'Tis the season for credit card offers

Written by Geoff Williams
Posted On: November 15, 2011

You may not be thinking about holiday shopping just yet, but before you set your alarm for the 3 a.m. Black Friday sale, it's an opportune time to take a look at some of the best credit card deals out there. Whether you're traveling or staying local, there's bound to be a credit card that helps you handle the holidays.

An abundance of deals can be found right now, mostly for new credit card users but also for existing card holders. This isn't by any stretch of the imagination a comprehensive list of every new credit card development out there, but if you're wondering where the action is with credit cards, here are some appealing developments that credit card issuers have been unveiling in recent weeks and days.

• Doing some holiday traveling? On Nov. 6, Discover stopped charging a foreign currency fee for consumers traveling and using their cards abroad. That's been a refreshing trend in the last year--cards dropping their foreign currency fees, also known as foreign transaction fees. Discover's was two percent. But now it's a nice big round zero.
• Could you use 200 bucks? Here's how the Chase Freedom Visa $200 promotion works. If you spend $500 within three months of opening your new account, you'll get $200 back. On top of that, all of your purchases will bring in at least 1 percent back. Some things you buy will net 5 percent cash back.
• Saving up for college? If you have a Upromise World MasterCard credit card from Bank of America, all of your purchases until Dec. 31 will get you at least 11 percent cash back to go toward college.
• If you're fast… The Discover More Card has a $150 cash back deal, but it won't be available after Nov. 30. But if you get it, and you spend $1,000 within 90 days of opening the account, you'll receive $150.

There are other good deals out there, too, some of which are no longer considered new and came out earlier this year. Such as:

• How about $100? The American Express Blue Cash Everyday Card has a $100 cash back bonus for new card holders who spend a thousand bucks within three months. That's obviously not as good of an initial cash back deal as the Chase Freedom card, but beyond that initial hundred bucks, you may appreciate the full 3% cash back on groceries, the 2% at gas stations and department stores and the 1% everywhere else.
• For the patient credit card user: The Capital One Cash credit card will give you $100 if you spend $500 within three months, and it pays 1 percent cash back rewards on all purchases. But we say you need to be patient because after each year ends, you'll get a 50 percent bonus, which at first sounds amazing, but it's not a 50 percent bonus on everything you bought but 50 percent more cash back. So if you received $20 in cash back over a full year, you'll get another $10. Still, that's essentially getting 1.5 percent in cash on all of your purchases year round. Not too shabby for a card with no annual fee.
  
• Continental Airlines OnePass Plus Card. Airlines have been really stepping up their game lately with credit card offers, and this is certainly one of the best. If you're accepted for this card, the first time you use it, you can get 25,000 bonus miles, which means you could visit just about any of your friends or family over the holidays, provided they live in the United States and Canada. (And don't fret if you have family in some far-flung country a gazillion miles away; you can at least use the 25,000 miles to go toward visiting anyone living abroad.) Sign up an authorized user within the first two months of opening the account, incidentally, and they'll throw in another 5,000 miles.

See, the credit card companies really want us to use their products, and for those who have good credit, and pay off everything on time, these zero fees, bonuses and rewards really are kind of like a gift to savvy consumers--and just in time for the holidays.