How to earn and use Virgin Points as a young adult, without a credit card!

Today's post has been kindly written by Joel Sycamore, and you'll find him on Tiktok @travelswithjoel. Joel is 19 and just starting out in points, but he's earned a healthy stash all without a credit card!

Once again, thank you to those of you who have contributed, you can read all past guest written posts here. If you would like to put yourself in of front our audience and wish to guest write, just simply DM us on Instagram or email sam@pointswellmade.co.uk with an idea, and we will try and make it work for you!

Can you really earn enough points to fly business class as a young adult without a credit card, or without actually flying? Believe it or not, you can. I'm Joel, I'm 19, and I've built up a respectable stash of Virgin Points, most of them without setting foot on a plane. At 19, I can't yet get an American Express card (at least not one worth having), or either of the Virgin Atlantic credit cards. So when I turned 18 and wanted to fly business class on my own dime for the first time, I had to get creative with how I earned my points.

The essentials

• Firstly, you need a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account and a Virgin Red account. These are absolute non-negotiables, and it's where you'll earn your first points.

• Also, set up a Virgin Trains Ticketing account if you use the train in the UK or need a railcard. It's an easy way to earn points on your commute, or on money you'd be spending anyway.

• Use vseats.io to find the reward seat availability you want. Sam and Helena explain how it works here.

A couple of disclaimers first. This is NOT going to be enough to get a family of four Upper Class flights multiple times a year, but it might get you an Upper Class return, or a few return trips in Economy. If you want to use your points, you'll broadly need to be flexible about when and where you go. And you WILL need to spend money to earn these points, but since it's money you'd spend anyway, in my eyes the points are basically free. Honestly, everything I outline is easy to do, and you can rack up tens of thousands of points. The hardest bit when you're young is finding people who are willing to earn the points and come with you.

There are three main ways (other than flights) to earn points from your ordinary travel spending: hotels, rail and insurance.

Hotels

For hotels, Booking.com via Virgin Red offers 10 points per £1 spent in Europe, 5 per £1 in the rest of the world, and 1 per £1 in South Africa, the USA and the Caribbean. This is perfect for me, as I travel frequently in Europe, and it's earned me upwards of 30,000 points on stays I would have booked anyway. If you're planning a group or family trip, you can easily earn thousands of points by booking it through Virgin Red (make sure the email address on your Virgin Red account matches the one on your Booking.com account). You'll also move up Booking.com's Genius programme, which eventually gets you free upgrades, breakfast and bigger discounts on your stays, as long as you complete enough stays in a two-year period. It's a win all round, really.

Rail

Another easy way to get points from your travels and everyday spending is to download the Virgin Trains Ticketing app and buy your train tickets there. It's no more expensive than Trainline, and you get 3, or sometimes even 6 or 9, points per £1 spent. If you need a railcard, buy it through Virgin Trains Ticketing too for 3 points per £1, and look out for the occasional promotion giving 2,000 points for buying a railcard (like this one here). Going on a group night out and taking the train? Refer your friends to Virgin Red, and you'll both get 1,000 points once they've bought their train ticket through Virgin Trains Ticketing.

Insurance

The final way I suggest earning points on transport and travel is using Virgin Red for your car and travel insurance. Arranging your car insurance through GoCompare via Virgin Red earns you 3,199 points, and you can also get £250 towards your excess should you need to claim (a game changer for young drivers as in my first year of driving, it halved my excess).

Insurance is a real sweet spot for earning points with little effort. You can also get multi-trip travel insurance through Virgin and earn 3,600 points, which is another superb deal, although I can't say I've done it yet. And while it's not travel related, there are lots of good home insurance offers on the platform too, one day!

Shopping

Unless you're spending a fortune with specific retailers, shopping isn't going to earn you a huge number of points. That doesn't mean it's a waste if you're spending the money anyway. The one that stands out to me is Harrods: 10 points per £1 on spend over £300 is a respectable earning rate if you were already planning to buy from there. If you'd planned to buy the items elsewhere, it might make more sense to shop around and see whether a competitor on Virgin Red offers better value in points. It should go without saying, but don't buy things just for the points, as you'd be far better off simply buying points.

Finally, if you shop at Tesco, linking your Clubcard to Virgin Points is a fantastic idea. Sam and Helena explain it in a lot more depth, covering auto-exchange and the 30% bonus on manual exchanges when it comes around.

Referrals

Another good way to earn points is to get your friends to sign up to Virgin Red through your referral link. You both get 1,000 points per referral (limited to 10 a year), credited after their first purchase, which could literally just be a train ticket. In my opinion, that's not bad for 15 seconds of work on your part, or 5 minutes for your friend.

Final thoughts

Overall, if you're anything like me, earning points on this everyday spending is easy, and it's now second nature to me. Whether you're a student, just leaving college and starting work, or simply don't want to use a credit card, I hope this has been helpful.

You can find me on TikTok @travelswithjoel if you want to keep up with my travels, and there will likely be more points and miles content on there in future.

Joel Sycamore

Points Well Made is a passion project from Sam and Helena. If you've enjoyed this and want to help us keep the lights on, please consider buying us a Ko-fi or subscribing monthly. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for more of the same. Thanks for reading.