Unlike living at home, our travel wallets are very simplified. We don’t have a AAA card, car insurance, Costco membership, library card, etc… you get the picture. We do miss Costco!

Only 1 card?

We don’t carry much, in fact, we only use 1 credit card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve. We are both users of the same card so it’s really easy to pay bills.

Why? The Chase Sapphire cards (both the Preferred and the Reserve) don’t have foreign transaction fees and we’ve noticed they give a fair market exchange. So you don’t have to worry that you are paying a fee for paying in another currency or that they are shafting you with a poor exchange rate. YES!

How much does it cost? The cost of the Reserve is a bit hefty - $450 annually but they have a $300 travel credit so in essence, when you travel a lot, you are only paying $150 annually.

Benefits? for us the biggest benefits are the Priority Pass, Chase points and the Auto Rental Collision Damage waiver.

Priority Pass: In the year between Oct 1, 2017 and Sep 30 2018 we visited 35 different lounges. To make the math easy, let’s say the cost per person, per lounce is $10 - that means we used $700 worth of lounge access. In reality, the cost per person, per lounge ranges between $35-$55 so we saved waaaaay more than $700.
Chase Points: In that same time we accumulated about 80,000 chase points which is about $1,200 worth (if you use it wisely) so for us, the $150 was more than paid for with these benefits.
Auto rental insurance - Chase provides reimbursement for damage due to collision or theft for most rental vehicles when traveling within the US and abroad. You can find all the details here - Chase Auto Collision Damage waiver.

There are other benefits too, like Global Entry $100 credit, insurance on purchases (travel and other), car insurance for 3rd parties, etc... We cannot recommend this card enough and this post is definitely NOT SPONSORED.

Show me the money!

No, seriously, some places don’t take credit cards so we need actual, hard cash. For that we use our Charles Schwab bank because they refund us all ATM fees. We ONLY use it to withdraw, we don’t use it as a debit card and we are picky to use it at ATM machines that look legit. Also, the exchange rate that we get from Schwab has been better than any of the rates we’ve seen at exchange places AND there is no transaction fee (some places charge to exchange).

Additionally we carry a bit of cash as a back up that we don’t use unless we absolutely need to. So far we’ve only used it in Bolivia where we needed to pay for the visa in dollars and the ATM machines don’t serve you dollars. Not too bad for more than a year on the road.

That’s it?

Yes and no. Yes, these are all the cards we use but we carry a few extra cards (like the Hilton Amex because we get more points if we pay with that card when we stay at Hiltons). We keep these cards active with some recurring charges like our Kindle subscription and we also update the travel advisories in case we need to use them for an emergency.

Anything else?

Actually, yes! We also have an RFID blocking wallet (similar one here). RFID technology refers to the smart tag in your credit card or debit card. The beauty is that you can just ‘tap’ because the card doesn’t have to be swiped. However, we heard that there are some people with readers stealing your credit card information contained in that RFID tag. So, to prevent our numbers from being out there, all willy nilly, we used a wallet and RFID sleeves (you can find similar sleeves here) We are not sure it worked, but it did make us feel a little safer.

Do you have any money related travel tips ? we’d love to hear about how we could optimize and save. And if you are curious how much we spent the first year, checkout our post here.

Update: Year 2 expenses can be found here.

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