I’ve never had a credit card, but I travel often and have always heard rumblings about rewards and cash back or whatever, so I’m wondering if there is a card I would benefit from since I regularly purchase plane tickets.
I’m looking for personal experiences, primarily.
thank you!
thanks, good idea!
I have bank accounts in different countries and can always open another if there’s a more favorable card somewhere, so location isn’t a critical issue for me.
Bank of Somaliland has some great deals on travel credit cards, as does Zimbabwe consumer bank, Bank of New Zealand and Icelandic bank /s I’m impressed that you have the ability to open bank accounts in any country when basic KYC rules would limit this for the vast majority of the world’s population.
thanks.
“bank accounts in different countries” is not the same as bank accounts “in any country”.
so not any country, but it’s a lot easier to open bank accounts in many countries than you might expect.
do you have personal experience with the african banks? New Zealand requires permanent residence to open a bank account.
most banks have credit cards, what benefits do the african cards from Zimbabwe and Somaliland offer that especially favor travelers ?
Which is exactly why you need to tell people what currencies and countries apply to you, if you actually want any useful answers.
That doesn’t seem like the problem here.
The finance and travel communities are very small here, so it’s likely very few to nobody around here knows much about travel or credit cards.
to soothe your anxiety, East Asia, southeast Asia, Western Europe or the USA are my specific areas of interest, although I’m also significantly interested in Australia, Africa and Scandinavia.
I think I’ve heard that banks in Somaliland sometimes offer insurance against pirate attacks, which might come in very handy.
not great for traveling, I’m a specifically looking for global benefits.
you know it’s okay that you don’t know or have any useful information, right?
nobody’s going to scold you for your ignorance, especially if you keep it to yourself.
In that case the most valuable piece of advice I can give you is that no matter how good contracts you have with your banks currency conversion is never ever for free, so make sure to only use credit cards that you pay in currencies that you have income in or else you’ll always unnecessarily waste money by having to convert from the currencies you have income in to the currencies you need to pay your credit card balance. It’s utterly unlikely that you’ll ever find any credit card that has so good conditions that it’d make up for that loss.
Which brings us back to square one: In order to get any useful advice, you need to tell what currency (or currencies) you have income in, that you’ll use to pay your credit card balance.
“most valuable piece of advice I can give you…”
more valuable than your previous gems revealing your near-total ignorance about banking, travel, and credit cards?
lay it on me.
“It’s utterly unlikely that you’ll ever find any credit card that has so good conditions that it’d make up for that loss.”
this is objectively untrue with even basic introductory benefits for most credit cards negating the credit card annual fees, most cards specifically offer no-fee foreign transactions…jeez dude, just say you don’t know or ask a few questions; you don’t have to keep pretending you know anything with vague assumptions and half-baked notions.
All you’re doing here is further exposing your ignorance.
" you need to tell what currency you have income in"
nope, makes absolutely no difference within the context of personal experience with credit card benefits, which is the topic here.