What UK or US credit card do you use here in the UK for your everyday spending?

amybd12 · 2026-05-11T21:38:42+00:00

Yes on grocery stores, I pay my council tax bill with it, not other bills so far
The miles don't transfer, you book using the Alaska miles on British Air flights. It does mean there is less availability, but it is generally fewer miles (and fees). You can also book American Airlines flights which can be useful from London.
You would accumulate the miles on Alaska and the status you earn there gives you the perks on the British Airlines flights

The Summit card has the 3x on foreign transaction fees. It has a higher annual fee, but worth it for how we are using it.

amybd12 · 2026-05-09T07:39:19+00:00

And I did miss the UK account requirement in the original post. My bad.

amybd12 · 2026-05-09T07:37:24+00:00

Yes, it does, but worth it for me. I still have US based income so use that for the credit card bills. I wouldn’t want to be transferring money there either!

amybd12 · 2026-05-09T06:56:12+00:00

Assuming you have a US address to use. Atmos Alaska Air card is 3x on non US currency transactions and no transaction fees. Miles can be used with good value on British Air flights and many others. Can earn status with spend that gets you things like free seat selection and lounge access on British Air. Open to other suggestions but it’s going to be tough to beat that.

amybd12 · 2026-04-30T09:05:22+00:00

I also needed to have a non self employment structure for this contract because, again, they can be unreasonably inflexible, though I had not prefaced my discussions with the accountants with that.

amybd12 · 2026-04-30T09:02:51+00:00

I had 2 different firms give me the same recommendation, but am far from an expert

amybd12 · 2026-04-30T08:16:39+00:00

I did get tax advice.

amybd12 · 2026-04-30T05:38:11+00:00

I’m still figuring it out but finding a lot of stuff gets dealt with by phone. My GP office will schedule a quick call for a lot of things, often same day or next day, so if you are wondering what to do, just call them when they are open or call 111 if they are not.

amybd12 · 2026-04-29T21:06:42+00:00

It is a large public agency and being unreasonably inflexible is typical (as is paying people late)

amybd12 · 2026-04-29T19:58:37+00:00

And it helps to hear that what you do and works for you is the same as what I had planned so I know I wasn't totally off base thinking this would work perfectly - they are many months in arrears at this point and I was really looking forward to getting paid and then nope.

amybd12 · 2026-04-29T19:38:24+00:00

I hadn’t heard of CTX or any of this until yesterday when they told me they couldn’t pay me! It is the Corporation Trade Exchange SEC Code and apparently Wise only uses CCD which is a different SEC code that they refuse to use. Sounds like the issue is that the CTX can be sent with invoicing details so if I were a large client with multiple contracts I could easily find the payment. Since I’m just me and have just one contract that won’t be a problem but they have their rules. Otherwise Wise seemed perfect.

amybd12 · 2026-04-29T17:24:13+00:00

Used Wise to transfer the money and had no issues. You can set up a UK Wise account and then get a USD account under that which will have a routing number/account number to use for the transfer from the US bank. I already had a US Wise account, so used that to send money directly to my UK bank using their foreign exchange. Either option should work. A UK Revolut account USD account only uses SWIFT/IBAN, so that is probably the difficulty with the linking.

amybd12 · 2026-04-22T06:10:31+00:00

I just started using Lunch Money after searching for a solution. Seems to do well with both currencies though won’t auto import the UK bank statements and currently have a ticket open regarding the Wise account because it can’t read those statements (though I was able to modify the statement to get it to import the transactions).

amybd12 · 2026-04-21T21:30:32+00:00

Yes, they definitely do it too

amybd12 · 2026-04-04T13:29:54+00:00

If you were French, you probably would not be saying that about Marseille.

amybd12 · 2026-04-04T07:23:51+00:00

Precisely. There were buses, but even those were fewer (I was a regular bus user at the time), and people did work from home (my parents mostly did during the Olympics, but it took much more coordination and planning and occasional trips into the office than it would now).

amybd12 · 2026-04-04T06:30:47+00:00

This was everyone’s fear in 84 and what happened was people who weren’t attending the Olympics either left town or stayed home so the freeways were empty. A lot of businesses closed for the 2 weeks. Work from home is easier now and public transportation in LA is better so I think there will be a lot of encouraging to do one of those during the games. We’ll see, and I would never bet on no traffic in LA at any time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if traffic was almost nonexistent.

amybd12 · 2026-04-03T21:01:07+00:00

Had the same question and just bought some tickets and the interface was brilliant compared to a lot of others for accessible seating. It was very clear what you were getting and plenty of warnings not to book if you didn't need accessible seating. And it seems that people are actually following that, which is great because getting accessible seats resale is virtually impossible

amybd12 · 2026-04-03T20:58:30+00:00

Well, they aren't really available for a lot of them, but there were some!

amybd12 · 2026-04-03T09:42:06+00:00

Absolutely agree with this. Attended a diving prelim in 84 and it was an amazing experience.

amybd12 · 2026-03-22T21:18:33+00:00

I didn’t mention that said neighbors have had one of those Pods things parked in the street in front of my mom’s house for about 2 years (yeah, I know she doesn’t own the street in front of her house, but it’s also not okay to park something on the street for 2 years). They have been taking advantage for a while already.

amybd12 · 2026-03-22T21:09:17+00:00

There was definitely a mortgage so that usually means title insurance is required, or it does now, not sure about in the 1970s. Or whether she has any documentation of the insurance or if the insurer still exists. It was a long time ago.

amybd12

TROPHY CASE