The Capital One Journey Card is a student credit card that allows college students to build their credit history from an early age. This card has features, benefits, and services that are geared toward helping you build credit responsibly while earning some rewards in the process. Something that is not too common when it comes to student cards. So let’s dive into it and take a look at one of the best student credit cards.
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By Matthew Coan
Start Building Your Credit Score
The Capital One® Journey® Student Rewards credit card makes building good credit easy. After you open your account you can access your credit score at any time and use Capital One’s Credit Wise tracking tool to help monitor and see what certain changes will do to your credit. You can even sign up to receive text and email alerts to help stay on top of your account. A great feature to help you remember due date and to make timely payments.
CreditWise from Capital One
The best part about the CreditWise credit tracking from Capital One is that you don’t even have to be a Capital One Card Holder to check your credit score. You also can check back as often as you want and it won’t have any effect on your credit score. Making how you use your Capital One Journey Card that much easier in seeing what progress you are making as far as improving your credit score and what is on your credit report. View it as a free class that you take all through college that will allow you to graduate and know everything about your personal credit score and how future financial decisions will impact it.
Capital One Journey Card Rates
One of the most important things you can learn is that paying interest is a waste of money. Just pay your bill off in full each month and take advantage of the rewards you are earning on your student credit card. Interest literally costs you money to spend money. Remember that you will be using your Journey Student credit card to help build up your credit score. And your credit score is not based on how much money you spend each month. It is just about the fact that you pay your bill on time (and now that you know) and in full to get the most out of your money. If you do miss your payment not only will it hurt your credit score but you will also incur some late fees as well.
Capital One Journey Card Rewards
The most attractive feature of this Capital One Journey Student credit card is that it has a rewards program that earns 1% cash back on all purchases made. Making it a simple and and straightforward student card. Capital One even bumps this up to 1.25% if you pay your bill on time. Which is even more of an incentive to pay on time to help improve your credit score. And, like we said before, if you pay your bill in full to avoid interest, then you will be getting paid for spending money that you were going to spend anyways. The best part is you can use your rewards for whatever you want, just like cash. You can have it applied as a statement credit, redeem gift cards, or even have Capital One mail you a check.
The on thing that we would like to see from the Capital One Journey is some bonus categories to have the opportunity to earn more cash back on certain everyday purchases. We know that it is a student credit card and extra rewards are not the main focus, but it still would be nice to add that benefit. All in all it is still a great card for students with an excellent base cash back rewards rate. And it is great that they add the cash bonus when you pay your bill on time.
Capital One Journey Card Benefits
The Capital One® Journey® Student Rewards credit comes with all of the benefits that any Visa® Platinum card offers. These include things like extended warranties (thats right, they take the warranty that comes with the items you use your card to purchase and extend them) on the items you buy, auto rental insurance, travel accident insurance, other travel perks, and more. Making it a good choice student credit card that comes with no annual fee that you are just using to earn some rewards and improve your credit score. Another benefit worth mentioning is the the Capital One Journey Card has no foreign transaction fees. So if you travel abroad you can use your card worry free. You can even take advantage of Capital One’s Financial Education website. Where you can take a look and learn about all of the financial decisions and scenarios you may face in the future. If you are looking for an intro rate on new purchases or balance transfers then you will have to look elsewhere because it is not available with this student credit card. But all things considered that Capital One Journey is a great student cash back card.
Now that you know all of the things you need to about the Capital One Journey Student rewards card you can get started in establishing your credit score and get more out of the money that you have to spend while being a college student. Make sure to always make on-time payments and try to pay your bill in full to avoid any interest charges. These are some of the main things to help you establish good credit habits.
Want Even More Rewards from Capital One?
If you think you have good enough credit, or have a targeted offer through the CardMatch Tool, for the Capital One Venture, VentureOne, or the Quicksilver Card then you can earn even more rewards for the money you have to spend.
The Capital One Venture Card is a solid option that allows you to earn an awesome miles reward rate for every dollar that you spend and you have the opportunity to earn a great signup bonus after opening your account. There is no limit on the amount of miles you can earn and your miles never expire. Making your next travel trip that much easier to pay for if you use miles to cover the cost. There is an annual fee for this card but if you can hit the signup bonus it will more than cover the cost.
The Capital One VentureOne Card is the next step down and it comes with no annual fee. It is one of the better cards in the no annual fee travel market. You will earn a great miles reward rate for every dollar that you spend and have the opportunity to earn a signup bonus from a no annual fee travel credit card which is great. The same goes for the VentureOne Card in the fact that your miles will never expire and there is no limit to the amount that you can earn.
The Capital One Quicksilver Card is one the most rewarding and simple to use cash back cards available today. You earn a great flat rate cash back return on every dollar you spend. There are even categories where you can earn bonus cash as well.
As with most Capital One Cards you can take advantage of the Capital One Travel Portal where you can find some great deals on things like flights, hotels, and rental cars.
If you don’t think that you have good enough credit to qualify for any of these upgraded Capital One Cards then go ahead and use your Capital One Journey student card until you build your credit score up.
Don’t be discouraged, it’s a great entry-level credit card that will help you understand how credit cards work and it is the best way to get your credit profile off on the right foot. Just make sure you make your monthly payment on time and stay within your spending limits. Then you can move on to one of these cards that will give you a little more rewards for the money that you spend.
About the author: Matthew Coan is the founder of Casavvy and a credit card expert. He has appeared in various media outlets including Yahoo, Credit Karma, Market Watch, Mens Journal, and more. Continue reading