Plastic: Taking Advantage & Being Taken Advantage of
Does anyone use travelers’ cheques anymore? If so, why? And why spell them “cheques”?
Traveling to most places is so much easier, with ATM machines at nearly every airport and on so many street corners. No more secrets stashes of cash. No more awkward rolls of travelers checks/cheques. Just the friendly plastic we use in so much of our lives.
Those gigantic banks we rightly rail against have certainly changed life — for the better — in the travel world. With credit cards and debit cards and ATMs, international purchases and cash withdrawal are almost as easy as at home. But it is also more expensive. There are fees and charges that need to be reckoned with but, overall, it is a huge improvement over the not so good old days.
Always smart Ed Perkins of Smartertravel.com has come up with an excellent explanation and lists of the bank nips and tucks you can expect taking advantage of the convenience. It is a good idea to take a look. His overall recommendations are:
- Put big charges on credit cards. If you travel outside the US a lot, consider getting a Capital One card, with its $0/0 percentsurcharge (and a reasonably generous reward program). Otherwise, USAA and many smaller banks and credit unions charge only 1 percent. Even cards with a full 3 percent surcharge are still an efficient way to pay outside the US.
- Use your debit (ATM) card for whatever local currency you need. If your itineraries permit, use one of the few no-fee systems. Otherwise, minimize your losses by withdrawing in fairly large amounts each time.
Take a look at his report, for more detail and numbers. It’s fascinating stuff — and could save you some money.
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1 Response for “Plastic: Taking Advantage & Being Taken Advantage of”
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Just Got back from a trip to Paris, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo. with the exception of Rwanda and the congo Atm’s were fairly easy to find. however not all atm’s are created equally. many of them did not like mastercharge (my debit card is linked to them) some banks took cards from passengers from other countries but not US and vice versa where my card worked and some Aussies cards did not. if you are travelling in East Africa try to find a stanbic (standard bank not sure why the call it stanbic). that one seemed to work best. in other parts of the world HSBC atm’s always worked well.