The other consideration is the CSR has a $75 fee for AU cards as they get their own priority pass membership. My understanding is you can order a plastic version to use in machines that don't like metal cards. So it's a reasonable request to have an extra and just maybe DH carries it around. You might have to call for that so the alternative is to just request a replacement for a damaged card. Don't pick one of the other options as they'll change your card number for those.
Knock wood we haven't had any issue using a card in the other's name. Mostly the cards interact with machines and people never see them anymore. You'd only run into an issue if you're buying something that requires the store to match name on the card to ID. (for me this is only a Visa/MC gift card, and then only sporadically).
The easiest thing to do is simply tell them you damaged your card. If you don’t want to lie, just take a knife to it and scratch it up a little (not the card reader)
. Tell them to just send a replacement card and that they don’t change the number so you don’t have to change everything online. That works.
Also- to anyone who isn’t doing this already with your CSR: never have it for more than one year. Get the CSR, use the travel credit of $300, pay the $450, after the first year and second wave of AFs, use the $300 travel credit again and then downgrade the card within 45 days to get your full refund (used to be 60) of 2nd AF.
Then, if you have a P2 or another Chase UR card, PC that card to a CSR and rinse/repeat. You should constantly be PCing that card annually, but it’s worth keeping because of the 1.5:1 ratio and the unmatchable insurance. Plus, you’ll always get $600 for $450
@have2getaway
Also, China is definitely authoritarian and has issues, but there is plenty of capitalism happening too. So tourist dollars would definitely not ONLY benefit the government, because entrepreneurs are alive and well in China (with all kinds of bureaucratic weirdness from the government). Different from other (smaller) countries where there is more direct government intervention in everything (and tourism dollars go direct to gov agencies).
This is good to know. Thanks.
Love all the talk of the ethics of visiting different countries.
1st- I agree that Taiwan is amazing
2nd- the more I travel the more I look at the intentionality of my travel. We’ve even had “carbon footprint” talk over on Reddit regarding our huge amount of travel. So I try to make sure my family gets something out of every trip we go on that makes it “worth” it for more than just ourselves. I have an affinity for thinking about many things and the older I get the more I realize that every single decision has both good and better outcomes so choose the better (or; more cynically, bad and worse outcomes so choose the “least bad”).
A perfect example of this is the saying “white savior” complex (which has nothing to do with being white, of course, and I dislike the term because of that). But it’s essentially any citizen (regardless of race) from a developed nation that goes to an orphanage in a developing nation, gives a bunch of stuff away, snaps their pics, then leaves. And how little that actually benefits those people vs donating to organizations that promote sustainability and independence in those respective nations. Well, the converse is that whenever I have my children with me in a foreign country (5 and 9), we always carve out a full day for volunteer work that is representative to that countries needs (Animal rescue in Costa Rica, Orphanages in Peru, when my kids are old enough we’ll do youth suicide groups in Japan but for now we do old folks homes there). And the challenge I face is exactly what to do. Using Peru as an example; we have the ability to use an orphanage group that has the teens who are a part of the orphanages there that work as tour guides and that allows them to learn sustainability (which we use). But my kids are also too young to fully grasp that (my 9 year old does somewhat but my 5 year old is oblivious). So we still choose to visit an orphanage to allow my American children to interact and play with the orphans as it is more impactful for
them (my kids) than it is even the orphans themselves. And I can wrestle with the fact of if that is selfish or not, but I believe that through those acts, I am shaping my children to be much better humans that can make a better impact in the world had they not experienced those interactions.
Sorry for the long read. As you can tell, I enjoy those discussions too.
They’re fun for me and I fully believe that mindless action, no matter what you are doing leads to a less meaningful life. Having these discussions internally and externally fortify your beliefs, shape your morals and lead to a more meaningful life; which is what life should be about.
Edited for typos/grammar
I've wanted to watch Veep because my BIL and his partner really like it, just haven't gotten around to it. Or figured out where we can stream it... GoT is going to it's final season? I watched the first few seasons, I liked it, but I didn't have HBO or anything so I was watching it via pirating sites and got a computer virus one too many times and gave it up. Same with True Blood when that was on. 
#goals
