It’s hard to believe March is here. March is on of my favorite times of the year. Sure the weather is starting to warm up, but the real reason I love March is college basketball. To be honest, I don’t care about NCAA basketball the other 11 months out of the year, but March madness is incredible. The sheer volume of games played in just over a month is mesmerizing. This year, in celebration, I want to do something special to coincide with March madness. I call it: Credit Card Madness.
Introducing Credit Card Madness
Credit Card madness will hopefully serve as the credit card enthusiasts version of March Madness. The goal is to compare credit cards in head to head match-ups to determine which is the overall best credit card on the market today. Considering this is the first year I have put this on, I do not have seeds or any official type of ranking to go off of. Because of this, I have decided to group credit cards by annual fee. Just like March Madness has the East and West, etc. Credit Card madness will have High ($400+), Mid ($100+), Low (<$100), and No ($0) annual fee groupings to start. In the end, the best overall credit card will be left standing (in theory).
How Credit Card Madness Works
Roughly each day I will take a few moments to compare two credit cards. Due to the number of cards I want to compare during this time I will compare the cards on a high level. With each pairing I will list the card benefits, highlight the benefits which make the card a contender, and ultimately select a winner to advance. In the end, the “final four,” will be comprised of the best high, mid, low, and no annual fee cards. Next, I compare High/Mid and Low/No annual fee cards. Then a final round determines the overall winner.
Key Considerations
The hard part of reviewing credit cards is the wide variety of people who ultimately use the cards. While the American Express Platinum card may be great for someone who spends a TON of money of airfare, it is a terrible card for someone who only uses a credit card to pay for gas. To mitigate these nuances I will use a variety of statistics on “average” American spending as a benchmark.
Another key consideration is the ease of use of the credit cards rewards program. Flexible rewards programs occasionally offer incredible value, but if they are too difficult to maximize the “average” consumer will end up buying merchandise or gift cards opposed to transferring points to an airline program.
Final Thoughts
Credit Card Madness #CCMadness? is part of the reason I haven’t been writing about credit cards as often recently. This should be a great opportunity to cover a wide variety of cards and ultimately produce something useful for you, the reader. I am slightly worried that my lack of seeds could cause some pretty solid contenders to get knocked out early. I guess that is always a risk when tournament style play is involved! Overall, I really do hope you find this series useful or, at least, entertaining.
