Bea

Also pace yourself against your actual spending, not against a calendar. Two cards with 4000 dollar requirements overlapping is 8000 in three months and if you cannot do that comfortably you end up manufacturing spend under pressure, which is how people make expensive mistakes.

23 dollars against the bonus is nothing, that is a fine backstop if the prepayments fall short.

The annual insurance switch alone is 540 of it. I feel a bit silly for not thinking of that.

Also nothing wrong with admitting you will come back. Trying to see everything once is how people end up remembering none of it.

Move them to the transferable programme or a partner, not to a statement credit, unless you genuinely need the cash. Statement credit valuations are usually the worst option available.

It depends heavily on where you are going, so look up how card friendly the country is before you decide anything. Some places you can spend a fortnight without touching a note, others still run on cash outside the big cities.

My default for a mixed city and rural trip: arrive with the equivalent of about 100 in local currency for the first day, then withdraw from a bank ATM inside a town rather than the machines in the arrivals hall, which almost always have worse rates and fees.

Two rules that matter more than the amount. When a card terminal or ATM offers to charge you in your home currency, always decline and choose the local currency, otherwise you take a poor exchange rate quietly. And carry a card with no foreign transaction fee if you can get one, because 2 to 3 percent on everything for two weeks adds up.