How much cash?

[rozpetal]

Can anyone help me... I have no idea how much cash we will need to take with us (family of 5 - 2A & 3C) we will be travelling for 18 nights. I will have a credit card and Virgin global wallet. Can I take more out with my atm card over there or do I need to find a foreign exchange if I need more? This is my first overseas trip so I'm rather clueless!

 

[aussie shaz]

Hi Rozpetal.
It's really difficult to say how much cash you would use. I can only tell you what we did.
We are a family of 2 adults and 2 children (10,12). We were in the US (Anaheim) for 15 nights.
We took $2000 cash, which we got here in Australia when the dollar was pretty good, and just used a credit card for everything else. We have the 28 degrees card, which has no conversion fees, no international transaction fees, and is a very competitive rate for US$. It also has no yearly fees etc.
We put most of our stuff on credit card, and used the cash only when we needed to. By the last few days, we worked out how much cash we had left, and spent that. We did pretty well, spending our last cash at the airport on the way home.
Hope this is of some help, but I'm sure others do it differently.

 

[Tashinwdw]

I agree with aussie shaz, it is really hard to judge how much you will need. We too exchanged for cash approx $1000, we also got an amex travel card at the post office and kept putting money on it as the dollar exchange was great - it loads it into the currency you want. and then also had a visa card to use for emergencies or those purchases you really needed but did not budget for.

each person is really different when they travel with expenses. We also have the kids save their pocket money for the year leading up to our holidays and then we exchange that, they then can use that money on whatever they want. they used it for special treats like icecream or lollies, as my rule was that they got one snack a day, anything over that they paid themselves. they also bought souvenirs etc. It was interesting watching them budget their money and decide if they really wanted that lollypop etc, we were really impressed with them. Of course we still did spoil them with things but the rule was they were not to ask for things, if we bought them something it was because we wanted to not because they sat there asking etc.

Food is always the biggest expense and if you are staying in places that have a kitchen then buying your own groceries will bring the price down as we found eating out every meal really made it pricey.

good luck

 

[PrincessInOz]

Hi Rozpetal. Welcome to the Dis.


This could be a "how long is a piece of string" thing as it really depends on what you want to do with the cash and why you're asking the question.

If it's just to have some ready cash for when you arrive, then maybe $50 - $150 might be sufficient. And if you have a large amount of USD already in your Global travel card, and you can pull cash out of there from an ATM, then you probably don't need too much cash on hand.
You can also access the funds in your normal Aussie account from the US ATMs; but be aware that there is usually a $3 - $5 transaction fee for this and you're at the vagaries of the exchange rate of the day.


If it's about spreading the load of hard cash, electronic cash in the Travel Card/Credit card, then this will come down to whether you can readily access the cash at ATMs in the Travel card and if you can use it like a debit card at the various retailers; which I think you can with the Virgin card.


If it's about how much to budget for, then this will come down to what activities you want to do, what your family eats and how much to allocate for souvenirs/shopping. I would take a look at some menus, and activity costs and work out a basic budget from these.


For what it's worth. I do go over with more cash in hand and money loaded in the Travel Card. I also have an average budget per day worked out and that gives me a ballpark figure for the amount of money to save and convert to US currency.

I find that relying on the credit card is getting harder; especially when the banks are starting to automatically block payment from some of the American retailers. Despite telling them that I was travelling, my credit card was blocked at Macy's on this last trip. I ended up having to call my bank back in Australia in order for the to unblock the CC.


I also prefer not to use my Australian EFTPOS cards in the US as there have been incidents of skimming going on. But we will use them at the US bank ATMs to pull extra cash if needed.


Hope this helps.

 

[rozpetal]

Thanks for all the info, it's all very helpful!

 

[zanzibar138]

We don't like travelling with large amounts of cash, so we normally go with one week's worth of pre-converted cash, then get another load out of the ATM for each week we're there (we would prefer to have less cash on us, but go with a week's worth to avoid paying too much in withdrawal fees).

We only really use cash for incidentals and small purchases. Any large purchases, or where we can use the credit card, we do. We have not found any travel cards we are happy with yet, so we tend to just use our regular credit card. Make sure you take a back-up card with you from another bank and keep it in a separate location, just in case one is lost or stolen, or your bank blocks the account. Make sure you tell all your banks that you are planning to use the cards overseas to decrease the chances of it being blocked.

It's worth noting that you will need small denominations when you first arrive to cover tips. We got caught out a couple of times and, as we didn't feel comfortable not giving any tip or under-tipping, we ended up wasting a bit of money in over-tipping.