Travel Money

kathandgeoff

How does everyone else take their travel money abroad? We always take some English money, some currrency for the country we're going to (this time it was Turkish lira) and some Travellers cheques - plus a debit/credit card for emergency. Came to pay our travellers cheques back into the bank today as we had not needed them, the cashier said he wasn't used to travellers cheques as not many people use them nowadays!!??

Our concern is if you just take cash & it gets lost or stolen you wouldn't have any cash, at least with travellers cheques if they are lost or stolen Amercican Express refund the money.

If there was an emergency you would need some means to pay for medical treatment for example, many policies carry an excess & I remember several years ago having to pay for my son's treatment when he cut his head on holiday & then had to claim it back from the insurance company!

jackieblack

kathandgeoff wrote: »

How does everyone else take their travel money abroad?

We take some local currency but mainly use credit cards (we have the ones that don't charge for foreign transactions and paid off in full so no interest charges)
They give a better rate of exchange than you'd get at Bureau de Change
Easily cancelled if lost/stolen
Don't have to try and guess how much we're going to spend and end up changing currency/travellers back upon return.
Emergencies easily covered.

I would only consider using (and have used) travellers cheques in the USA where they are accepted in most shops/restaurants in the same way as cash.
I couldn't be doing with faffing around getting travellers cheques changed into local currency while abroad!

furryjen78

Be careful with Travellers Cheques, we went to Tunisia last year and one of our party lost her Travellers Cheques (I believe they were from Thomas Cook) and it took her months to get reimbursed. Even though we phoned and cancelled them immediately (running up a £50 mobile phone bill for the privilege) the amount of paperwork she had to send them to get her money back was ridiculous. There was certainly no chance of her getting replacement money whilst we were out there.

[Deleted User]

We take mainly cash with us but always share it between us. My wife has a money belt , it might not stop a mugging but a pickpocket is going to struggle. We also use the safety deposit box in our hotel room. unfortunately if they put them up much more you had just as well give the money away !!!

loobs40

We are at the stage now where I don't get travel money in the UK. I simply use the best card available (Halifax Clarity in our case) to get local money in the destination airport or town using ATMs. This has worked for us all over the world e.g. Australia, New Zealand, USA, Hong Kong, Turkey, Spain , France, Italy etc and I have not had a failure yet

kathandgeoff

Thanks everyone for your advice, we do always get a safety deposit box in our hotel, guess we are just being a bit OTT re safety! Will look into the debit/credit cards for future reference.