How do you plan your cash for two wk trip?
 

We are leaving in three weeks for a two week (almost) trip to Ireland and then Paris, and France. We got a Visa ATM debit card from Robobank, and have lots of plastic, debit and credit.

How do you plan your cash to take? $1000? $2000? US dollars? It seems that travelers checks are passe. So, how do you plan your cash? How much do you take? It seems like many places we will go take cash only. Any tips here?

Load up the accounts that your ATM card is connected to and withdraw Euros as you go. Take several hundred in US dollars (cash or trav checks) for emergencies.

Search on this forum for many discussions of this topic. "ATM" in the search box above.

As kayd suggested. Preferably, setup a seperate account from your normal bill-paying one in case someone gets yuor card they'll only have access to vacation funds and not anything else.

We spent a month in Italy and got cash from ATMs every other day or as needed. Both my husband and I would take out the limit allowed (from our checking). We transferred funds to our credit union ATM checking account to cover the trip. We took emergency travelers’ checks that we never needed. We both had a back-up credit card with us but, paid cash all the time. Hotels gave us discounts for paying cash. We never carried more than 600Euros daily with us. It was quite a simple thing to do. ATMs were very accessible. I had worried about this prior to our trip and then found it to be one of the easiest aspects of our trip. You also get a better exchange rate by taking Euros out locally.

Even if someone gets your ATM card, they can't do anything without your PIN number so if you have it written down, never keep it in the same location as your ATM card.

Also, as noted above, several hundred dollars should be fine for emergencies, but US $'s are now more of a hassle than anything. Banks don't seem to want to fool with currency exchange anymore.

I carry $300-400 USD for the airport and to hold on to for the return trip or anything unforseen where I would exchange a small amount.

I buy $200-300 euro ahead from my home bank (actually usually swiss franc for me).

On the trip, every few days as needed, I withdraw ~$300 worth from an ATM machine.

I use a credit card for hotel bills and expensive restaurants.

I have an extra credit card stashed in my suitcase along with the $300+/- USD as a back up.

I don't know ahead exactly how much I will spend, I just make sure my checking account at home has plenty of money in it. I'm pretty secure about carrying cash, but would never want thousands of dollars in my wallet at any one time.

If you want to take travelers checks, that's OK, just realize you will incur fees, a bad exchange rate, and most likely have to go to a bank during business hours to cash them. Get them in USD not euro. Some people have toted the same ones around for years, to have in case of emergency.

I always worry something will go wrong, or I'll be too jetlagged, or... so I get approximately one day worth of local currency while at home.

I know, I'm losing money on it, but for the peace of mind...

Then with the ATM card you don't have to carry cash on you.

Also remember that you may have a maximum amount that you can withdraw per day from your account. So, don't forget. I tried to w/draw a large amount of cash at the end of the day so I could pay cash for my hotel early the next morning but couldn't because it would have put me over my daily limit. Just FYI...

Not only may there be a daily max on your card, (you can ask your bank to increase that while you are on your trip, most will), but the ATM itself may have a limit. ie., I normally have a $500 daily limit on my card withdrawals, but the ATM may limit me to E250 a day... so I go down the road to another ATM if I need it :)

I normally take $500.00 in cash for miscellaneous or emergency items, and the rest is all ATM.