Author: joeheg

What Cards Am I Looking At Before The End Of 2019?

We’re more than halfway through September and it’s less than 100 days until Christmas. Christmas music is already playing on Sirius XM if you listen on the app (Note from Sharon: YAY!), and you should because now it’s included with even the cheap select subscriptions.

Besides getting ready to pull holiday decorations out of the attic, it means I have to give a good, hard look at my plans for our credit cards for the rest of the year.

Right now, I’ve finished with all of our spending requirements for new cards and I’ve almost reached the one spending threshold I set to achieve. That only means it’s time to look for new cards.

What’s out there that looks interesting to me? As a preface to my choices, I’m currently at 4/24 and Sharon’s at 5/24. I’m not looking at Chase right now for me because I already have 5 personal cards and 1 business card with them and I’m happy with that portfolio.

So what’s looking interesting for me right now?

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Why I’m Not Excited About The Newest Great Reward Value With Royal Air Maroc

Royal Air Maroc is the national airline of Morocco. Up until recently, it was an often overlooked, niche airline with flights to JFK, Boston, Washington D.C. and Miami from its hub city of Casablanca. Only JFK offers daily flights, with all other cities getting service three days of the week. If you were looking to fly to Morocco from the U.S., it was the only way to get there non-stop. They also have connecting flights to several cities in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Royal Air Maroc is not currently a member of any airline alliance, so there was no way to use airline miles from U.S. carriers for flights. This is supposedly changing in 2020 when it’s planned that they will join the Oneworld alliance.

They are also not a transfer partner of any U.S. credit card program so you can’t transfer points from AMEX, Citi, Chase or Capital One to their program to book flights.

Then seemingly overnight, Royal Air Maroc became the buzz of the points and miles universe and I can’t understand why. Well, I do understand why but I just can’t see why those reasons are such a big deal.

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Unpopular Opinion: Leaving Premium Seats Empty Has Never Made People Book Those Seats In The Future

I’ve never seen Sharon unwittingly walk into a tornado of comments like she did last week. Apparently her thoughts in her article United: The Airline That Proves They Just Have No “Effs” To Give were more controversial than she imagined they would be. The basis of the article was about United’s Twitter team response to a request of a passenger to upgrade to the empty rows of Economy Plus left empty in front of him.

What seemed to set everyone off what Sharon’s comment about how United could have instilled some goodwill to passengers by offering upgrades to the empty seats.

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Yes, You Should Buy Medical Insurance For International Travel

When we’re traveling within the U.S., I don’t give much thought to insurance before the trip. I make sure to use a credit card that has good travel protections, and if I rent a car, I use a card that acts as the primary coverage in case there’s damage to the vehicle. For medical coverage, I’ll have my insurance card in my wallet in case I get sick or even worse if there’s some sort of emergency.

When traveling outside the United States, there are a bunch of things to think about. You need to reconfirm travel arrangements, make sure you have all the necessary travel documents and visas and arrange for your mail to be held, your pets to be looked after and everything else that goes through your head. It’s easy to forget that you should also be looking to buy a travel medical insurance policy for your trip.

That’s because even if your medical insurance reimburses you for expenses abroad, they will most likely be considered out-of-network charges with high deductibles and copays. If you have Medicare, you don’t have any coverage at all.

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