Up until now I had a classic Visa card which cost me 18 euro per year. Since most of my on line shopping and all of my off line purchases are being paid with my regular bank card this card was more of an extra security measure in case something was wrong with the main bank card. Or when travelling abroad and the Visa card was the only card that was accepted/worked. It is always good to have an extra card with you!
Streetlife
A little real life example will illustrate this. A few years ago a friend of mine went to the USA for work and since the EUR was strong back then I asked her to bring me back a digital camera. Since I had known her for years and trusted her completely I gave her my visa card and code. She said this was unnecessary but I did not want the hassle of having to calculate the exchange rate when paying her back in euro’s and this way everything was nice and easy for the both of us. A week later I received a call. She needed to stay a few days longer and since she also had to bring back a few Iphones (for persons who had not given her their credit card) and there was also a security deposit blocked by the hotel. She was now at her limit on both her own cards! Could she please use my card to pay for the extra nights? Sleeping on the streets of New York avoided, by having my extra credit card with her!
Money, money, money!
So yes, an extra card never hurts. But 18 euro a year just was is too much for this feature. I used to have a free one with Keytrade (before I shut that broker account down and when I went to work for the big bank I also shut down my Argenta account) and my fiancée still has a free one at Argenta. But I wanted to do better than free and preferably find a card with some cash back possibility.
I landed on the Extra world MasterCard via Beobank: a 5 euro per year cost and a cash back of a 100 euro a year. A far cry from or the credit card hacks in the USA but 95 euro for switching to another card and using that one while grocery shopping? I’ll take it!!
Slashing the 18 euro of recurring costs reduces the seize of my stash need by 450 euro!
The 100 euro of cash back even adds a further reduction of 2500 euro! So almost 3.000 euro reduction in the seize of my stash!
Travel hacking
And then FOB wrote about the Flying Blue-American Express card. Finally available in the Netherlands and the best available choice for some travel hacking! So I checked if it was available in Belgium as well. Beobank had it, but nowhere do they mention it being free for the first year. And I wanted a cheaper card, not a more expensive one!
There is a nice little overview here of available travel hacking cards in Belgium. Nothing as good as the deal FOB got.
Why do the Dutch get better conditions than us Belgians? Not faire!
I looked and looked but cannot find a similar deal as the Dutch. Did I miss something, anybody found a better cash back credit card in Belgium (with no or low annual costs)? My application for the Beobank one has not yet been send so if there is something better out there, let me know!
Nothing found here… My visa is free.. i will look at the beobank one… What are the conditions for cash back?
Had a quick look on the train… Not bad as a deal. Conditions to get the cash back are fair in my opinion.
I find the conditions to be OK, couldn’t find anything better. Max of 100 euro but with only 1% cashback I could not see us spending more then 10.000 euro anyway
I have noticed people from Belgium order the Flying Blue American Express card via the link on my site https://www.financieelonafhankelijkblog.nl/ga/goldcard and get it for free for 1 year. So I would be surprised if that does not work anymore.
De voorwaarden zeggen dat je een Nederlandse rekening nodig hebt. Ik heb ze zelfs op de airfrance.be site gevonden en daar had je een Frans rekeningnummer nodig!! Aargh!!
Ik zou hem gewoon aanvragen, waarschijnlijk krijg je hem gewoon ook met een Belgische rekening. Ik zie Belgen, Duitsers, Fransen allemaal succesvol de kaart via die link krijgen
Interesting story on your credit card. I bet your friend was super thankful that they had it. The certainly would have been in a bind and I’m not sure she would have enjoyed sleeping on the streets in NYC. I have to admit I have two credit cards one for international travel and then one for US but both are cash back cards since I don’t travel too much. Otherwise I would try to do some travel hacks 🙂
She was very happy having my card with her and never traveled again without a back-up card! This will be our first time using a cash-back card (they are not as wide spread in Belgium as they are in other countries) so pretty curious how it all works …
We actually only have one with ING, but the only reason we have that is because of the business travel of Mrs CF (and the deal is not as good as the free one from American Express, but I have a beef with AE from past experiences).
If she did not do any of that, we probably would not have a credit card at all. Debit works just fine for 99% of the time (and perhaps some cash). Granted, we had to pay our Airbnb holiday with it too.
Good luck finding the best deal!
The cash back one is a mastercard and via ebuyclub.nl I could get additional cashback at bol.com and zooplus, e-shops we do use on a regular basis.
Like I said, an extra card ‘just in case of’ is always handy but I rather be paid for it than have to pay for it. Since the American express travel hacking card should be available for me as well i now need to compare it with the Mastercard in regards to utilty in our day to day live.
Interesting! A couple of months I already researched some visa/master cards to acquire free flight miles. Came to the conclusion Belgium really sucks in benefits on credit cards…
Although you managed to find quite an interesting card with the 1% deal cash back!
We will probably go for the cash back card and use the ebuyclub.nl site also. Will report back in a year on our experiences with it!
And me that I closed my credit card and I live only with the current one…. 😀 . I had one from ING, 30 euro/year and I used 1-2-3 times every year, so I closed it.
Yep, I still keep the routine to use cash, was restarted when keep my monthly budget under control, and enjoyed for my discipline in my last 4 years.
I will check the one from Beobank, the idea of cash back is interesting.
My bank changed their free credit card policy. The fuckers didn’t tell me. This card of yours, is it linked to a bank account @ Beobank. There should be a possibility to stay @ another bank.
No, you can link any account to it, even accounts at other banks. We do not have a Beobank account either.
4 the visa lovers, Beobank Visa Internet Cashback is an alternative. 1% Cashback up to 200€. Not that I see myself buying stuf for 20K a year. It’s pretty fucked up that you can’t use it at Colruyt.
I’m using the F word a lot lately, ah fuck it. 🙂
That cash back is only for on-line purchases. At the moment there is now way we would make 10.000 euro on line purchase, not even 5.000 euro. Since the mastercard is for all purchases that card suits our needs better. It is only a max of 100 euro cashback a year but at least that is a 100 euro we will be able to get. I say at the moment, because once our supermarkets start offering internet orders at the same price than in the shop this might change.
I overlooked the online vs all purchases thing. thx for this interesting post.