I just got back from my summer vacation in NYC, which was fabulous! I got to see all the touristy things in Manhattan, and spent some quality time with some friends. We were actually staying in Connecticut, about an hour from NYC, which was great. Here I am in Soho.


The thing I was noticing was that a few of my Canadian friends were withdrawing money all the time from bank machines. While this doesn’t sound like a strange thing, I kept hearing “ka-ching!” in my head each time one of them went to the ATM, because I kept thinking of all the fees they were being charged with each withdrawal. Typically there’s a flat fee for using a machine out of the country, then there’s an exchange fee, and then the fee because the bank wants to charge you a fee. I shudder to think how much those ATM visits were costing them. I had brought a bunch of cash with me, and then was using my credit card for bigger purchases. And I lasted the entire 6 days with the cash I’d brought with me, which I thought was pretty good.

So my travelling tip to you: if possible, always bring some local cash with you, and traveller’s cheques if necessary. Use your credit card when possible, like in restaurants, to keep the cash for situations where plastic isn’t usable (like in a local market). And if you need to use an ATM in a foreign country, be sure you know how much it’s going to cost you, and make sure you’re using a reputable ATM as well, since you don’t want to have the machine eat your card and theyn you’re left stranded. (That’s happened to me before.)

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