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.

pile of credit cards

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!