I have my wedding come up in Ireland (I live in Australia) and have hotel $7k payment and Honeymoon roughly another $7k payment but that’s via booking.com.
I already have an ANZ Black rewards card so was going pay for honeymoon through that so I get points. There is a overseas fee if I used ANZ card for hotel.
Then I was thinking should I be getting a new card so I get a sign up bonus and the minimum payment at once.
Interested to hear if you have any suggestions on what you would do for the above scenarios?
If your timing and financial circumstances allow, you could apply for a new credit card for it’s signup bonus and meeting the qualifying spend with your upcoming purchases.
Alternatively, you could use your existing ANZ card to earn points for the spend.
If this is non-AUD spend, you might want to weigh up the cost (3%) vs the potential points earned. In most cases, in my opinion, it is too costly to pay the 3% for the points earned. Work out the cents per (airline) point (cpp) for this and see whether it is worthwhile. You want this cpp value to be as low as possible when you are earning points; inversely, you want this cpp to be as high as possible when spending points.
If you are paying in advance when making the booking, it should be in AUD. Some cards like St George cards have the annoying “feature” of charging you forex fee even though you are paying in AUD, but the charge location is outside of Australia. I’ve been caught out a few times. However, if I recall correctly, I don’t think I have the same issue with ANZ cards.
If you are paying at the hotel, it will obviously be in the local currency.
The 3% is pretty standard if your card charges forex fees. Might be worth checking out some no forex options (e.g. debit/credit cards) for your trip since you have the time.