Help help, I have an amazingly clueless question about credit cards & interest rates. I am looking at the Amazon.com credit card, which has 0%APR for the first six months, and then a variable rate (which is currently 15.74%). Is that good? I have no idea.
Depends. Are you planning on moving debt onto the card and paying it off in six months? Then you should go for it. Are you planning on carrying a balance? Then probably not. That 15.74% is probably prime + 9 or so. That means that if interest rates continue to creep up you'll be paying more and more and more....
The question is whether you want to use credit cards for emergencies, for convenience, or for a floating line of credit. This dictates how you are going to use the cards. For the first, you're going to use it as a security blanket (or velvet cape, whatever you prefer), so you're going to want a relatively low interest rate and a big credit limit. For the second, your credit limit will probably be smaller, but the interest rate shouldn't matter because you're paying it off every month. You definitely want no-fee, though. For the last, you want a low, low interest rate, since you'll effectively be servicing a loan every month.
I need to start (re)building my credit history. It's now clean (after being very, very bad), but it's ... non-existent. (All the bills & household credit cards are in Pete's name, for the reason that my credit was HORRIBLE.)
You'll probably have as much trouble as I do. Everything is in Susan's name because I can't get a card. It's not bad credit, it's just no credit.
The Amazon card should be fine if you're going to pay it off every month. And you get a $25 gift certificate every time you charge a certain amount ($1000? $2500?)