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List Of The Best Christmas Shopping Credit Card Deals and 0% APR Offers

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The Best Christmas Shopping Credit Card Deals and Offers.

It’s almost that time of year again….stores are already brimming with lighted Christmas trees, holiday displays and specials… where, bleak economic times or not, we all have to prepare to go shopping for our loved ones at Christmas or whatever their holiday celebration.  Now most of us are probably keeping a tight grip on our wallets, plastic and checkbooks, in preparation for even more gloom and doom from Maria Bartiromo, and belt tightening tips from Suzie Orman.  So here’s a very valuable list from Money Blue Book to help you preserve cash and credit and make it somewhat if not entirely unscathed through your holiday purchasing bout.

List Of The Best Credit Card Reward Offers and 0% APR Deals For Christmas Holiday Shopping

Here is my list of the best Christmas shopping reward credit cards (I’ve bolded the percentage rate you will most likely earn for purchases made at online stores and at most brick and mortar department stores and malls):

  1. Blue Cash® From American Express – Get up to 5% cash back for everyday purchases like groceries and gas, and up to 1.5% for everything else when you exceed $6,500 worth of usage. Prior to that you’ll earn 1% cashback.
  2. Starwood Preferred® Guest American Express Card – Get 1 point for every $1 spent, redeemable for versatile hotel and airline travel rewards. Potential to earn up to a potential 1.25% back with bonuses.
  3. Discover More Card – Get 5% cash back bonuses in purchase categories like department stores, travel, home improvement, gas, groceries, and restaurants, 5% to 20% cash back at retailers through Discover’s online shopping site, and 1% unlimited rewards for everything else. Earn a $50 bonus when you make $500 in purchases within 3 months, and with Discover’s special Christmas promotion, you can get $20 back for every $200 that you spend at participating mall locations.
  4. Chase Freedom(SM) – Get 3% bonus cash back on gas, groceries, and fast food purchases for the first 6 months. Earn 1% cash back on everything else with unlimited rewards, no spending cap, no restrictions, and no expiration date.
  5. Citi Premier Pass Master Card – Get 10,000 bonus points after $300 in purchases made within 3 months of account opening, and earn 1 point for every dollar spent (1% back), redeemable for airline travel rewards.
  6. Citi Cash Returns Card – Get a full 1% cash back on every purchase plus an average 5% cash back at 400 retailers within the Citi Bonus Cash Center, along with an extra 20% bonus for the first 12 months.
  7. HSBC Weekend Card – Earn 2% cash back rewards on everything you buy on Saturday and Sunday. During the rest of the week, you get 1% cash back for everything, with unlimited reward earning potential.
  8. HSBC Platinum Mastercard Cash Back Rewards - Earn up to a potential of 2% cash back with a limit of $400 worth of rewards, or 1% unlimited cashback on all purchases depending on qualification level.
  9. Capital One® No Hassle Cash(SM) Rewards Card – Get 2% cash back on purchases at gas stations and major grocery and drug stores, and 1% cash back on all other purchases, with no earning limit or expiration.
  10. Fidelity Investment Rewards Visa Signature Card – Enjoy a full 1.5% back on all purchases with no merchant restrictions. Points can be redeemed for cash and deposited into your Fidelity brokerage account.

Credit Cards That Offer 0% APR Rates For Interest Free Purchases (Ideal For Christmas Shopping)

  1. Advanta Platinum 90-Day Interest Free Business Card – Permanent 90 day interest free grace period on all purchases. This special Advanta credit card grace period offer is recurring and continuous year after year.
  2. American Express Blue – 0% APR for purchases (up to 12 months)
  3. American Express Blue Cash® – 0% APR for purchases (up to 12 months)
  4. American Express Blue Sky® – 0% APR for purchases (up to 12 months)
  5. American Express Platinum Business Credit Card - 0% APR for purchases (12 months)
  6. American Express Clear Card – 0% APR for purchases (12 months)
  7. Capital One Platinum Card – 0% for purchases and balance transfers (Up until October 2009)
  8. Capital One No Hassle Cash Rewards Card – 0% for purchases (until October 2009)
  9. Chase Flexible Rewards Platinum Visa – 0% for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  10. Chase Perfect Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 6 months)
  11. Chase Platinum Visa Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  12. Citi Diamond Preferred Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  13. Citi Platinum Select Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  14. Citi Business Card - 0% APR for purchases (12 months)
  15. Citi Business Card With ThankYou Network – 0% APR rate for all purchases (12 months).  Extra bonus offer of 10,000 ThankYou® Points after $250 in purchases, redeemable for a $100 gift card.
  16. Discover More Card – 0% APR for purchases (6 months) and balance transfers (12 months)
  17. Discover More Card – Clear – 0% APR for purchases (6 months) and balance transfers (12 months)
  18. Discover Open Road Card – 0% APR for purchases (6 months) and balance transfers (12 months)
  19. First National Business Edition Visa Card – 0% APR offer for purchases (12 months)
  20. HSBC Weekend Card -  0% promo rate for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  21. HSBC Platinum Mastercard Cash Back Rewards - 0% interest rate for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
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Crunch Time – Prepare For the Personal Credit Tsunami

