Money? What do you think?

[Beth__WDW23/6/02]

WE are off in 5weeks,but cause this is our 1st time we have no idea what to do with money.

We are taking £1,500 in cash and 2credit cards (lol)
But we dont want to take cash, we've been told to take about 250$'s and rest in travellers cheques, but i just dont know.
We was told tonight to put a grand into our visa account,and use our visa;s instead? but we dont know what to do?

cash,visa,travellers cheques,how much in dollars?
We are clueless im sorry

Thanx Beth

 

[Karyn.Phil]

Hi

We're leaving in three weeks and are planning to take only about $400 cash with us, the rest we will pay into our credit cards to use over there as credit cards give the best exchange rate and they are accepted everywhere.

If you have a cirrus symbol on the back of your current account card you can also use that for cash withdrawals from atm's as well.

Interesting story I heard the other day. A colleague of mine charged his credit card up before a trip to Australia, paying over £2500 from selling a car into it, on arrival at Gatwick he went to use it and found the card was blocked. When he phoned his credit card company they said that this was a common way of laundering money and so a hold had been placed on the card for 10 days! Nothing he could say would change their minds and he spent the first ten days in Oz borrowing money from his mother in law (cringe).

After hearing this I checked with my business account manager and she confirmed this can happen if you don't normally pay a lot of money into your credit cards. Nightmare.


Have a lovely holiday

Karyn

 

[Hilary]

If you don't want to pay money into your VISA account in that way before you go, and your credit limit on the card is a bit low for your trip, you could try asking them to let you have a temporary increase. I believe most banks will consider doing this.

Put the cash in a bank / building society account in the meantime, so that you know you've got it to pay off the cc bill when you get home.

When we first went to Florida we didn't use our cc at all - just a mixture of travellers' cheques and cash, but now we tend to take just sufficient cash to make sure we can cover little things like road tolls, ice creams, tips, etc., and rely on a few TCs and the cc for the rest. We are very careful to keep a track of what we're charging to the cc so that the bill when we get home isn't too much of a shock!

 

[vernon]

I'm not a big fan of travellers cheques, it's difficult to use £ TCs and if you take $ ones you lose out on the exchange rate when changing them back. If you know you will be spending at least that amount, I can see a good arguement for taking £1,000 worth in the form of cash and TCs knowing you will need to use your CC as well. As has been mentioned you can use many "cashpoint cards" in the US if they have been autherised by your bank. This is a useful backup in case you do run short of cash towards the end of your holiday. Personally I take about $400-500 and use credit cards for almost all my spending. If I get short ofcash I'd draw some from the ATM, but as Hilary says unless you keep a close eye on your CC spending you can get a nasty suprise on your return.

 

[Penny12]

I'm pretty much the same as Vernon. I take about $400 cash, use my CC as much as possible, and then, if/when I need more cash I just hit the ATM. The CC and ATM exchange rates always seem to be better than TC's, plus I use just what I need rather than maybe have to come back to the UK and re-change something back to Sterling. There are ATM's in every park and at every Disney Resort, and plenty off-site too, but charges do vary. I seem to recall all the SunTrust ATM's charge $2 per transaction, so it's worth taking 'lumps' out obviously, rather than just $20-30 a time or something.

Penny

 

[BevS97]

I take US$ travellers cheques - We really need to be careful with budgetting and it's just way too easy to spend a fortune on credit cards.

We are taking $100 per day this year, last year we took $150, so we'll see how it goes with just $100 - and what we do, is put it all in the safe and just take out $100 each day so that we know we won't run out of money, and we can see how the spending is going - if we don't spend it all in one day, then we can splash out a bit more the following day.

we still carry a credit card, and I will use it for things like car hire, and clothes/scrapbook shopping as I don't consider those to be 'holiday expenses'. We will also charge the occassional expensive meal.

Bev

 

[Mrs Dazzle]

Hi Beth - we're much like everyone else really. Still old fashioned enough to want "cash" (although this is changed from our $TC's when we get out there). We to tend to use the poor old CC for when we hit the shops, though or for the expensive meals we treat ourselves too. Our "holiday" CC is with Nationwide who do not charge us any commission on foreign transactions . . and a pretty fair interest rate too.

Couple of years ago I wanted to be sure we had sufficient credit on the CC in case of any emergencies. Which was just as well as DD was proper poorly whilst we were away and medical treatment don't come cheap - even though we claimed it back from our travel insurance when we returned . The CC company upped it by £2500 just for the three months I requested (I'd deliberately been banging bits and bobs in the building society to handle any shopping bills..... still wasn't quite enough in the "holiday fund" to cope when we returned, mind you

You must take whatever you feel comfortable with. There are three of us - me, DH and DD (9). Last year we took £900 in TCs, £200 in $s (as small denominations as poss in case you need toll change, quick food, etc).

One thing to remember - $TCs over there are pretty much as good as cash - particularly in large places. In the years we've been going we've never been asked for any ID. One more tip (sorry ), if you do get loads of TCs, make sure both of you sign half each, otherwise, if you're like me and you get them by yourself, you'll spend some of your time signing the things!!

Relax and enjoy the countdown - do whatever you feel happiest with.

 

[rob@rar.org.uk]

Cash and credit cards for us, with most spending on credit cards. We've found this gives us the best balance of exchange rate and flexibility: travellers cheques are too expensive and too much hassle.

Regards

Rob