This Is America’s Favorite Credit Card
According to consumers, it does pay to Discover.
For the second year in a row, Discover has ranked the highest in customer satisfaction among credit card issuers, according to the results of a new survey by J.D. Power.
Discover received a score of 828 out of 1,000 in the survey, based on credit card terms, billing and payment, rewards, benefits and services, and problem resolution. American Express placed second with a score of 820, and Chase ranked third at 792.
Overall satisfaction with credit cards hit a record high of 790, up from 778 last year.
Related: 3 High-Tech Ideas to Fraud-Proof Our Credit Cards
Consumers were more likely to use their rewards last year, with more than half having done so in the past six months. That could be because rewards are getting better as banks get more creative with wooing and keeping customers, many of whom are still lukewarm about spending.
“When customers feel the rewards are attractive and when they redeem rewards more frequently, satisfaction improves, they spend more, and they are more likely to recommend the card to friends and family members,” Jim Miller, J.D. Power senior director of banking services, said in a statement.
Customers who redeem rewards spend an average of $1,128 per month, compared to $645 by those who don’t redeem rewards.
Even though they’re more satisfied with their credit cards, Americans are still concerned about ID theft. Less than a third of those surveyed felt their personal information was very secure, and just 16 percent thought that security had improved since last year.
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Coming Soon: Deductible Relief Day!
You may be familiar with the concept of Tax Freedom Day – the date on which you have earned enough to pay all of your taxes for the year. Focusing on a different kind of financial burden, analysts at the Kaiser Family Foundation have created Deductible Relief Day – the date on which people in employer-sponsored insurance plans have spent enough on health care to meet the average annual deductible.
Average deductibles have more than tripled over the last decade, forcing people to spend more out of pocket each year. As a result, Deductible Relief Day is “getting later and later in the year,” Kaiser’s Larry Levitt said in a tweet Thursday.
Chart of the Day: Families Still Struggling
Ten years into what will soon be the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, 40% of families say they are still struggling, according to a new report from the Urban Institute. “Nearly 4 in 10 nonelderly adults reported that in 2018, their families experienced material hardship—defined as trouble paying or being unable to pay for housing, utilities, food, or medical care at some point during the year—which was not significantly different from the share reporting these difficulties for the previous year,” the report says. “Among adults in families with incomes below twice the federal poverty level (FPL), over 60 percent reported at least one type of material hardship in 2018.”
Chart of the Day: Pragmatism on a Public Option
A recent Morning Consult poll 3,073 U.S. adults who say they support Medicare for All shows that they are just as likely to back a public option that would allow Americans to buy into Medicare or Medicaid without eliminating private health insurance. “The data suggests that, in spite of the fervor for expanding health coverage, a majority of Medicare for All supporters, like all Americans, are leaning into their pragmatism in response to the current political climate — one which has left many skeptical that Capitol Hill can jolt into action on an ambitious proposal like Medicare for All quickly enough to wrangle the soaring costs of health care,” Morning Consult said.
Chart of the Day: The Explosive Growth of the EITC
The Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit for low- to moderate-income workers, was established in 1975, with nominal claims of about $1.2 billion ($5.6 billion in 2016 dollars) in its first year. According to the Tax Policy Center, by 2016 “the total was $66.7 billion, almost 12 times larger in real terms.”
Chart of the Day: The Big Picture on Health Care Costs
“The health care services that rack up the highest out-of-pocket costs for patients aren't the same ones that cost the most to the health care system overall,” says Axios’s Caitlin Owens. That may distort our view of how the system works and how best to fix it. For example, Americans spend more out-of-pocket on dental services ($53 billion) than they do on hospital care ($34 billion), but the latter is a much larger part of national health care spending as a whole.
