Credit card research 2021

In October 2021 I did some research on getting a credit card for the first time.

Reasons I hadn't bothered getting a credit card until now

• Mostly, I was too lazy to do the research and didn't have an urgent need
• I don't buy a lot of things, so some of the benefits of a credit card don't matter to me

Reasons I decided to get a credit card

• I was taking care of a few other financial things, so I was already in the "mood" for doing some credit card research
• I recently learned that credit cards seem to have better protection against false purchases made using the card
• Some travel plans meant I was expecting to make more purchases, and might benefit from some more of the benefits of a credit card
• Building a credit score might be useful in the future (though at the moment I don't have any concrete plans to borrow any money)

Choice of credit card

Factors that were important to me

• No foreign transaction fees
• No deposit required (i.e. not a secured card)
• No annual fee (don't want to be incentivized to make purchases)
• Card reliably works abroad (e.g. I found some mentions that Discover It cards don't work well outside the US)

One of my confusions was that credit card recommendation sites list credit score ranges that are good for each card (i.e. where you have a good chance of being accepted), but that I didn't even know my credit score or if I even had one. And the only way to find out my credit score seems to be to get a credit card. From reading a bunch of threads on r/personalfinance it seemed like I should get an "easy" credit card for now, and then later switch to a better card once my credit score was higher.

Final choice

Eventually, I found these two pre-approval tools through this comment. These tools seemed to confirm that I indeed had no credit score. So I went for the only card that seemed to meet all my requirements, which was the Capital One Platinum card.