Longest 0% purchases and good overseas rates?

michaelsft

Hi everyone, sorry if this appears like I haven't done any research, I have but I was hoping for a little advice as well.

Imagine this situation, I go to live abroad for a year outside Europe, I am looking to take a credit card as a safety net so if I need to purchase a flight home quickly I can. I would be applying for a card 2-3 months before leaving the country to ensure I get it.

Ideally I would like a long 0% purchase card so that if at any point in the first 14-15 months of having the card, I need to use it on something expensive like a flight home, I would still have some time left at 0% to clear the card upon my return. I notice there's a new PO card that offers 25 months and after that there's a Virgin card that offers 24 months - because my current card is a Virgin I imagine the PO is my only option.

Whenever I used a card overseas before (years ago), I got a PO card that offered great rates abroad but I don't think these apply to the new PO card, is that right? There's also a Halifax Clarity card that offer great rates overseas but I don't think it has a 0% on purchases.

What would people advise for me? Should I ignore the overseas rates as it'll just be one purchase abroad? Will overseas purchases invalidate the 0% purchases at all?

I'm not confused by credit cards but I don't know everything and don't want to make a big rik of it!

Thanks for reading!
Michael

grumbler

0%, if offered, is on all purchases - domestic and abroad.
However, I don't think that you'll find a card offering both 0% (let alone 'longest') and 'good overseas rates'.

Nobody can give you an advice - do your maths based on your scenarios.
Typically, you pay ~3% for currency conversion. A yearly interest is likely to be considerably bigger.

michaelsft

Hi, thanks grumbler... I think.

I'll probably just go with the longest 0% on purchases and suck up the transaction fees. I just thought someone might have had a similar experience or might understand things a little better to help me but I guess that's impossible.

YorkshireBoy

grumbler wrote: »

I don't think that you'll find a card offering both 0% (let alone 'longest') and 'good overseas rates'.

Nationwide Select offers both, but would require a FlexDirect current account as well (other routes are available, but this would be the easiest).


However, it might be a hoop too far to save 2-3% *if* a flight home is required!

Candyapple

If you are intending to use this card to only make a purchase of the flight back to the UK and nothing else, assuming you applied for it now and left to go to the other country in November 2015, so in 15 months time you needed to use the card to pay for the flight back - what happens if the card provider blocks the use of the card due to fraud prevention methods or similar because the card hasn't been used in such a long time?

You'd probably fare better taking out a specialist overseas card like the Halifax Clarity card so that way when you are abroad not only can you use the card without paying fees, but if you did need to use it to pay for the flight back, at least it wouldn't run the risk of being flagged up for security reasons and leave you potentially stranded. If you did that, you could always when back in the UK try and apply for a 0% balance transfer card so best of both worlds.