You can get credit cards for almsot any charity, and the National Trust is no less worthy than any one of those others.  If keeping your country’s heritage and natural beauty is an important consideration in your life then the National Trust thank you dearly and recommend that you do your shopping with the National Trust credit card.

When you do your grocery shopping with the credit card, everything you spend will be calculated at the end and a total of it will be sent to the National Trust to do with as they please (hopefully to maintain the heritage of England).

So if your environment and the future of England’s heritage are at the top of your list then you need to support them with a credit card.  Your children may thank you for being so ecological  when they grow and inherit the earth.

What’s the old saying? Something to do with irons in the fire i think, but the fact remains that when you get a volley of acceptances through the post or via email (whichever way they work it) then you’ll have a choice of the card you want.  Don’t be afraid to leave them waiting either, remember that they want your business and they’ll do almost anything to get it.

The trick is to do your credit card comparison in two stages.  The first stage is to use the comparision websites to make your initial choices from the things you find most important in a credit card.  If 0% interest on purchases is what you’re after then write down all the cards that offer this feature.  Before long you’ll have a list of the credt cards that carry all (or as many as possible) of the features you’re looking for.  Then go onto the stage i mentioned above; simply apply for all of them.

When you get your answers from them, choose which one you want.

Verified by Visa

This is one of the greatest ways to combat credit card fraud online.  It isn’t exclusively Barclaycard’s of course, but when you get one of their cards you can guarantee it’ll feature this.  Basically you add an extra password to your credit or debti card account so that online purchases cannot be made by anyone unless they have it.  You don’t even have to type it all in, so those who are watching will never know your full password.

Purchase Delivery Insurance

This is another great service offered by Barclaycard.  This covers all items you have bought with your credit card that need delivering to your home.  This allows you to claim the money back from your purchases if your goods don’t turn up, or arrive damaged and you cannot resolve the issue with the retailer.

Help Abroad!

If you’re off out and about abroad you can count on Barclaycard to protect you with free legal assistance and medical cover in the event of an emergency.  You can even get an emergency cash advance should you need some in a hurry.

Contactless Technology

All Barclaycards come with contactless technology now so that you can purchase items up to the value of £10 (soon to be £15 i think) without having to enter any numbers for your card and without having to carry cash.

There are many others extras from Barclaycard like 24hr customer service and optional insurances, but overall what you get for nothing is pretty impressive.

To begin with, let it be said that i am not against giving money to charity, and certainly not in this way either; any way to get money to your favourite charity is good no matter what, i am merely going to advocate an alternative by the end of this post.

How it works is that the bonus that you usually get from your credit card in the form of reward points or airmiles is now paid directly to your favourite charity in the form of a percentage of the purchases you have made.  This is great and it’s an wasy way to get money to the people you care about and the charity you trust with your donation.

The next best thing is that you don’t actually have to give them anything, this is done by your credit card on your behalf.  The trouble is though that the percentage of what you donate with each purchase may not be as much as you actually could give.  How do i mean?

Well it’s like this.  If you are disciplined enough to save money then it would be much more lucrative for the charity if you were to get a cashback credit card and donate the money you get from this directly to the charity yourself.  You get much better rates on cashback credit cards, particularly if you’re a big spender and you’ve got the right cashback credit card.

If you can do this then you can make them a lot more money.  Although i do appreciate that many people don’t have the time to sort this out, or perhaps the financial control; therefore a charity credit card is probably best for them.

You want to know why yes?  Of course you do.  Well it goes like this.  The football credit card is a credit card just like any other really.  You go out and spend money on it and pay off the balance every month (or as often as you can!) and you carry on like that.  However, instead of receiving  loyalty points, airmiles or any other such reward (including cashback) your credit card provider pays a percentage of your purchases to your football team.

When i say your football team i mean the one you support, like Arsenal or Manchester United; that sort of thing.  The football credit card comes printed in the teams colours and every single transaction earns money for your football team.  Now this doesn’t necessarily go towards paying for all those expensive foreign signings, it primarily goes to things like the support of the youth team.  Now you see where i’m going don’t you?  If you invest in your favourite club’s youth team then you are effectively investing in the world cup of the future!

It’s never going to do you any good to go on one credit card comparison website and work it out from that site alone.  To begin with they could be selling advertising space to the highest credit card company and quality of service may have absolutely nothing to do with their ideas at all; it could be all about making money.

