Kickbacks
These are products or services I use, with links that give me (and generally you) some reward if you sign up using them. I wouldn’t use them if they were rubbish, but that rests solely on my opinion, and not everything’s for everyone. Unless noted, I don’t have any relationship with any of these companies besides being an ordinary customer.
Scroll down or jump directly to:—
- Banking & finance
- Monzo Bank
- TransferWise Borderless Account
- Curve
- Useful gadgetry
- Chipolo
- Razors
- The Bearded Colonel
- Software & online services
- Milanote
- Duolingo
Monzo Bank
- What is it?
- The most well-known of the next-gen banks. I’ve not had a bad experience with them, and their transparency is refreshing. Full disclosure: they employ some of my friends. Free sign-up, no monthly fees, but they will perform a standard credit check. Everything’s done on your phone (including live chat with customer services if you need it). Works well overseas if you don’t have a bank account in the local currency (but also see TransferWise, below, who—I believe—do Monzo’s currency conversions behind the scenes).
- What do I need to do?
- Use this link to sign up
- What do I get?
- £5 when you use the card
- What’s your kickback?
- Actually, I’m not sure—it’s a little unclear; it’s either £5 as well, or nothing. I don’t mind either way.
TransferWise Borderless Account
- What is it?
- It’s not a multi-currency bank account per se, but it does an excellent impression of one, and is really useful if you travel. You get an account number so that you can transfer money to for each of the currencies that you choose to activate (GBP, EUR, USD, CAN, AUS, and NZD), and a MasterCard Debit card that you can use in ATMs and shops in any country you visit. If you don’t have funds in the currency you’re spending in, they’ll do a conversion on the fly from one of your other balances, otherwise it’ll just debit as you’d expect, and you can convert in advance whenever you want. Good exchange rates (Monzo use them for their conversions too).
- There are small fees for bank transfers out (but not transfers in), and for conversions, but not for debits in a currency you have enough of a balance in. Free sign-up. I’ve used this a lot (both in the UK and in Germany, with fairly regular conversions to Euros from Sterling) with virtually no issues besides an occasional processing delay with some UK retailers (Tesco at one point left two additional pending "shadow transactions" on there along with the real contactless transaction, and it didn’t resolve itself for a few days, but that only happened once and was just a minor annoyance).
- What do I need to do?
- Sign up using this link. You can find out more about it on the main Borderless account page (but use the first link after you’ve read about it and want to sign up!)
- What do I get?
- No fees on your first transfer of up to £500. Not the most exciting reward, I realise, but it’s a pretty excellent service to begin with.
- What’s your kickback?
- £50 of free money if three people sign up.
Curve
- What is it?
- It’s a MasterCard that will charge back to any of your other Amex, Visa or MasterCard cards, depending on which one you have selected in the app on your phone at that time. You can even go back in time and change which of your real cards was used to pay for a transaction (which will then charge the new card you’ve picked and send a refund to the one that was used originally, it’s like magic).
- Although it’s worth having a normal card as a backup (and occasionally necessary), if you have several different cards it means you can leave most of them at home on a night out and so on. You can explicitly select which currency should be used to charge to each of your cards (and will do fairly cheap conversions if it needs to).
- Just remember to set it to currency you do actually want to use with that card for the country you’ve in, which if you have a multi-currency card like TransferWise, you should set it that to the local currency otherwise it’ll be Curve doing any conversions instead of, or possibly even as well as, TransferWise, which would defeat the purpose. With that warning aside, it’s worked great for me in different currencies.
- Rewards from select retailers earn you “Curve Points”, which you can spend (1 point = 1p) when you’ve accrued enough to be able to cover a transaction (i.e., you can’t pay with Curve Points and your normal card; if you want to buy something that costs £5 using your points, you need to have at least 500 of them). There’re some premium options too, but the basic card is free and works decently.
- What do I need to do?
- Install the Curve app for iOS or Android and go through the sign-up process. It’s free. Use the promo code “DZA7KLE”. You can read more about it at the Curve website.
- What do I get?
- £5 worth of Curve Points when you first use the card.
- What’s your kickback?
- £5 worth of Curve Points when you first use your card.
Chipolo
- What is it?
- A low-power Bluetooth “thing-finder” that syncs with your phone. This one’s not a service, they’re just a thing you buy and use with their app.
- Right, but what is it?
- It’s a little keyfob or card-shaped device, which has a speaker and a button. Push the button and the app on your phone will make noise (like a short-range “Find my phone”). You can also push a button in the app and it’ll make the Chipolto make a noise (i.e., “find my keys”). Optionally it’ll use your phone’s GPS to remember whereabouts it was before it last went out of range. You can tether multiple Chipolos to one app, if you’re prone to losing several different things (I am).
- What do I need to do?
- Order one using this link.
- What do I get?
- A 20% discount.
- What’s your kickback?
- A free Chipolo if three people use that link to buy one.
The Bearded Colonel
- What is it?
- Subscription razors. They send you blades (frequency of your choosing) in the post.
- What do I need to do?
- Sign up on the Bearded Colonel website and use the code “REFN5ZNM5DZPV” on the last part of the checkout (look for the part that says “Have a coupon? Click here to enter your code”).
- What do I get?
- £5 off the first month.
- What’s your kickback?
- £5 off my next delivery.
Milanote
- What is it?
- A combination of task management, mood boards, note-keeping, process flow, and general creative “place to put ideas and keep track of stuff”. It's really aimed at teams, but the free (with a quota) version works pretty nicely for individuals.
- What do I need to do?
- Sign up for free on the Milanote website.
- What do I get?
- Nothing extra (standard free plan).
- What’s your kickback?
- I get 20 extra cards added to my free storage allowance for each person who signs up. That will make more sense if/when you use it.
Duolingo
- What is it?
- Learn a new language on your phone, tablet, or desktop. The free version has ads and some annoying “free-to-play” style mechanics, but is otherwise fully functional. “Duolingo Plus”, for a monthly fee, gets rid of some of the annoyances, the ads, and lets you download courses for offline use.
- Duolingo alone isn’t enough to become fluent, but it’s a good (and free) starting point. My advice would be to treat the daily XP targets as minimums.
- What do I need to do?
- Sign up on the Duolingo website.
- What do I get?
- Nothing extra (standard free account).
- What’s your kickback?
- Nothing.