What’s In Your Wallet? — Update

I have a brand new credit card in my wal­let — a Cap­i­tal One Cash Rewards card.

The card offers 1% cash back on all pur­chases, the rewards don’t expire for the life of my account, there’s no limit on the amount of rewards I earn, and I can request my cash back when­ever I want.  In other words, it offers all kinds of ben­e­fits that my old Citibank Div­i­dend card didn’t offer.  Plus it has a $10,000 credit limit.

The most impor­tant fea­ture, and the main rea­son I applied for the card, is that I am the pri­mary account holder. Now, along with my new Amex Blue Cash card, all of the credit cards I carry in my wal­let are my own and will work toward build­ing my own per­sonal credit history/score.  My old cards were all on joint accounts with The Husband.

No, I’m not prepar­ing for a divorce.  We’re being prag­matic; we’re “putting our house in order”, if you will.   I’m prepar­ing for wid­ow­hood.

But enough of that – back to the excite­ment of my new card.  The truly fun aspect of this credit account is that in another week or so I’ll get a newly minted per­son­al­ized card that I cre­ated using their Card Lab.

I’ve only been a card­holder for about two weeks now but every time I use the card I’m reminded of how thor­oughly ugly the design is.  Don’t get me wrong — I not a spenda­holic with a sick attach­ment to my credit cards and I’m not vain about what my credit cards look like.  But there’s no escap­ing it, the card is butt ugly.

Cap­i­tal One’s card lab has a selec­tion of pre­loaded graph­ics and pho­tos that card own­ers can choose from to cus­tomize their cards.  Or you can upload your own photo.  I thought it would kind of fun to have a pic­ture of my kids on my card but I couldn’t find one that worked — one or the other’s face was always obstructed by the Visa logo.  The photo I choose, the daylily pic­tured above, is bet­ter any­way – it was taken by my then 12-yo son.

So in a week or two I’ll have my own per­son­al­ized Visa card and every time I use it I’ll be reminded of the most impor­tant thing in my life — my fam­ily.  Even though I’m not unhappy with the amount of money I spend every month, there’s always room for improve­ment.  See­ing that card and being reminded of what’s really impor­tant in my life might just help me carve a lit­tle more fat off my monthly spending.

[photo credit:  The Son]

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