Revolut: an online bank account
A few years ago, when I was very active on FB, I often read questions from expats about the best way to go when transfering money to a foreign bank account. Often these questions were about transfering money within their own account as these local banks here charge insane fees and this will hit you hard if you add them up. The answers were always the same: Revolut (and sometimes they mentioned Transferwise as well).
At first I had no interest in a Revolut bank account
As we were stuck using the local bank anyway, and that's where the salary was sent so not much to do about that. But for quite some time, the high fees had been annoying me a lot because they even charge you for using the ATM even if it's their own ATM. I'm talking about 5 bucks costs to take out the money! For a long time we had to pay our rent and utilities in cash, and I was so happy when due to covid, this changed to transfering the money. It just adds op, especially if you need some more cash for yourself that month, because most ATM's also don't allow you to take out more than 350 bucks at once, so for the rent we needed to do transactions already.
I realized that having one may be beneficial after all
When the annoyance about the withdrawal fees from the local bank were getting higher and higher, I decided to have a look at the Revolut bank accounts anyway. I noticed that the free plan includes taking out money from the ATM 5 times max every month with the limit of $250. This would mean, that for the cash withdrawal alone it was worth having a free account. Especially if my boyfriend would also get an account, so that we could both benefit from this.
I installed the app on my phone after vising their website and noticed that I'd had to pay (I think it was) 10 bucks for the shipment of the free card. I also noticed that the higher plans were shipped for free, but at this point the higher plans didn't make sense for my personal situation, so I didn't order the card immediately. I noticed that I could use the account anyway, because there's a virtual card option which you can use while waiting for your card and you can also gift someone a virtal card with some balance on it. Quite nice!
After a few weeks, Revolut offered free shipment
I received an email that I could order a standard card without any shipping costs and I decided that there's no reason to postpone this anymore. I remember that the card arrived in a couple of working days. Really fast!
Once the card arrived, I started looking into the benefits of this free account. You wouldn't think it's really that great when an account costs you nothing, but on top of the ATM withdrawal benefit, there are other benefits too.
The biggest benefit for someone that doesn't live in a country where the local currency is dollar, euro or pound, the exchange fees of your local bank can be insanely high and even charge you per transaction on top of that as well. For example, I opened a Euro account at some point as I thought this would be benefical for some incoming Euro transactions. While connecting my account to something, I transfered just 20 cents and had to pay 6 euro haha. Then I realised this account may not be that great at all. In the end, I paid about 5 euro every month for banking fees while only using it 3 times in the end. I found out that exchanging currencies would be even more expensive. That was reason enough to close the account and start using Revolut for euro transfers, exchanging currencies & ATM withdrawals.
The first year, I only used it for ATM withdrawals
I sent money from our local bank to Revolut, and then took it out for free until the limit was reached. This way I avoided paying for the local banking fees for quite some time. Only this made it worth having the account. At some point, I was self-employed again and earning Euro's instead of local currency, and this meant I would also use the exchange option in Revolut, with the free plan the limit is set at $1000, wich was well enough for me. I could even leave my money in Euro, until I used it or needed it because you can just pay in the store, Revolut keeps track on the amount you have left for free exchange of currencies that month and when it will reset.
You also get notified when you reach the contactless limit of your card, and you can reset it with just a click in the app. I love that, as I could not do that with my local bank account, I always first had to use my pincode once to reset it.
Let's get to the fun part: Revolut Metal price plan
The reason that I started writing this article was not to get you excited about the free Revolut price plan. No no, it was meant to share my experience after using Revolut Metal for a month now. There was no reason to start using any of the upgraded price plans until something in our financial situation changed. Salary arrives in Euros now and there was no was that we considered paying all our bills with the local bank account because of the huge fees.
As soon as the first salary was on they way, I changed the price plan to Metal, meaning it would cost me about 12 euro each month to use the metal plan and all its benefits. Before I decided this was going to be worth it, I didn't even have to calculate much, the only thing I needed to take into account now was simply the exchange fees. This alone would be worth the 12 euros each month. Our local bank charges 6 euros each month for our local currency bank account, even if we don't use it! So the aim is to close this account as soon as possible. For this, I needed to clear the credit card debt (check) and the last actions needed are the remaining overdraft and personal loan. Until it's closed, the 12 euros are still worth paying.
