Travelers cheques are a thing of the past
Dec 28th, 2006 by Ian
I think the last time I used a traveler’s cheque I was stuck in Costa Rica with no cash. I had traveler’s cheques, credit cards and my bank card. Unfortunately my bank card didn’t work at the atm, I didn’t have a pin for my credit card, the bank was closed, I owed the hotel for my previous night stay, my flight was leaving the next day and I needed to hop on a long bus ride that day to make it to the flight departure city. In the end the hotel cleaning lady ended up taking the travelers cheque though she was doing us a big favor as it would take her 3 weeks to get the money out of the traveler’s cheque. Though traveler’s cheques are supposed to be widely accepted in today’s world, bank cards are more widely accepted as they don’t require a person to verify your id.
I try to travel smarter now =). I take my bank card, a couple credit cards with pins, and some emergency cash. In order to minimize transaction fees I try to withdraw a large amount of cash in one go – this also gives you a better exchange rate depending on the size of your transaction. The downside is you end up having more cash on you than you’d like to loose.
Recently I found out that you can go into any bank that displays the credit card logo and withdraw cash. Using your credit card in this manner has several advantages.
1. 1% fee (not sure if this is standard, can be a better deal if you are taking out small amounts).
2. You don’t need to have set up a pin (it can take weeks to setup a pin so if you leave it to the last minute you may be out of luck)
3. You aren’t limited to your cash advance limit (mbna mastercard says that it is up to the bank how much they will allow you to withdraw but I’ve found it to be larger than my daily cash advance)
4. With a 1% fee you can take out less cash and not feel like you are paying too high a percentage
The disadvantage is that you have to find a bank, the bank must be open, the bank must have your credit card logo, and you must explain to the teller what you want to do – some times in a foreign language. I’ll keep my current system and just supplement it with this additional technique.