It may surprise you when all I tell you that between Chris and I, we have an awful lot of credit cards.
The reason that we have credit cards is because we get air miles! We love to travel and so the perks of having credit cards that are affiliated with air miles means that every time we spend a lot of money on our credit cards, those air miles rack up.
Now, I have come to note that with Delta, 42 and a half thousand air miles gets me a return trip from London to New York and that is works okay with me. Chris on the other hand, loves to use Virgin and so what we’ve done between the pair of us is he has got a Delta Amex and I have got a Virgin Mastercard.
So I spend money and top it up on his account and he spends money on his account and tops it up on my air miles. So we switch. That works for us.
We did use to have a British Airways Amex, but we could never find good enough flights to use our points. We did use our points on flying to Dubai once and then that was them all used up. I think the most recent thing we’ve done is we flew to Chicago business class, and that was over years of accumulating points. So I don’t actually recommend the British Airways credit cards because I don’t think you get points you can spend.
However, I would advise taking out a credit card for an airline that you use often and attaching it to your sky miles.
I use my credit cards for doing small renovations. So for example, I’m about to do a bathroom in one of my flats and I will be putting that on my credit card. Also, I buy everything, home furnishings or anything else for my properties, even lettings fees on my credit cards because it all amounts up.
Now, below I’ve put a list of credit cards that actually I think are really useful.
Side note here: if you’re bad with credit cards or you don’t know how to use them properly, i.e. don’t pay them off at the end of the month or you don’t have a repayment plan – don’t take them out. It’s not worth it.
They stay on your credit rating and if you’re looking to get a mortgage, then your mortgage lender is going to ask that you repay the credit cards first or they’re going to reduce the amount that they lend you by the amount that you’ve got on your credit card. So just be warned about that.
Okay, so the first card we’ve got as the Virgin Atlantic reward plus credit card.
So when you sign up, you get 15,000 bonus miles and then plus an extra 10,000 miles. My gosh, that’s halfway to New York versus London. You get 1.5 following club miles for every one pound you spend and 3 miles for every one pound you spend Virgin Atlantic or Virgin holidays.
The other benefit with getting a credit card from Virgin is that they transfer cash into your bank account interest free for six months.
You could have to apply for that with them. But I found that a real bonus, I use that to do a renovation on one of my properties last year and then paid that off within the six months. So it was interest free money that helped me leverage my cash.
The only thing to be aware of is it’s got an annual fee of 160 pounds and really high interest rates. So again, if you’re not good with money, don’t take out a credit card!
The second credit card we’ve got is a Delta Sky Miles Gold credit card.
That’s Chris’s and actually that’s a US one. The reason we took that out was because it got the 30,000 bonus miles from the start. You also get main cabin party boarding. You get miles every single time you spend money with them. So for us in America it’s really good!
So what have I done instead of getting that US credit card?
I have applied for American Express preferred rewards gold credit card.
That means I get 20,000 membership rewards up front when I spend 2000 pounds in my first three months. So that’s half way to American back for me. And this is a huge priority.
The annual fee is 140 pounds, so just be aware of that. But again, if you apply for this card, you can use your membership rewards with loads of different airlines and for me that’s really good.
So, that was my experience. And the reason I use these credit cards, it’s purely for air miles and the perks that you get from that. I’ve got a holiday habit that I have to keep fulfilling and credit cards allow me to do so.
What do you think? Do you have any credit cards with some amazing perks?
Let me know in the comments section below!
And if you’ve got any questions, you can email – natasha@ncrealestate.co.uk
P.S. This is not an ad! This is purely what I use and I wanted to share that with you.
Natasha
