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The other week I wrote about my favourite (and most useful!) travel items, and I thought it would also be important to mention some helpful money advice for my fellow travellers out there.
How you keep your money, how you withdraw it, and having back ups—today’s blog will cover some handy tips to help keep you calm in stressful situations, and avoid them in the first place. If you prefer to listen and watch, remember you can always check out my Youtube channel!
1. Store money in more than one place
In my blog about useful travel items, I mention having more than one wallet. This is especially important in regards to keeping your money safe. Dispersing your money in more than one wallet or place in your bag has two functions.
1. If someone finds and steals one of them, they might leave with only that, and you won’t be left with nothing.
2. If you lose one of the wallets, that means you won’t be left with nothing and you’ll have back up money or cards in the other place.
I travel with several money holders, usually a travel wallet, a smaller wallet to use during the day, and a little change purse for short outings (all are in in the picture above).
I keep my money and credit cards dispersed between them, so that if one of them goes missing or gets lost, I won’t be left completely empty handed.
2. Travel with two credit cards
A Visa and a Mastercard will do you just fine! American Express cards aren’t often taken so I would suggest the latter two.
This is a very important tip for several reasons.
1. Incase one gets stolen or missing you’ll have a back up (don’t keep them both in the same place).
2. If you come into a situation where one card is not working—you have a back up!
3. Sometimes (though not so frequent) one or the other type of credit card isn’t accepted, so I find it handy to have two types.
Having more than one type of credit card makes me feel a lot more secure when travelling, knowing my chances of being in a sticky situation are less.
3. Check fees for foreign ATM withdrawals
Though important in general, this tip is SUPER important for my long term travellers.
Before you head out, make sure to double check if your bank charges any fees for withdrawing cash from foreign ATMs. Generally there is a fee for the average checking account, but there are many good options out there. If your bank doesn’t offer this, look up some alternative checking accounts from other banks.
Years ago I switched over to a different account offered by my bank, and as long as I kept a certain balance in it, it was free to have! So now, I can withdraw from any ATM anywhere, without them knocking me a few dollars each time.
Now that being said, even if your bank won’t charge you to withdraw, an ATM will recognize that your card is foreign and will charge you to use it. This is unavoidable, but the least you can do is make sure you aren’t getting charged from your end!
PRO TIP: ask a local you trust about the cheapest bank/ATM fees for foreigners to use. They will likely be able to direct you to the cheaper option!
4. Avoid airport exchanges
This is probably the best place to get ripped off with a high exchange rate, so try not to exchange money at airports.
My suggestion is when going from country to country, make sure you exchange enough so you can get to your next destination before leaving the city/town where you are.
If you forget to do that, or couldn’t exchange for some reason, I’d say the next best thing to do is to take out some local currency from an ATM at that airport. The fee to use it might be kind of high (you can check first), but might be better than the exchange rate. The other option would be to only exchange a small amount of cash that you need for that day. Once you arrive to your final destination you can go somewhere to exchange the rest of the cash you had before.
5. Have some emergency US cash
This is one has definitely saved my butt a few times.
When travelling either long term or short term, I think it’s crucial to make sure you have some emergency US cash on hand. US cash is pretty well accepted globally (I have yet to go somewhere I couldn’t use or exchange USD). Having some US cash on you while travelling is handy for several reasons.
1. Incase your cards get lost or stolen, you have some back up cash you can exchange for local currency while you sort out your card issue.
2. For paying visa/customs when going across borders—especially by land. Generally fees are quoted in both local currency and US dollars, so if you don’t already have some local currency on hand, your US cash will help you out!
3. For emergency times when you can’t pay by card and no ATMs are in sight. One time I needed to book a little hopper flight out of the middle of Borneo, and there was no way to book the flight online from where I was. I had to pay for the flight in person at the counter, and since I didn’t have enough local currency to do so, my US cash came to the rescue!
As for how much you should have on you, that’s up to you. I’d go with a few hundred (2 or 3) but not much more as you don’t want to chance getting that much money stolen!
6. Lock up money if you can
If you are staying at a guest house or a hostel this one applies to you more. I truly believe that most of the people on Earth are decent and not out to take advantage of you, but unfortunately some of them are.
In my post about useful items to travel with, I mentioned travelling with a small luggage lock to use on lockers. Sometimes guesthouses will give you free access to one of these, or sometimes you have to pay a fee for it.
I’d say if it’s free, you might as well make use of it. And if it’s not, then consider using it if you feel security might be an issue with the location or the people you are sharing a space with.
If you don’t have access to a locker to lock up your money and important things, then at least keep them out of sight, tucked in a safe spot in your bag where it isn’t easily accessible to be slipped out.
7. Carry only the money that you need
The idea here is to never travel and be out and about with excessive amounts of money at any given time. Obviously this will prevent you from losing more if something gets stolen or if you misplace something. Part of this has to do with how much money you should take out of an ATM at one time, which depends…
Do most places take card where you are going? Then you might not need much anyway. Do shops and guesthouses take payments by cash only? Then you’re going to have to take out more.
Either way, with a rough estimate, determine how much spending money you’d need each day.
From here you’ll want to think about how long you are going for. If only a week, then taking out enough for that one week is probably fine. If you are staying somewhere for weeks or months, I’d say it’s wise to take out enough for longer time periods (and store that cash in a safe place like a locker) so that you aren’t constantly getting dinged those foreign ATM fees.
As far as how much to carry with you each day, the same goes. Carry only what you estimate you’ll need for the time you are out. I usually carry whatever amount of cash I think I’ll use, plus one of my credit cards (in case of an emergency). Whatever I am not using that day I keep back at my accommodation (locked and out of sight).
That’s it for today’s money advice. For more helpful blogs to check out before traveling, check out this post about what to research, and this one about common travel vaccines.
I hope you found this useful, and if you did please share with a friend who could use the advice. Don’t forget to subscribe to my email list for more travel tips and ideas!
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Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a lovely week.
Much love,
Danika
