My thinking on this is, today is December 9, if you sign up for a card today, you probably won’t have the card in hand until December 15 or so. Then what happens is most likely, you’ll have a billing cycle which will start on the day you opened the card and will end a month later, so your billing cycle will probably end on January 8 if you opened an account today. Then most cards are going to have anywhere between 20 and 30 days from the end of the billing cycle before you have to pay it off, so you won’t have to pay it until somewhere between January 28 and February 7.
Discover is a great card to have in fact. They offer 4 different card options right now, and 3 of them have no interest for the first 6 months. But even if you went with the card that is offering 3.99% for the first 6 months, they give you plenty of time to pay off your balance. My card has a billing cycle that runs from the 11th of each month to the 10th of the next month. So, let’s say I was going to make a big purchase this month (indeed, I need a new furnace for my house, it’s going to cost me $5,400 and I’m having it installed on Thursday). Well, Thursday is the 11th, so I’ll charge $5,400 on the 11th. My billing cycle will run until January 10th, at which time I’ll actually get a bill for that $5,400. I will not have to pay for that until February 10 to avoid paying interest. There may be better offers out there, but I’d say you can’t go wrong with Discover…almost anyone who books travel is going to take it, the only problem will be if you want to use it a lot, not everyone takes it, but most merchants do now days. You can check out their offerings at www.discovercard.com