The Five Step Process

1. What is the purpose and outcome of this credit card? This is the first and most important question you need to answer first.  Why do you want the card?  Personally, I have to two cards, one is for internet purchases and the other is a gas card that gives a 5% rebate on all gas I buy.  What is your reason, is it because you need a zero percent credit card that will help you on future purchases so you don’t have to pay large amounts of interest or is it so you can retain reward points so you can fly free on your next vacation?  The point being you should have a solid reason for getting the card.
2. What kind of fees and interest does the card carry? Every credit card has fees and carries some sort of interest rate.  The question is what fees and interest are you willing to tolerate.  For example if the card you are looking at has a $75 annual fee are you willing to except that fee, or if your card has a default interest rate of 32.99% are you willing to except that rate if you would happen to miss a payment and they jacked your rate up. Take your time to read through the fine print this is where most people get into hot water.
3. What kind of reward do you want? This is the fun part about picking a credit card. Do you want frequent flyer miles, or reward points, or a 0% on all balance transfers? I’ll leave this up to you.
4. What kind of credit do you need? Most credit cards have a particular credit rating you need to meet in order to get the card.  Most cards need a good to excellent credit rating; however few are available for bad credit users.  If you do have bad credit I recommend staying away from unsecured credit cards all together because these cards will have extremely high interest rates and penalty fees.
5. Apply and prepare. At this point you should have a good idea of what card you want now it’s time to apply.  Once you have that done your application will go through an approval process which could take a few weeks.