Moving to Australia - What setup should I have?

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Hi guys,

I am about to move down under for 2-3 years, leaving Sweden behind and starting a new chapter in life in Sydney.

I have got gold status at Star Alliance (SAS) and at Skyteam (KLM) for the moment - I will receive Lifetime Gold if I keep the status for another 5 years. With that reason behind, I would like to get your help to setup credit-cards/banks in the best possible way for Star Alliance to at least reach gold status every year, and maybe some add on on the side like virgin?

What should I apply for? Running a American Express and 3 different Star Alliance Mastercards for the moment in Sweden - but will ofc change all of these to my australian bank.

Thanks for your help,
 
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Welcome to AFF.

Any SkyTeam miles you have will be valuable in Australia, as availability is wide open ex and into Australia for those ST airlines that fly here, due to low participation locally.

AMEX Membership Rewards points locally are transferable directly to SQ and Thai (also Air New Zealand, but we'll ignore that, for good reason!). Both of them have reasonable Award availability out of Australia.

Of the local banks, & Star Alliance, Westpac, St George and ANZ points are transferable to SQ.

AMEX and all the banks' points are transferable to Virgin Velocity, which in turn can be converted to SQ KrisFlyer at 1:1.35 currently, soon to be devalued a bit. There are a number of bank cards co-branded with Virgin Velocity which I think have better earn rates. Australian business Traveller is one web site that periodically reviews cards and their airline points earnings. There are others.

Most airline - aligned cards have sign-on points bonuses, say 80-100,000 points if you meet a spend criteria (say, $6,000 in first 2 months), so you should definitely watch out for those. Not sure how you'll go with the local credit ratings though.

You mention setting up cards to help you with your Star Alliance gold status. Not sure what you meant there - points earn has no impact on status of course, unless you meant you'll use them to buy the flights :)
 
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Thanks for a quick reply.

Perfectly done, all I need. To make you a bit jealous, we got some credit cards in Sweden giving me basic miles/status miles to boost my status. Easy explained, to get SAS Gold you need 45.000 EB-points - and Amex Platinum will get you 20.000 every year...
 
Welcome.

Retaining your Star Alliance status will likely become the main issue as you will need international travel to do it.

Depending on whether you will have much domestic travel as part of work I'd then target cards on Qantas/Virgin depending on whether your work has a preferred airline.

Don't think anyway of getting points into SAS from Australia (so may be worthwhile retaining the Swiss Amex - even with the assumedly 3% charges)
 
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