned nearly $120 back in rewards.
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@MaisyMay: Whoa cool. I want that American Express through Costco! But I need to pay off my other cards first. It will be very soon, though.
I have a couple of cards with annual fees.
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@bluestriped bee: The Costco AmEx is wonderful. I totally recommend it and I normally refuse to even discuss cards with fees.
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Not at the moment. Once we get our balances paid off, I'd like to get the Costco AmEx for the cash-back incentives. I've had Visas, Mastercards, and AmEx cards and AmEx far and away has the best customer service of any of them.
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I think technically the Costco membership costs money and the credit card is free.
I have the Chase Sapphire Preferred that carries an annual fee of $95 but I'll probably cancel before I pay next year. The first year was free!
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I have the Costco AMEX too and we upgraded to the executive membership for $110/year but it pays for itself. We earn rewards through Costco and the AMEX card.
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We have the costco amex, a American airlines card, and an Alaska airlines card.
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@sunny: Yeah, you're right. Same difference though
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@mrskc: What rewards do you get for Exec? Whenever they have the person scanning our cards to tell us the best account for us, they tell us what we have is fine.
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Out of the 4 credit cards we have between us, 2 of them have an annual fee.
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@MaisyMay: it's not through Amex but through Costco you get an additional 2% reward. So you would need to spend enough yearly to earn at least $55 to make up for the price increase of exec.
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@MaisyMay: that's the only way I would do it- there needs to be a benefit that cancels out the fee for me to be ok with it. On principle, I'm very against annual fees since I feel credit card companies make enough profit as it is. Of our cards, only one has a fee, and we get that waved since we threaten to cancel otherwise.
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@sunny: We looked at that one and did a ton of math trying to figure out if the fee was worth it an ultimately decided it wasn't. Did you know that when you cancel a credit card your score takes a hit? We had some issues with credit cards numbers getting compromised and we closed one and my score went down 7 points :-S.
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@ShootingStar: yes your score may go down but not always. The formula takes into account average age of accounts, utilization ratio and reports of late payments. Since closing an account would only affect the first two (positively affect the first, negatively affect the second) I'm confident that any score drop in my case would be small. Also your score will recover over time if you pay on time... I track this through Credit Karma as well as through requesting my actual score once every few years.
Btw the Chase Sapphire Preferred can be downgraded to the no fee version so that's what I'll be doing instead of canceling. I totally think the fee is worth it the first year (if you don't get it waived) with the 40,000 points you get the first year. The 40k in points is worth $500 towards travel or $400 in gift cards.
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@sunny: Oh I had no idea it could be downgraded. We totally would've done that instead of going straight to the regular Chase Sapphire.
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Our Chase Southwest card has a $70/year fee (I think). We use it enough that we get at least 2 'free' flights per year, so I don't mind the fee.
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Oh, and if you spend $2,000 total in the first 3 months, they give you 50,000 points for joining. We flew to Las Vegas for $50!! Totally worth it!
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We have a Costco Amex that has an annual fee, I gave my parents my 2nd Costco membership and they help me get more cash back with their purchases. I normally get $300 back a year.
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I have a cc that has a $75 annual fee. But there is no cap on rewards like my non-fee cc's and based on my calculations we'll come out ahead.
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In addition to the Costco AMX, we also have a Mastercard that collects AA miles which we opened 7 years ago when we were paying for wedding stuff. I think thats $89 a year or something, but we just used the AA points to buy a round trip ticket to Singapore and Hong Kong!
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We have a Gold Amex. We get back in rewards more than we pay for the annual fee, so it's worth it for us.
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