
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
Learn more about trip cancellation and interruption insurance and how to get it.
The simple, no-hassle AAA Member Rewards card makes it easy to use and redeem points.
A Chase business credit card can help you earn rewards while you score important cardholder perks like free employee cards or flexible travel redemptions.
You can earn more store rewards if you can use your card at other shops too.
The TD Bank FlexPay has a long intro APR offer and a great list of Visa perks but lacks rewards.
The Amazon Prime Rewards card is better than many store credit cards, thanks to its Visa Signature benefits and competitive rewards.
The First Latitude Platinum Elite is an OK card to start or fix your credit journey if you don't have many other options. Read more in Bankrate's review.
This card’s low variable APR could be enough to make it a top option for some credit-builders.