Credit Card Myths: Travel Edition

If you know me at any level, whether that be personally or someone who consumes some of our content, you’ll know that I’m anti-credit card. I have several reasons for despising credit cards, spanning the spectrum of principles, ethics, psychology, control, and simplicity, to name a few. I won’t rehash all the reasons in this post. Every time I discuss the topic of credit cards, I know all the arguments people will use against me. The most popular defense of credit cards is the benefit of points, cash back, and miles. If you’re interested, I did a podcast episode about why most people (yes, probably even you) are actually losing money with their points.

Another common pushback I receive about my position on credit cards is the necessity of having one to travel. Flights, hotels, rental cars, and retailers…..all of these require a credit card, right? What kind of idiot travels without a credit card? Well, me. My wife and I just got back from a 10-day trip that included Qatar and multiple cities in Thailand. No credit card. As always, we had cash, our primary debit card, and our travel debit card. That’s it! To be honest, there’s not a lot to argue about. It works great. It worked as well on this trip as the other 30+ countries I’ve been to. It’s a myth. We don’t NEED a credit card to travel.

There are a few nuances. Take hotels, for example. Most hotels require a damage deposit to protect themselves in the event you decide to throw a raver or rip the TV off the wall. Each hotel is different, as evidenced by the three we stayed at. One put a temporary $200 hold on our travel debit card, one required a refundable $100 cash deposit, and the third didn’t require anything. All of our flights go on a debit card. That’s an absolute non-issue. As for rental cars, it’s hit and miss. Any time I need to rent a car, I’ll check with the company beforehand to ensure they don’t require a debit card. Some do, but most don’t. I just choose one that doesn’t.

Life is always simpler without a credit card, and travel life is no different. We have a sum of money in our travel fund to spend on travel. When we use an ATM to take out local currency, it comes out of our account. When we swipe our debit card at retailers, it comes out of our account. When we grab an Uber, it comes out of our account. At any point on the trip, we can see exactly how much we have left to spend. It’s easy, it’s simple, and it’s freeing. We have zero financial stress coming back to America, as we only spent the money we had in our travel checking account. Nothing will haunt us, we won’t be paying for this trip for the next few months (or years), and we don’t have to worry about anything other than trying to catch up with life when we return. I’ve worked with hundreds of families over the years and I can confirm the post-trip stress caused by credit card use can be brutal.

There are so many myths surrounding the topic of credit cards. Hopefully today’s thoughts about one of them will at least give you something to think about. Happy travels!