Is getting an Amex card going to be a pain?

ozaz

Utop1st said:

How do people earn money on betting? I don't understand this.

That's taking things a bit off-piste!

Mr87

ozaz said:

Utop1st said:

How do people earn money on betting? I don't understand this.

That's taking things a bit off-piste!

Wait until there's been a run on red (say, 5) and then put everything on black 🙄

Mr87

ozaz said:

Ken2000 said:

ozaz said:

Ken2000 said:

Thanks all for the replies so far. Would it be safe to say that in most cases, it would make more sense to pay with a credit card (and pay it off each month)? I'm thinking that if I had a cashback Amex and a Starling Debit Card, that would cover me for pretty much every situation I can think of.

more sense to pay with a credit card (and pay it off each month)?
Totally depends on you. If you want to use a credit card for reward point or cashback accumulation then yes you should put as much as possible of your spending through it (and of course not spend more than you would otherwise have spent and pay off in full). Lots of people do this. I personally prefer debit card spending (spending what I already have) for the majority of my spending. But I still use credit cards primarily for section 75 protection (so on purchases over £100).

cover me for pretty much every situation I can think of
Amex + Starling (Mastercard) would enable you to spend anywhere and would give you fee-free international spending (via Starling). But it wouldn't give you section 75 protection for purchases over £100 where Amex isn't accepted.

I suppose the simplest solution would be to have another credit card for those rare scenarios where I'm after protection but need to use a Mastercard or Visa credit card.

From a simplicity point of view you should decide how many banks / credit card companies you want to have accounts with. You could perhaps have Amex + Starling + a traditional bank who would provide a backup current account and backup credit card. If you're ok with 3 providers that's what I would do.

But if you want less providers and you could perhaps drop Starling and and just use a traditional bank which provides both your only current account and a back up credit card, or you could perhaps drop Amex and just use a Visa/Mastercard credit card from a traditional bank as your only credit card.

I agree if you wanted to keep things simple, the 2 cards strategy seems like a good one and this is what I'm aiming for eventually. That said, it's not that difficult nowadays to manage multiple cards and accounts with multiple banks - I just have the online banking apps grouped on my phone so it's dead easy to look at all my finances. If you're technologically minded, the other thing you can do is link all your cards to something like google pay so it does all your transactions in one place. That also allows you to pay contactless with your phone and choose which card you want to use without getting your wallet out (you could leave some cards at home, this is also what I do).

And if you were worried about making sure you didn't miss a payment - just put a DD to pay off in full every month. Simples!