Travelling/credit card/car hire!

lincoln67

Afternoon! My wife and I sold our houses and left our jobs to go travelling, leaving the UK in February. When we are in Costa Rica (May) ideally we would like to hire a car, and don't have a credit card at the moment.

I hadn't thought about this - and everywhere says you need one. We've got a really good amount of money saved up and a really big hold on the debit card etc would be absolutely fine... but I'm a bit worried about pitching up in Costa Rica and it being a problem. Looking at organising a credit card and... everywhere would reject us out of hand (which I think is the unemployed bit / selling our house - I've not found one where I could put my savings in yet!)

I've rented cars before and not had a problem but I think that seems to be because some big rental companies are okay with debits... and I've not found them saying debits are okay for this trip. I'm not sure if there's a credit card I could apply for to get round it, or a way of getting round the debit card problem. Suggestions welcome!

Been searching and not doing well so feel free to point me to threads if I've missed them...

Thanks a lot!

CliveOfIndia

Ideally you'd want one of the "travel" credit cards which don't charge a foreign-exchange fee on non-sterling transactions.  But if you're technically unemployed, that may restrict your options somewhat.  Run a few eligibility checks, also look at some of the credit-builder cards.

But with no income you may struggle.  Unfortunately savings are not taken into account by any lender, because they're not a guaranteed source of income - you could in theory go out and spend the whole lot tomorrow.

lincoln67

CliveOfIndia said:

Ideally you'd want one of the "travel" credit cards which don't charge a foreign-exchange fee on non-sterling transactions.  But if you're technically unemployed, that may restrict your options somewhat.  Run a few eligibility checks, also look at some of the credit-builder cards.

But with no income you may struggle.  Unfortunately savings are not taken into account by any lender, because they're not a guaranteed source of income - you could in theory go out and spend the whole lot tomorrow.

Thanks - all makes sense. Started trying a few on the basis of 'travel' but saying not eligible... will try a few more later/the credit-builder types! It's a very 'not really a problem, problem' as I'm sure we can just use public transport in Costa Rica and work it out there. Just seems dumb when we'd be maybe looking at spending £600-700 and are totally good for that. Appreciate the reply!

TwiceNightly

If you can't get a travel credit card, but can get another type of credit card then it's not the end of the world as the card would convert the currency into GBP at the Mastercard or Visa rate and you would pay something around a 2.99% foreign transaction fee, which on £600 is around £18.

Have you been with any bank for a long time? That's who to start with in my opinion, try their eligibility checker.

lincoln67

TwiceNightly said:

If you can't get a travel credit card, but can get another type of credit card then it's not the end of the world as the card would convert the currency into GBP at the Mastercard or Visa rate and you would pay something around a 2.99% foreign transaction fee, which on £600 is around £18.

Have you been with any bank for a long time? That's who to start with in my opinion, try their eligibility checker.

Yeah ended up going down that route as I don't seem to be eligible for any travel credit cards... but don't seem to be eligible for credit builder ones either in the current circumstances!

I'm with Starling (and have been for a while) but they don't seem to offer a credit card unfortunately! Bit frustrating - the two options are revise the route for public transport or paying well over the odds for the one or two companies who seem to accept debit cards in Costa Rica, but that seems to be (for our length of stay) going from say £770 for the whole trip to £1600. Bit hard to stomach doing that!

(also thanks for your help!)

lincoln67

Just on the off chance anyone gets to this point / same circumstances as us for some reason (!) then interbus seems like a good way to travel to major destinations in Costa Rica/for convenience. The longer stretches were the problems for us looking at public transport but for $59 we can get picked up etc from our hotel... if it's not good I will post back in the future haha

sausage_time

You may be able to rent using a credit card for security, but then settle the bill using a debit card (for potentially a better FX rate).  I have done this in the US.