We all love OBC’s. Here are a few ways we maximize money we have to spend on board. This may not work for you, but it fits us just fine.

Princess Visa. Since our vacation of choice is a cruise and our cruise line of choice is Princess and we don’t rely of air mileage to get to the port, we use the Princess Visa exclusively. We just do our normal monthly spending and use the card. We never spend more than we can fully pay off, so never carry a balance or pay interest. We get double points for Princess purchases and single points otherwise. $100.00 in OBC uses 10,000 points. $500.00 OBC, however, is only 40,000 points. Of course you can redeem for a variety of products or services, but we go for the OBC. Another plus is… OBC’s from redeemed points is fully refundable, so anything left over comes back to us by check.

CCL Shareholder Benefits. Purchasing the required 100 minimum shares of Carnival Corporation stock just to get the shareholders benefit is NOT a good reason to buy stock. It would take you 112 1 – 6 day cruises or 55 7 – 13 day cruises or 23 14 days or longer cruises to recoup your investment. If you are like me and like to make a long term investment in companies I am a consumer of, it’s worth looking into. I look at it as an extra dividend every time I step on board.

Future Cruise Deposit. Leave a deposit, normally $100.00 per person, and get OBC based on cruise length and cabin type.

Use a Travel Agent. I must admit, that I am completely capable of handling all of my own arrangements and did so until just last year. After following my friend. Sheri, at CruiseTipsTv, I tried it out. The agent Sheri uses is about 3 miles away, so I made an appointment with CTA Travel. Although they do charge a minimal service fee, Karen always gets us enough of an extra OBC to cover the fee. a TA will also keep track of any fare changes, handle special requests and sends us personalized guides of where we are going.

Bottom line, we usually get on the ship with at least $700.00 in “free” money. Takes care of tips, excursions and extras.

Every time I pull out my Princess Visa, I’ll say “Cruise Points!!!!”