Are Travel Writers The Luckiest People on Earth?
Imagine getting paid to admire the view of the snow topped Andes from the modern skyscrapers of Santiago in Chile, or to explore the winding cobbled streets of medieval Tallinn, Estonia or to sail a boat along the Italian Amalfi coast. Of course it’s only travel writers who get rewarded for doing that, right? Well, no. If you love to travel and it’s only your bank balance holding you back from doing it more often, its time you investigated getting yourself a charge card.
Of course, if I had a penny for every time I’d heard ‘charge it’ instructed in a movie as the lead protagonist hands over a shiny piece of plastic to a sales assistant, I’d already be a rich man. So why, I now wonder, has it taken me so longer to discover charge cards and to realise how rewarding they can be. But I digress; if you’re still wondering what the link is between getting rewarded to travel and taking out a charge card please read on, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to start benefiting from both your everyday spending and your wanderlust.
First the basics: what is a charge card? Well, it’s is like a credit card except you pay the balance off in full every month. If you do that anyway with your credit card, then you should definitely look into applying for one and if you don’t, consider whether you could use a charge card as you would your current account for all your unavoidable monthly spending such as groceries and petrol. Why? Well, I used to think the only benefit of a charge card was the absence of a pre-set spending limit (basically you can spend what you can prove you can pay back) until I discovered the rewards schemes and other perks that go hand in hand with these cards.
In short, whatever you spend on your charge card will earn you reward points, but it’s what you can redeem them on that will have you dusting off your passport. Given my passion for travel I’ve naturally focused in on a charge card offering travel rewards (how you accumulate points and what you can spend them on will vary according to the credit card company and the specific card). With the reward card I’ve applied for, I can redeem my points against a range of travel services such as flights, hotels, holidays and car hire. My charge card will also give me double points for any travel related spending and purchases made abroad: substantiating my claim about being rewarded to travel (admit it, you didn’t believe me).
Travel insurances are also included as a benefit of my chosen card plus access to a travel agency to help plan my trips but do shop around to see which reward scheme and perks best suits your needs. Some introductory offers made by credit card companies can also negate the annual fee (something you must factor in to your charge card choice), for instance American Express is offering 20,000 bonus points with its Preferred Rewards Gold Card if you spend £1,000 on it in the first three months. That’s enough points for you and a friend to enjoy a return flight to a European destination.
So you could be benefiting from a free holiday simply by doing your usual grocery and weekly petrol shop on your new card. Act now you could be enjoying Paris in the springtime or waxing lyrical about the tulips in Amsterdam. Now there’s a thought to send you packing.