Currency exchange...JFK or Shannon
 

Am travelling from JFK to Shannon in June. It's been a while since I've travelled overseas.....is there any difference or advantage in exchanging my cash to Euros at JFK or when I land at Shannon?

Would recommend not exchanging cash at an airport. The fees are outragious. 1 Euro is 1.35 US Dollars. Check to se what you will get at the airport exchange.

Would recommend a credit or debit card at an ATM to obtain cash. And use your credit card for purchases.

It isn't necessary to exchange currency now that there are ATMs everywhere. But if you want to exchange you'll get better rates for buying Euros in a country where that is the currency. If you want to have euros in the US, JFK will be convenient though probably not the most economical.

Use "ATM" as a search term in this forum to learn all you need to know about this topic. It is discussed almost daily.

Except for maybe a small amount just for "insurance" purposes - you do not want to exchange cash anywhere. By far the worst exchange rates are 1) cash for cash in the States, followed by 2) cash for cash on arrival.

Leave all that cash in your checking account and use an ATM after arrival.

Don;t exchange cash at all (although you can keep US$100 tucked away for emergencies if you want). Just pull whatever cash you need for wlaking around money from an ATM. You'll get a much better rate at Shannon than at JFK. (And naturally pay for everything you can with a credi card.)

If memory serves me right- Last month while in Dublin airport waiting for DH to get his shoes back on I checked out the Bureau De Change right across from us and it seems as though it was about $1.53 to the Euro to exchange cash for cash.

Using our ATM we averaged out at $1.37 to 1Euro and a 1% fee. Now, we did have $200 USD for emergencies and would have exchanged it if we needed to but overall- had we exchanged cash for the Euro's we did take out of the ATM we would have spent $427 more than we did!

Use your ATM and treat yourself to something nice rather than just letting the banks have it!