EQ Bank would have paid me $1.85 in cash back for my total one week spend. That still doesn't beat the $2.55 I got from Neo for spending less overall, but more on groceries and gas.
Thomas used the Capital One Guaranteed Secured Mastercard with a $300 limit while still in active bankruptcy. T. Morrison opened a GIC-secured credit card through Meridian immediately after discharge. And Robert Jenkins got the Capital One after discharge.
My rent is $1,850, so I would have earned $18.50 worth of points based on the 1% cash back rate of my credit card. But the Chexy fee on credit cards is 1.75%, which works out to $32.58. So, I would have ended up $13.88 in the hole.
The only way to understand the true cost was to do it myself and crunch the numbers. I withdrew $100 from each credit card. Here’s how much it cost me, and how much it could have cost me.
My goal? To see what it’s like to sign up for each of those virtual cards, verify my identity, add it to my wallet, and actually use it in the real world.
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