Traveling Abroad and Exchanging Money
May 23rd, 2006 by Grant in: Travel
Starting tomorrow, my wife and I venture across the pond to the Greek Islands for a two week stint in Europe. Needless to say, my posting will be scarce during this time…
Interestingly enough, I went to my local bank to convert $100 in U.S. currency to Euros. The exchange rate was about 0.778, which means I’d get roughly 78 Euros for my $100 bill.
But wait! There’s a catch!
The bank was going to charge me a $11 processing fee for the exchange. Considering this would effectively lower the exchange rate by about 7%, I politely declined…
Surely there must be a better way.
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June 1st, 2006 at 3:09 pm
11% processing fee? That’s ridiculous.
How about this … go to AAA get free traveller check (I think it is Visa) in US denomination. Cash the check for Euro at any europe bank. The bank will charge you a fee, of couse, but I don’t think it will be anywhere near to 11%. That would be safe also.
For pocket exchange, I remember AAA offers some kind of travel kit with a convenient combination of foreign currencies. Never used it before, but I hope it won’t be that expensive compared with your local bank.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Hey Nick, great tip.
Actually, what we ended up doing was just using the ATM’s in Europe to withdraw cash. My credit card company doesn’t take an exchange fee, and they give me much better rates than you can get at the airport or ForEx kiosks.
It seemed to work pretty well, but AAA is a good idea too. They also provide good resources (many are free) for tourists when traveling abroad.
-Grant