So if you find a good looking deal on a website, check it out on another comparison website and see if they agree.  If in any doubt you should really check it out on at least 5 websites to see if the one you’re looking at is ranking in at least the top five credit cards at the time of searching.  That’s another thing to consider.  Sometimes websites won’t update their listings very often and what was the best credit card a month ago could change quite quickly and become not so good; it’s important to get the most recent offers if you’re going to make an informed decision.

Just make sure you use a reputable website, or if at all possible check as many websites as you can.  Don’t rush your decision to get a credit card and pick the first one that appears on the screen or through your letterbox; read everything and you should get a good one.

The Royal Bank of Scotland and Captial One also offer pretty good student credit card deals and they are as follows

RBS Student credit card

• 18.9% APR
• No 0% interest on balance transfers
• No 0% interest on purchases
• No annual fee
• Maximum credit card limit of £500
• Discounts from HP, Firebox and Lonely Planet
• Direct Debit Payments

Capital One Student Credit Card

• Not so hot 34.9% APR
• No 0% interest on balance transfers 
• No 0% interest on purchases
• No annual fee
• Low starting credit limit of £200
• Paperless Credit Card Statement
• Choose your own card design.

So considering what you’re really after the RBS one looks pretty good doesn’t it?  Unless of course you value being able to choose your own card design above the actual interest rate of your credit card.  If you do then you have bigger problems than choosing a student credit card, believe me.

The other problem with the Capital One credit card, other than it’s low limit and it’s high interest, is the fact that it offers students no rewards or discounts at all!  Not really worth it at all.  I think this card is primarily a card for those who have had bad debt problems and need to rebuild their credit rating; it just happens that it’s also perfect for a student application too.  Leave it alone!

That’s the important thing isn’t it, sadly?  No-one wants to pay out anything to charity, and that’s why there has to be such a thing as charity.  So if you’re willing to meet everyone halfway and just provide support almost passively then you need to get a hold of charity credit card.  The best one on the market today is the UNICEF card, and depending on where your priorities stand, it’s a damn good charity to support.

UNICEF stands for teh United Nations International Children’s Fund and it does exactly what you might think it does from its title.  UNICEF primarily provide emergency healthcare and food to children in devastated areas of the world.  They are a very dilligent and caring organisation and they continue to work for the same causes time after time, really quite tirelessly.

Your contribution to UNICEF can make a difference, and if you don’t want to put your hands in your pocket to rake out any cash, all you have to do it get the UNICEF credit card and spend your money like you always do and pay it back off the card.  Every time you spend your money on the credit card, the credit card company will pay UNICEF a percentage of what you spend.

This is the perfect way of contributing to charity without even knowing about it.  We should all do this shouldn’t we?

Now, you may not be supporting England (the actual team) by doing this, but if you sign up for what they call a “football credit card” you will be supporting the club from which an England player most probably comes from.  Let’s say you support Chelsea or Manchester Utd.  Now i don’t know much about football, but i know that these are both large clubs who are no doubt loaning players to the England squad.

If you support the club, then you support England right?  Well that’s the way i see it anyway.

How does it work?

Well it works like this.  Whenever you spend money on your credit card, the credit card company (not you!) pays a percentage of what you spent directly to your favourite football club.  Now you might think that you don’t want to contribute to the already massive salaries of the football players (even though they are your favourite team), and you needn’t worry.  This is because your money will be going towards the maintenance of the club’s youth team and things like that; in order to provide you with a world class football club for as long as you live.

So why not support your club, and support the future England squad!

It’s all a matter of getting the right credit card for the job basically.  You don’t need to saddle yourself with mountains of debt by getting a credit card, just get one that suits your needs perfectly.  This is why doing a credit card comparison is very important and virtually essential in today’s financial climate, particularly since there are so many credit cards out there already trying to get your business.

They can’t all be bad right?  Yes, you’re right, they can’t all be bad, and indeed they are not.  There are credit cards out there that can help you get what you want, and if you use them correctly you can have it for virtually no charge at all.  Get your things earlier rather than later with a credit card with 0% interest on purchases for the first few months; however, do be careful to make sure that you can pay it off eventually, there is one thing these credit card companies are very good at, and it’s getting you into a shed load of debt!