Best Current ‘Emergency’ Credit Card

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  askbargain on 24/02/2023 - 23:31

  a high income

  what about a high saving?

  • 

    cdt87 on 24/02/2023 - 23:33

    Yep, looking for options in the meantime. House deposit is current priority.

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  Mechz on 25/02/2023 - 00:06

  How big is 'high limit' to you?

  • 

    cdt87 on 25/02/2023 - 00:32

    +1

    $10-30k or a charge card? Either initial limit or easily increased later with good behaviour.

    • 

      Mechz on 25/02/2023 - 01:15

      What you get up front is usually the Max you get unless your income increases a fair bit. All the lenders have minute criteria that could change at any time too so it's hard to point to a lender and say 'apply here'. They do it so you can't game the system and get more than you can afford to repay / more than the risk they are willing to take on you. Most of the time it's easiest to apply where you already bank but sometimes the opposite rule applies.

      Just remember every application leaves a mark on your credit record.

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  Darude Sandstorm on 25/02/2023 - 00:35

  +1

  just save, make sure when you have enough for the house you also have enough after that to keep an emergency fund.

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  avoidfullprice on 25/02/2023 - 07:16

  +3

  ‘Best’ in your case maybe no annual fee (so if you don’t use it costs you nothing). However, if you have to make an emergency purchase and you need several pay cycles to clear, then ‘best’ is low interest rates. No annual fee and low interest rates don’t come on the same product so you need to prioritise what is important for this emergency 10k-30k CC.

  Having a such high credit limit will affect your borrowing power to purchase a house. So the best is actually forget about applying for CC, save up for an emergency fund of 30k, and when you get a mortgage dip in your redraw for emergency

  • 

    oscargamer on 25/02/2023 - 09:46

    Yep. Any available credit can significantly negatively affect a mortgage application

  • 

    leiiv on 25/02/2023 - 09:52

    OP might already own a house. Another option is a line of credit type of loan.

    Unfortunately, the best no-annual-fee card with a very high limit is already in the past: Citibank signature

  • 

    freefall101 on 25/02/2023 - 14:55

    This, when I talked to a broker for memory it was about 4-5 times the amount of credit card debt is what's taken off the max loan.

    Makes sense when the interest is usually so much higher and minimum repayments are more than you'd expect for a home loan (my monthly home loan repayments are about 0.5% of the original loan amount, on a credit card it's usually 2-3% for minimum repayment).

    • 

      Settero on 25/02/2023 - 15:39

      +2

      While true , credit card can be closed prior to application and confirmation letter of closure supplied, so unless you plan to buy soon having a large credit card until you are ready to buy is no big deal.

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  oscargamer on 25/02/2023 - 09:45

  Anything with zero annual fee…. But you don't need one.

  Get debit card for your savings

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  silenthillrocks on 25/02/2023 - 11:12

  +2

  Bankwest zero platinum is good for this. Zero annual fee, no Forex fees, free travel insurance, purchase protection and can stagger repayment of up to 5 purchases at 0% pa

  • 

    Murdrum on 27/02/2023 - 20:15

    +1

    This is honestly an excellent card for the price of free. For OP, the "Purchase now, pay off later" is great for their use case. It lets you pay back up to 5 different large purchases over 4 months with no fee or interest. Useful when shit hits the fan.

    I just used this to cover emergency international flights for two.

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  dtc on 25/02/2023 - 13:33

  If you have savings in Up, then you can just use its debit card, transfer the money over from the savings account as needed.

  Then as extra backup, get a zero fee card which you hopefully never have to use (since you will only use it if you run out of savings)