Travelhacking in the Netherlands

Credit cards are very commonly used in countries like the USA. To lure new customers in most credit card companies have very good welcome bonuses, typically consisting of points for major hotel chains or airlines. Many people in the USA FI community are into travel hacking and are constantly on the lookout for the best credit card deals. Credit card use is much less common in the Netherlands. Most people have one credit card through their bank. Without competition the welcome deals are usually non-existing and there is no travel hacking. There is one amazing exception, keep on reading!

KLM Flying blue

If you travel regularly with KLM I would advise you to obtain a free flying blue card to collect miles and XP points. Buy flights and earn miles for free flights and XP points to get silver/gold/platinum status with all sorts of benefits at the airport (queue jumping, free check-in luggage, free seat selection etc.). This year we earned around 10,000 miles and 44 XP points. Bit of a bummer is that you lose your XP points if you don’t collect enough before the end of the year to get a status upgrade. Keep on reading, there is a happy ending!

KLM  Flying Blue AmEx card

You can connect an American express card to your KLM flying blue card. This is very helpful as you can now earn miles from other purchases than airplane tickets. For instance Jumbo, Tango and bol.com except this card. There is different level credit cards (silver/gold/platinum) that earn you different levels of miles per euro spend. 

And there are great welcome bonuses! We just received our platinum cards. Say what, platinum cards in the FI community!? Yup, the welcome offer includes half price for the card the first year, still a whopping €25 per month. That is a not-so-frugal €300 euro for the first year. But what does it give us? We get 20,000 welcome miles which covers a free flight within Europe (€150). We'll get another free flight from using the card for groceries, fuel etc. We get a 60XP welcome bonus. For an upgrade to silver flying blue status you need 100XP so we made it!

No more waiting in line, no payment for check-in luggage and free reserved seats to keep the family together in-flight (we spend around €100/year on extras). On top we get free rental car insurance. Last year we rented twice and spend €80. No more surprises at the car rental counter! You get the point by now, we are making money while getting better treatment at airports.

Don't use your credit card for credit!
Obviously you should pay your full bill at the end of each month to avoid the insanely high interest rates to be incurred on your debt. With the KLM AmEx cards this is the only option you have, no worries!

What's in it for you?

If you have our traveling habits you could obviously repeat what we did. However, a silver and gold card are worth considering as well, do your homework at the KLM website. A silver card is for free the first year and gives you 5000 miles. A gold card costs €85 with 20,000 welcome miles and 30 bonus XP.

We can help each other out to make the deal even better! AmEx provided me with a link. If you use my link you get a gold card for free and 22000 miles! It helps me as well as I also receive 22000 miles! There is better deals for silver and platinum cards through the link as well (more miles than the standard offer).

Once you have a credit card AmEx should provide you with a link as well so you can do the same and invite your friends to grow your miles. Let's travel hack together? Get your card through this link.

Backtracking 2004-2007; working abroad and traveling the world

My first full-time job was abroad on a tax-exempt status. At that time I had a clear financial goal; traveling the world for a year after the two year contract had finished! I decided to simply not spend the roughly 1/3 of my income that would have otherwise gone to the tax office but rather put that money into a savings account. After 2 years this allowed me to take a year of and, as I spend roughly the same amount of money during my travels as I did during my working life, I came back from this life changing experience without any money left.

The aftermath 

My perspective on several things had changed dramatically. I had only possessed 12 kg of stuff in a backpack for a year and not missed anything materialistic. Although with my income I consider myself among the fortunate within the Netherlands, on a worldwide scale this is even more true. Hence, I saw absolutely no reason why I would not be able to save a substantial amount of my income from now on. This nicely matched with my ambition not to spend the rest of my life working as a year is not nearly enough to see the world! 

On my trip I had traded all my money for all the time in the world to only do what I like; a saving account is not a very sustainable strategy as I spend all the money I could save in 2 years in just 1 year. Disregarding social securities, this implies that to enjoy life for 25 years I would have to work for 50 years, e.g work from 20-70 and enjoy from 70-95 years old… At this point in time I was 33 so this did not seem a feasible route to take, I needed an investment strategy with higher returns that would work for me when I was not anymore.