travellers cheques, cash or pre pay card

[DaveH]

Hi All

we are going to florida for 3 weeks in late July 09. I have been looking at the different options for money

- travellers cheques that can be used as cash in shops etc
- dollars(cash)
- pre pay cards
- credit cards(best foreign option)

I am thinking of taking a combination of the four but was just wondering if anyone had any tips or good experiences with any certain type of the above

Many thanks
Dave

[Katys Grandad]

Been discussed many times and I think it's fair to say that everybody has their own preference. I'd say your intention to have a mix makes a lot of sense.

A credit card is virtually essential in the US and having a few dollars in cash will be needed on arrival for tolls and small necessary purchases. Pre-pay cards are useful if you want to limit your spending but if you have a credit card, I'm not sure they have a lot of value on that point (their exchange rate isn't that brilliant). Personally I haven't used Travellers Cheques for many years because, for me, they don't offer anything that the others don't.

[becbecs]

We take Cash and Pre-Paid $ Visa Electon Card so we get face value and no exchange rate to work out and be charged for. Works really well and no huge Creditcard bills to be paid later.

Only charge you would get is for re-loading the card and drawing from ATM machine

[steph_goodrum]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by Katys Grandad
Been discussed many times and I think it's fair to say that everybody has their own preference. I'd say your intention to have a mix makes a lot of sense.

A credit card is virtually essential in the US and having a few dollars in cash will be needed on arrival for tolls and small necessary purchases. Pre-pay cards are useful if you want to limit your spending but if you have a credit card, I'm not sure they have a lot of value on that point (their exchange rate isn't that brilliant). Personally I haven't used Travellers Cheques for many years because, for me, they don't offer anything that the others don't.
[/quote]

The Fairfx one offers virtually the commercial rate as opposed to the tourist rate. As it allows youu to load as little as £10 then its quite a good way to build up your spending money. You can transfer it free of charge from your debit account. You can get them free at the moment from thisismoney website instead of the usual £9.95 so you know exactly how many dollars youu are getting and dont have to wonder if the exchange rate will bo up or down before youu go or spend the money.
My only worry is that these days it seems to be a bit of a gamble entrusting your money to anyone in advance of you needing it so tend to get dollars or travellers checks when the exchange rate is ok.

[sammibabe]

Only charge you would get is for re-loading the card and drawing from ATM machine
[/quote]
We take a small amount of cash (tolls and small purchases), TC and Nationwide CC (usually first 'big' shop and my trip to Jo-ann's[msnwink]) When the TC are used you get the change in cash to top that up without the need to take more cash than necessary.
We haven't used the pre-loaded cards before as I don't know how you get the cash topped up unless you draw from the ATM which you pay for.
We get them when the rate seems good which worked really well last year.

I know a lot of people don't use TC anymore but we still like them.

[steph_goodrum]

Sammibabe
With the Fairfx card you can top it up online. You can get cash from the ATM which is around $1.50/$2 cant remember exactly. The only crafty thing is that you have a limit of $300 cash so you couldnt take all your money out at one time by going to the bank but if you took out one withdrawal and used the card (chip and pin) to pay for most of the things then it would be ok.

[DaveH]

steph

I have looked at the fairfx card and it looks really good. Have you used this card before? and if so was it accepted at most outlets/eating places

Cheers
Dave

[becbecs]

We use the Travelex Pre Paid Card and you can also top up on line. Most of these prepaid cards work in the same way.

We have a Travelex Euro Card for Traveling to Europe and Travelex Dollar Card for the US.

You just transfer the funds over here and you get what ever the exchange rate was at the time. But where ever you may be in Europe or USA you just pay face value with no charges.

Is it true that Nationwide are going to start charging for CC use abroad ?

[sammibabe]

Thanks for that. We will probably stick with TC - it works for us. Nationwide have changed their cc charges abroad and I can't remember how but the last time I checked it was still the best one to use abroad.

[MJG]

We go a week on Saturday and we will be going with £500 in Dollars and the rest of our spends on a Travelex pre-loaded Visa card.

Seemed the best way to compromise between the security of travellers cheques and the convenience of cash.