
Chase Sapphire Preferred Review
A powerful combination of bonus rewards, annual credits and travel perks.
Courtney Mihocik is a NACCC Certified Credit Counselor™ and a senior editor for the Bankrate credit cards team. She specializes in helping people with limited or no credit understand their options for improving their credit scores. She focuses on the subprime category and provides guidance to people on their credit-building journeys.
Courtney is passionate about creating a space where people can learn more about managing their personal finances, specifically helping her peers achieve their credit card and credit score goals. She believes that public education fails to teach the essentials of personal finance to students and wants to make up for it in her editorial work.
Previously, she led insurance content at Reviews.com and worked as the loans editor at The Simple Dollar, where she produced daily personal finance articles from founder Trent Hamm in addition to student, personal, business and bad credit loan articles. Before entering the digital media space, Courtney worked in hyper-local print journalism, covering arts, culture, food, news and more for publications in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Courtney graduated college with a 750 credit score, which quickly plummeted to the 500s when she nearly defaulted on her high student loan payments she couldn’t afford. After applying for an income-driven repayment plan and six years of careful budgeting, hustling and responsible credit use, she’s happy to report her credit score is back hovering around 720 and she can qualify for better financial products.
Achieving a good credit score takes time and patience. But as long as you pay bills on time and manage your credit wisely, you will watch your score climb. As someone who went from a 500 score to a 750 score, I can tell you it’s worth the effort.
— Courtney Mihocik, CCC
Spend a lot in certain rewards categories? Consider signing up for a second card.
In terms of hotel credit cards, Marriott co-branded credit cards can be a great choice.
The Citi Custom Cash offers an impressive rewards rate and great benefits for a no-annual-fee card.
Here’s how frequent hotel-goers can earn and redeem rewards with Marriott Bonvoy.
What to do if your card issuer won’t share the results of a dispute investigation?
A credit score of 700 may not allow you to fill your wallet with high rewards credit cards named after precious metals and gems, but you’re well on your way if you keep building good credit habits.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred’s many perks and benefits make it a worthwhile card.
If you have bad credit, the Secured Self Visa® Credit Card could be what you need.