{"id":5601,"date":"2014-04-10T08:36:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T14:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/?p=5601"},"modified":"2014-04-10T08:36:06","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T14:36:06","slug":"pay-credit-card-annual-fees-smile-sometimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/?p=5601","title":{"rendered":"Why I pay credit card annual fees with a smile&#8230;.sometimes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in February I was faced with a series of decisions. \u00a0Five credit cards were sitting in my wallet and every single one of them was due for an annual fee. \u00a0This was the big <a title=\"My First App O Rama\" href=\"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/2013\/02\/15\/my-first-app-o-rama\/\">app-o-rama<\/a> that I did last year. \u00a0Here are the cards that were coming up for renewal<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>US Airways- $89<\/li>\n<li>Club Carlson- $85<\/li>\n<li>Priority Club- $49<\/li>\n<li>Delta Gold- $95<\/li>\n<li>Citi AA- $85<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What was the carrot dangling?<\/h2>\n<p>Ouch. \u00a0Paying the massive $403 annual fee for all of these cards was a tough pill to swallow, but some of them offered great benefits to keep the cards. \u00a0Here was the carrot dangling for each card:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>US Airways- 12,500 Dividend Miles<\/li>\n<li>Club Carlson- 40,000 Gold Points &amp; Last Night Free Promotion<\/li>\n<li>Priority Club- Free Night<\/li>\n<li>Delta Gold- Nothing<\/li>\n<li>Citi AA- A Statement credit (tomoto, tomato)\u00a0to offset the annual fee plus put $10 in my pocket<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What did I decide to do with each card?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>US Airways- \u00a0I kept this card. \u00a0I can get a flight in the US for 20,000 points. \u00a0Essentially they were willing to offer me over 1\/2 of a flight within the US for $89. \u00a0If there is one card that I kept, and regret the decision it was this one.<\/li>\n<li>Club Carlson- I kept this card too. \u00a0I love this card, and the last night free promotion is incredible when you stay in 2 night increments at hotels. \u00a0Invaluable. \u00a0Plus the 40,000 points is worth over 4 nights at a category 2 hotel when used properly.<\/li>\n<li>Priority Club- Kept this card. \u00a0$49 is a small annual fee, and it has already paid itself off. \u00a0We did a quick road trip to Zion National Park this last weekend and ended up using the free night already. \u00a0We were basically willing to stay at this Holiday Inn Express in Cedar City because the kids were sick of driving and so were we. \u00a0It had a price tag of $120 per night, but we were willing to do it when I remembered that I had this free night. \u00a0A quick call to the IHG Rewards desk and the hotel was booked. \u00a0It saved me $70!<\/li>\n<li>Delta Gold- \u00a0Dropped this thing like an ugly girlfriend. \u00a0Trying to charge me $95 for a card that offers very little benefits to keep the thing, psshaw, yeah right, when monkeys fly out of my butt.<\/li>\n<li>Citi AA- \u00a0Kept it. \u00a0When they pay me $10 to keep it net of the statement credit, how do I resist?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>In the end how much did I pay?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>$308 to keep four of these cards<\/li>\n<li>-$95 Statement Credit<\/li>\n<li>-$70 Savings on the Holiday Inn Express<\/li>\n<li>$143 Total paid to this point<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yeah. \u00a0Paying $143 in fees sucks. \u00a0In return I&#8217;ve still got:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>12,500 Dividend Miles<\/li>\n<li>40,000 Club Carlson Gold Points<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Other thoughts about paying credit card annual fees<\/h2>\n<p>If I would have gone with my instinct to cancel the US Airways credit card, I would have only been paying $54 to keep three cards alive for another year, which would be hard to resist. \u00a0Keeping up the fees on all of the cards won&#8217;t make sense every year. \u00a0You need to assess whether or not you&#8217;re going to be using the benefits of the card enough to outweigh the costs of the annual fee.<\/p>\n<p>The Priority Club card is going to be difficult for me to cancel indefinitely. \u00a0Finding a nice hotel in the Priority Club family for under $50 would be a miracle. \u00a0You know that you&#8217;ll find the value in that card, so it seems like I&#8217;ll be keeping it for quite a while.\u00a0 Plus the longer that I keep the card, it benefits my credit score, so that&#8217;s not a big deal to me.<\/p>\n<p>Keeping the Delta Gold card wasn&#8217;t really an option.\u00a0 They offer a free checked bag on their flights that are within the USA, but paying $95 isn&#8217;t worth it to me.\u00a0 They really don&#8217;t offer much else, and didn&#8217;t budge on the annual fee when I called, so paying the credit card annual fee wouldn&#8217;t have made me smile.<\/p>\n<p>The Club Carlson card is awesome.\u00a0 The last night free promotion makes the card definitely worth it&#8217;s salt.\u00a0 You&#8217;ve got to use it at least once a year and it is a card that I will pay the annual fee on because it is worth it!<\/p>\n<p>The Citi AA card is churnable every 18 months.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll probably want to drop it soon as I&#8217;m approaching my 18th month and want to pick up another 50k AA miles.<\/p>\n<p>The US Airways card will definitely be dropped next year.\u00a0 As US Airways and AA come closer to merging it won&#8217;t be of much use.\u00a0 Especially if Citi continues to waive annual fees.<\/p>\n<h2>What are your thought on paying credit card annual fees?<\/h2>\n<p>These are my thoughts on my cards that were up for renewal this year. What do you think when you have to pay an annual fee on a credit card?\u00a0\u00a0 Which cards are worth their fees in your opinion?<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=f90a3e97-381b-4491-aba1-ab399f70cd4a\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in February I was faced with a series of decisions. \u00a0Five credit cards were sitting in my wallet and every single one of them was due for an annual fee. \u00a0This was the big app-o-rama that I did last &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/?p=5601\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,1043,128,1581,246,1533,942,834,1886,727],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}