There is a very good reason why I do not use credit cards more. I mainly use them to fit my lifestyle and not let a great deal dictate my spending habits. The requirement of a travel credit sounds good on the surface but it also has a time limit which may make you spend more in order to use up the credit.
Probably going to brittany does is beat the bush many of you have asked me to do more credit card reviews on travel credit cards so that we can maybe travel for free or what not using all the points the reason i haven’t been doing much of those credit card reviews is because my spending level isn’t that high and i actually would not purposely increase my spending
Level just to meet the minimum requirements of these cars before you go all beat the bushes and go anywhere you just like to stay home i have done my fair share of travel and here’s a list of places i’ve been i’ve been to taiwan caribbeans korea hong kong singapore kobe tokyo shanghai mexico hawaii new zealand australia so i did all that traveling before and got
It out of my system and maybe it’s not enough traveling for some people actually for me i think it’s a good amount so nowadays when i look at traveling i think of more of all the treacherous flying i have to do you have to stay in the airplane you have to sleep in a chair and having the really dry air it’s just kind of like a pain that you have to suffer through in
Order to get to your destination so in light of all this pain the jetlag and stuff i don’t exactly look forward to it all that much although i do like the destination so these days i really rather maybe one day be able to go somewhere for much longer than just one week maybe for a month even the main thing i don’t like about these travel credit cards especially the
Chase sapphire reserve is that you have a time limit of when to spend your travel credits chase sapphire reserve have a 300 dollar travel credit per year well it’s basically you use it or lose it so if i happen to not really want to go anywhere for that year then i basically lose that credit so if i were to have that card then i would be like oh gosh i really need
To make sure i go somewhere this year this is as opposed to if i find somewhere organically i go oh maybe i want to go there and if i really want to go there i might not time it exactly so that i go within one year i go whenever i feel like it the second aspect is that these minimum spend requirements might actually make you spend more the chase sapphire reserve
Requires a $4,000 within three months this is 1333 dollars per month if you’re spending outside rent or mortgage as well as the things that you cannot charge your credit card adds up to be $1300 i’d say that’s a pretty high spend right so at least for me i cannot easily meet that $1300 because i think my spend rate on the credit card you know it might go close to
Something like five hundred dollars a month for everything usually for people that cannot spend four thousand dollars at three months you might use your normal spending in there and try to fill it up with other stuff maybe like oh maybe it’s a time to buy a laptop at the time maybe i’ll buy a fancy camera you have to think if it’s actually making you spend more
Earlier in time versus if you don’t have that card at all maybe you’ll delay getting a laptop later on maybe you’ll get like the expensive item later on actually the later on you get something the less money you’re spending because it’s actually like an average cost over time thing earlier you spend something the more you’re spending another aspect i noticed is
About toys usually through these programs you can extend the value of your points for example for the city thank you premiered i had going through their portal i noticed that if i look at any of the hotels it was roughly about 25% more than the cheapest if i went to those travel website and trying to look at a similar hotel so me spending the points gruder portal
Gets me 25% more however it just kind of negates itself so this is the card itself the first year annual fee was free the second year actually ended up paying ninety five dollars because i wanted to extend the time at which i can use this card from my calculations keeping it another year was actually worth it it was actually making me more than the $95 so i’m like
Oh man yeah okay i’ll do it just because i’m going to get more but the ninety five dollar annual fee has been bothering me quite a bit it’s going to be up in about two months and i can’t imagine what it would be like to have a chase sapphire reserve and then you always have that three hundred dollars sitting in there burning a hole in your pocket you’re like i
Kind of get rid of it i’m going to go and use that this $300 is a ticking time off because you paid $450 for the annual fee it’s kind of like you could cash into it and it’s going to be evaporate if you don’t use that credit in time sort of like those get entertainment coupon books right you pay a lot you really have to spend or in order to get the value out so
This is kind of like the chase sapphire reserve card you paid $450 in it you better go and use that $300 travel credit and then you better use up that 50,000 points in order to get the value out so if you add everything up yes you do get an advantage but you also need to step back and go hey did it make me spend more money if i didn’t have that credit card if
You didn’t have it would you do the same exact thing now if you answer yourself yeah i was going to go travel anyway i was going to go to greece or italy or something then sure by all means use the credit card the best way is if you have something planned and you know you’re going to go somewhere that you want to know what you want to do this year and maybe at the
Same time you have a large purchase coming up that you can meet the minimum spending requirements then that would be a perfect time to get one of these cards possibly pave the feet meet the minimum requirements and then you have a budget point and then you can buy your ticket with these points and then you can just chain them all up exactly and it won’t actually
Make you spend more if you time it right so that’s it for my spirit travel credit cards it’s not that i’m not going to go travel it’s in the future i do travel i might actually just get one of these credit cards it’s just the way you think about it don’t forget to give me a like on this video comment down below let me know if you got one of these credit cards it
Actually made you spend more in order to meet the minimum requirements if you’re interested in supporting this channel i have an audible link down in the video description below we can get a free audiobook and if you cancel before the trial period ends you can still keep the book and you can still help benefit this channel of course if you try out this audiobook
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Transcribed from video
Why I Dont Use Travel Credit Cards | BeatTheBush By BeatTheBush
