Cheap Travel Money Discussion Area

rthak

Can someone please explain what a load fee is? Is it charged on cash withdrawals or only on actual 'purchases'. Thanks

deadplant

Hi All,

I'm getting married later this year, and we're planning a 2 month trip to America for the Honeymoon.

Basically, as well as a normal wedding list, we want to give the guests the option of maybe contributing towards the cost of the honeymoon, by either setting up some kind of travel account where they can deposit monetary gifts online, or asking for cheques. But, i'm very aware that companies that offer this service will be taking some of this money as charges so i want to maximise the actual money we get by getting the best currency exchange into dollars, and also minimise any fees/charges. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Should we just ask for cheques and deposit them into a (Nationwide) account? Should we set up some kind of dollar account etc? Should we use a pre-loaded travel card?

In addition, whilst we are over in the States we'll be wanting to make purchases by using both cash and debit/credit card purchases, hopefully linked in some way to the "travel account" mentioned above, so we'll also be needing to make cash withdrawals.

Any help or advice appreciated, as i'm a bit lost with all the different options available.

dzug1

Derek_Michael wrote: »

Post office use Mastercard exchanged rates which adds 1%

Do you have a source for that? It may well be true, but I can't verify it anywhere other than for USA Mastercards which could be different.

marsha8

I have a Nationwide credit & debit card for which I have not been charged when using abroad but I understand that the rules have been changed(March 2009) so that charges will only be free if you travel within Europe.I am going to Egypt in June & although some travel insurance companies include this in Europe Nationwide does not & therefore charges will be incurred.Should I be considering getting the Post Office card which I believe is free?

luci

All the information is on the Nationwide website including which countries there will be a charge for.

m00head

luci wrote: »

All the information is on the Nationwide website including which countries there will be a charge for.

Here is a link to the information on the Nationwide website:
http://www.nationwide.co.uk/current_account/foreigntransactions.htm

Also, I think the information in the table as part of the article here should be either updated or changed from US Dollars to Euros instead, as Nationwide will start charging for US Dollars conversion soon:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-travel-money#saving

gtran26

Hi,

I am taking a trip to Brazil, Argentina, & Chile in May. I live in US & just got the Fidelity Visa debit card which charges the standard Visa 1% commission to withdraw foreign currency & reimburses all atm fees. My question is do atms use the exchange rate from Visa or do they use their own which means maybe airport & hotel atms may give a worse exchange rate than a popular bank? Also in US the max I can withdraw from any atm with a debit card in a single day is $500, would that limit also apply in South America? Any help for this newbie traveler would be greatly appreciated!

Karluk

Hi all

Can anyone point me to the exchange rates for the Nationwide Credit and Debit Cards?

I basically want to know which method of spending in Florida gives me the best deal.

Today, using the Travel Money Maximiser -

£2000 would buy me $2836 @ 1.418

If I spent £2000 today on a Nationwide Credit or Debit Card - how much would this cost in £

Anyone know?

Many thanks

jav_01

Karluk wrote: »

Hi all

Can anyone point me to the exchange rates for the Nationwide Credit and Debit Cards?

I basically want to know which method of spending in Florida gives me the best deal.

Today, using the Travel Money Maximiser -

£2000 would buy me $2836 @ 1.418

If I spent £2000 today on a Nationwide Credit or Debit Card - how much would this cost in £

Anyone know?

Many thanks

Yes... I would like to know essentially a similar thing:

What is better to use - the Nationwide Flex Account Visa Debit Card in Europe or use Thomas Cook/Travelex online?

Thanks

sim0ne

Hi there
We are planning on travelling to the USA (specifically Hawaiian Islands) for our honeymoon in June/July. Obviously we would be affected by the new rates on the Nationwide credit/debit cards for transactions by then so I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice...basically we are going to have approx $850 USD of hotel bills that will need paying by some form of card - and then the rest of our spending money that could be either card or cash (but we prefer card as much as possible). So as I see it we could either apply for the Post Office credit card to pay as many of the card purchases as possible and also get a Nationwide Basic Cash account/card or a prepaid card (e.g FairFX/Caxton) for cash withdrawals. Or if it worked out easier/comparable in price we could just use the prepaid cards for all our purchases. Does anybody know how the Nationwide Cash Account card compares against the prepaid cards? As if they're similar we may just use the prepaid cards for all our purchases.

Thanks in advance