The Discover Card: Why it is the Best Card for Purchases
Over the years, I got really good and playing what I call the shell game. To slowly pay off a large balance without paying fees, I would transfer it to a new card with 0% apr. Then when that card offer expired, I would get a new card, and on and on.
But the shell game is winding down, mostly because it is becoming harder to find a card that will offer you 0% with no balance transfer fee. So I’m trading in my shells for a card that I can just use for purchases.
I used to think all credit cards were basically the same. And they mostly are as far as rates, policies, and fees are concerned. But there’s one card that I’ve now decided to use because it beats out all the others in one area, hands down.
The best card, I’ve decided, is the Discover card. And my reason is not what you’d expect: it’s because of how easy it is to download a year’s worth of transactions.
This is probably an odd reason. But my credit card is used for my business and at the end of the year, I really need to be able to total all my expenses by category for tax purposes.
I first discovered how important this was after changing to Discover from Bank of America. My old card had no way to download the year’s worth of transactions so I had to keep track of everything on a spreadsheet. When I switched to Discover, I was overjoyed to find a link to a Year-End Summary.
The Discover summary let me download every single purchase for the entire year in a format that Excel could read. They even had appropriate categories so that I could sort and total. So it was a snap to total up all my gas purchases, shipping purchases, etc. to put on my Schedule C.
I figured my original Bank of America card was just lame for not giving me this same feature, but other cards must all do it. So when I found a card that claimed it had better cash back bonuses, I canceled the Discover and moved on to another, a Chase card.
When the year ended, I went online to download transactions. But unlike the Discover card, the Chase did not give me anything I could bring into Excel. Instead it was a pdf which listed everything, but in very broad categories such as services, merchandise, and automotive.
How exactly does this help me? I can’t import a Pdf into Excel, especially since it is full of pictures, pie charts, and little check boxes. What exactly they want you to do with a check box, I have no idea. So at tax time, I had to go through line by line and copy/paste the amounts into a spreadsheet.
The Discover card, on the other hand, was a csv file that I could easily import into Excel so that I could sort/total. And it was just data; not silly pictures. Their categories were also more meaningful. They had a category for gasoline that was separate from the generic automotive.
What took me hours to do with my Chase card took only minutes with Discover.
Another benefit of Discover: throughout the year when you log in, they give you a pie chart that shows you exactly how your money is being spent.
So now Discover is my card of choice for purchase because of the hours it saves me at year-end when I go to do my taxes.
Earline has been using offers on credit cards to lessen a balance for years. She also has a website on ladies casual shoes and womens casual shoes.
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