I
just found out that earlier this month, Barclaycard announced that it
will offer some of its card members complimentary FICO scores. This
applies to several cards including: the Barclaycard Ring, Barclaycard Arrival, Barclaycard
Rewards, NFL,
Juniper,
Frontier and Carnival cards. You
can check your free FICO score from Barclaycard here.
One
way
to get a free FICO credit score (Equifax)
is
to go to myFICO and sign up for a free 10 day trial. Be careful because if you don't
cancel within 10 days, you will automatically be subscribed to their
service for $14.95 per month for a minimum of 3 months! And if you
obtain your FICO score through myFICO and try to cancel, be prepared
to have a difficult time trying to your account cancelled when you
call in. The reps will do anything possible to get you to keep the
service. You
can request similar free trial FICO scores through Experian and
Transunion.
When it comes to checking on my credit score, I still prefer using the following methods of obtaining my
simulated credit score for free: credit karma, credit sesame,
quizzle, and credit.com
When
you apply for credit (whether
with a new credit card, auto loan, mortgage, or personal loan),
the company you are seeking credit from checks your credit report and
credit score. The credit report chosen is one generated by Equifax,
Experian, or TransUnion. Many companies use their own propriety
method of calculating your credit score, however,
it
is estimated that the score used 90% of the time is your FICO score.
The
FICO score is the global standard for measuring credit risk. To
learn more about your credit score, read this pdf on consumer credit
education produced by FICO.
Since
I already have a Barclayscard (NFL card I sign up for the $400
bonus), I decided to check my own FICO score:
808.
Nice! This just goes to show that applying for credit cards and
responsibly using your credit to travel for free will not lower your
credit score.
Of
the Barclayscards that allow you to view your FICO score, there is
currently only one card that I would recommend: The
Barclaycard Arrival Plus(TM) World EliteMastercard®.
The
Barclaycard Arrival credit card offers a unique and interesting
rewards
system.
The
sign up bonus of 40,000 bonus miles is easily attainable after $1,000 (now $3,000)
in purchases within the first 90 days from account opening. With
this card, you earn 2x miles on every single purchase. You also get
10% miles back when you redeem for travel.
Barclaycard
uses the term “miles” loosely in my opinion. Redeeming
the miles earned by this card is different from other points and
miles earning credit cards. While airline specific cards only allow
you to earn the affiliated airline mile,
the Barclaycard Arrival card allows you to earn miles to pay for all
travel purchases such as made within the last 90 days as a statement
credit for cash back. Other
points programs like the Chase Ultimate Rewards program only allow
transfer of points to certain airline partners.
The
way that you redeem your Barclaycard
Arrival miles
is to first pay for any travel, such as airlines, travel agencies,
tour operators, hotels, motels, cruise lines, railways, and car
rental agencies, and then later request a statement credit. You can
redeem your miles for a statement credit with your travel related expenses at 1 mile = 1 cent, and you get 10% miles
back. This effectively turns this card into a 2.2% cash back card
for all travel expenses.
Because
of the 10% miles back feature, I
value each Barclaycard Arrival mile at 1.11 cents. Miles
need to be redeemed at a minimum of 2,500 mile increments, or a $25
statement credit.
Let's
go over an example
on redeeming these
miles:
Let's
say you purchase a round trip airline flight on any carrier of your
choosing for $200. You can then use 20,000 miles in your Barclaycard account to get a
statement credit of $200 on your bill. The flight is now free, and
you have earned travel miles on the airline you flew on. Because you redeemed
your miles on a travel related purchase, you will receive 10% miles
back, or 2,000 miles back into your account.
This
example shows how great the
Barclaycard Arrival is for flyers traveling domestically or in
economy. There's no need to search for any special award seats; simply book a ticket as you normally would, and then get a cash back
statement credit (and 10% miles refund) later. You will earn
frequent flyer miles on the airline you are traveling with.
Barclaycard Arrival miles earned can be used on any airline, for any
flight, in any seating category without restriction. And
of course, you can always redeem miles for statement credit on non
travel purchases at 1 mile = 1 cent.
On
the other hand, the Barclaycard
Arrival is not good for international travel or
expensive trips.
For
our most recent trip
to Asia,
the
cash value of our flight was $5,210. Of course, we didn't pay for
our trip in cash! We
spent a total of 120,000 American Airlines miles, 55,000 United
Airlines miles, and $258 in taxes and fees. 175,000 miles allowed us
to fly from LAX (Los Angeles) to ICN (South Korea) to TPE (Taipei,
Taiwan) to HKG (Hong Kong) and back to LAX for free instead of paying
$5,210 in cash for our flight, the actual cash value of our trip.
In
order to redeem Barclaycard miles for our Asia trip, we would have
needed to accumulate a whooping 521,000 Barclaycard
miles.
This would convert to a statement credit of $5,210, with a 10% miles
rebate of 52,100 miles. As you can see, I would save the Barclaycard miles for domestic or economy class travel. This card is also not good for accumulating
miles for first class travel, which can be upwards of $10,000 dollars
per ticket.
This
being said, the Barclaycard Arrival credit card is still a great
credit card worth considering. One
great benefit of this card is that there are no foreign transaction
fees. There is also a complimentary TripIt Pro mobile travel
organizer subscription. https://www.tripit.com/pro.
This is a $49 annual value, although I have no personal experience
with the service.
The
first year of card ownership is free, then an $89 annual fee applies.
As long as your account remains open and in good standing, your
miles never expire.
Is
this card worth it? I think so. In fact, my wife just applied for
the card and was approved!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments? Questions?