Suze Orman addressing a Senate Committee.
Image via Wikipedia

If ever there were a time to batten down our financial hatches, don our life vests and check the life boat for leaks, this is it; I can almost hear the gale force winds howling when I listen to Maria Bartiromo giving us the horror tale of the stock market in the evening. This is only made more scary by Suze Orman advising us how to deal with our incredibly shrinking assets in the morning.

But we all know what the best first step should be.

Michael Sitarzewski in How we got out of debt: from $50k to $0 in less than a year talks about his own moment of illumination when he realized he was looking at “a $23k personal loan, $24k in two cars, and a few thousand on credit cards ($50k for for the math deficient). He had heard Dave Ramsey on the radio, was impressed, so he and his wife turned to Dave’s book The Total Money Makeover for help.

“The plan? Live on less than you make (a lot less if you can), and use the rest to pay off debt.

So we formulated a plan based on Dave Ramsey’s “Baby Steps.”

1. The $1,000 Emergency Fund - we put ours in a savings account that was tied to the checking account as overdraft protection. That helped us get over using the credit cards as a buffer. We found that we never had an expense so large that we needed more than $1,000.

2. Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball – pay off the debts, smallest to largest, using the payment from the last one on the next. Eventually, everything is paid off and the fun starts. Interest isn’t relevant in the conversation because the excitement and the feeling of progress by paying off debts is extremely valuable. Don’t get out the calculator, it doesn’t matter. Pay them off, smallest to largest, and you’ll see how fun getting out of debt can be.

We started with the smallest card, then the other. Closing credit cards is fun. In the meantime I made the incredibly difficult decision to rid myself of my car and the $800/mo it was costing us. Man I loved that car, but $580 for the payment, another $100 for insurance, and $120 or so in gas per month? Didn’t love that. My car took two months to sell, but once it did we were able to apply that money to the other car (it was next in line).

With the second car paid off ($300/mo), my car sold ($800/mo), and the credit cards gone ($180/mo), the personal loan was up next. The friend that loaned us the money was getting a little impatient with us given how much debt we were paying off, but he was pretty excited to see the progress come so quickly when it was his turn. We were paying that debt off quickly. Very quickly.

It is said that once you start doing smart things with money, money finds you. Whether or not I believe that in a metaphysical sense is a matter of debate, we did see a nice tax return (the largest in years) and had an investment pay decently that spring. We didn’t get raises during that period, and still haven’t, but the investment keeps making returns and by getting out of debt, we’ve found a lot more money in our salaries.

We wrote the last check on September 18, 2007 – we were debt free in less than a year.

3. 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings - we chose a high interest savings account… and decided on 3 months of expenses because two of us were working. By extension, that means 6 months as long as we don’t both lose our jobs. We’ve completed this step. Reaching this goal while debt free was relatively painless – we were already trained by the budget.

4. Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement. In 2007 – for the first time ever – we fully funded our IRAs. We snuck it in just under the wire, but we did it.

For the long run, look at  5 through 7: College funding; Pay off your house early – Build wealth and GIVE! “

This advice is good for normal times but in today’s hazardous financial climate, with worse times looming, it will pay extra dividends to start the belt tightening and budget crunching, injecting more discipline in our spending and, generally, getting our financial house in order. When the good times return, this should accelerate our savings and one day we could be receiving interest instead of paying it out monthly.

Video: Suze Orman’s Guide To Tough Financial Times

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