I wanted to make a screenshot to compare the plans, but I guess it's hard to read, so here's the link to the Revolut price plan pageso you can compare the plans yourself.
Metal Cashback
Once you changed you plan to Metal, you can select one of the cool metal cards:
I picked the pink one, and yes, they are quite cool (and heavy) to have. The card comes with no charge and arrived within days here.
One of the nice benefits of the metal plan is that you will receive cashback while using your card.
I choose to get cashback in $ADA, simply because I felt I should pick a cryptocurrency rather than fiat currency. The amounts in cashback aren't high (yet) because it's only 0.1 or 1 % depending on your location. But still, it's a cashback and I like the idea that one day these small amounts of $ADA (Cardano) can be worth a lot more than today, this way, my cashback suddenly was a lot more worth it as well! You can get cashback maximum for the amount of the costs of your Metal plan. There's a ticker keeping track of this in your account.
As you can see, I'm not spending nearly enough to get there :) It would be nice to say one day that the cashback pays for the monthly costs, but for that, I'd need a huge income to be able to spend that much money.
Note:
The regular card still keeps working as well, this is very convenient as we both have a card for the same account which we can use now, and both of them give the cashback as you're paying a monthly fee for the plan in your account.
Vaults
Although this is not a benefit for the metal plan, but goes for all plans, the vault option is something that I started using since the Metal plan, because before there was no real point of using it. I seriously got addicted to the vault feature and have gained so much insights in our spendings and
This one was new to me, I didn't see this info until today, and I'm not sure if this goes for lower amounts as well, will be checking upon this myself as I'm so fond of the vaults feature.
I fill the vaults as soon as the salary arrives.
I created vaults for the monthly bills, and also for the monthly budgets I set. This can be for: accountant monthly fees, tax savings, car costs (gas, parking), health insurance etc. Some of the vaults are collecting the money monthly for bills that come every 3/6/12 months. You can set a target for the amount you wish to add to the vault, including deadline. You can even send your spare change to the vault.
I'm also using the spare change option, but in a seperate vault, this way I can see how much money I save up from using the spare change option, on top of that, I empty the other (monthly) vaults from the amount that is left over in there to add in the spare change vault. This way, each month starts over and I can see the savings grow in a seperate vault every single month.
All the other cool benefits of Metal summed up
As I'm already perfectly fine using the benefits mentioned above, I'd almost forgot to tell you that this is not all that comes with the metal plan. There are some other cool things, that I will currently not be using yet (as I don't travel now) but most-likely in the future, this will be very convenient.
Purchase protection
A very convenient one with the current pandemic:
Ticket cancellation
Refund
Junior accounts
Smart delay
Single use cards for security
Some of the benefits above also are included in the other paid price plans, but lower covarage.
Conclusion
After 1 month of using the Metal price plan, I can't imagine ever dealing without it. I love the extras and the unlimited exchange fees of currencies and higher limits cash withdrawals are convenient as I don't have to worry about the extra fees. Getting a cashback on top of my spendings is awesome as well, I also got 1% cashback from the local bank here when using the credit card, but those spendings came with monthly fees + interest, making the cashback not worth it in the end.
While writing this review, I discovered the daily interest option for the vaults (coming in 2021 it says) this makes me even more excited as I'm a daily user of the vaults, meaning the money in there will grow in the future.
Using the Revolut Metal price plan and all the options in the app, have given me great insights in our finances and I'm very pleased with how everything works. If you're intested in analytics of your spendings, you can also find this in your account, I totally forgot to mention that. I probably forgot the mention more stuff, like buying crytocurrency (although you probably suspected this when I mentioned the ADA cashback) stocks and commodoties.
Revolut is like a whole world out there which you have to discover.
I never had such pleasure using any bank account in the past as I'm experiencing now using Revolut.
Interested in your own Revolut account?
You can check out the exact pricings of each plan here. If you live in a country where the local currency isn't Dollar/Euro/Pounds, it's a very good option because of the reasons I mentioned above.
This is not a referral link btw, because even though I'd receive a nice sum of money for referring people, I'd also expose my name, which is not worth the money. If you're ready to sign up while we already have built a nice relationship, ask me for my referral link in private. :)