
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
Before you share a line of credit with your significant other, here’s what you need to know.
Learn 9 tips that can increase the likelihood of card approval, including checking your credit score, correcting errors on your credit report and narrowing options to those you’re qualified for.
Earn valuable rewards paying your bills with a card, but make sure you understand the fees and more.
Pay off your credit card faster by making more than the monthly minimum payment
Paying off credit card debt could help raise your credit score and bring down your overall debt levels, making you a more attractive prospect to lenders and fetching a lower interest rate.
For those in the market for a credit-building card, the First Access Visa Credit Card is a possible option, but it comes with lots of fees.
These travel card benefits will help you save on travel costs and everyday expenses.
As one of the few credit cards to offer monthly swappable categories, this flexible card can rake in 3 percent cash back on each month’s biggest expenses.