Londonuck

Do you think it is better value to get Sterling and Euros in Canada before going back home or to just withdraw money on your Canadian bank card when back there? Thanks.

Hurlabrick

When you withdraw on your bank card, you get the rate that the bank sponsoring the machine fancy giving you - usually a much poorer rate than you can pick up by shopping around at home. Also, my bank charge me an additional set fee (modest but annoying) for each such FOREX transaction (in addition to a cr*p rate!).


Personally, I always buy my foreign currency from specialist dealers offering good rates (I use FairFX) and keep my card for use at overseas cashpoints only if I run out.

Londonuck

Thanks!

Aviator

Amazon.ca Visa is useful. You get the Visa rate of the day and no premium for the FX. For cash, I just take it from the machine. For the small amount of cash needed, a crap FX is like the price of a coffee and the ATM is convenient. If you take thousands in cash, that might be different.

BristolUK

When I have drawn $$ in Canada on my UK card, the £/$ rate was decent enough but there were two charges from my UK bank working out to about £6 for every £100
And then about a year ago the Canadian bank started adding 2 or 3 $$

I now use TransferWise to transfer from the UK bank to Canadian bank. It's a good £/$ rate and the fee is only 0.5% (min £2).

So if I was going to the UK I'd do a reverse transfer and use the UK card for ££ withdrawals over there.

Only works if you still have the UK account of course.

Londonuck

Thanks, good stuff.

Piff Poff

I've picked up some Euro's and some Sterling before we fly as we have been caught by not having ready's when needed. The rest we need we will use debit and credit cards. Don't want to travel with too much dosh!

SchnookoLoly

We still have a UK bank account so we just use that for withdrawals when we are over there. But when my parents went last year, they just took out a small amount of cash from the bank so that they had some cash (£200 or so, something like that) and just used the Amazon Visa card for all purchases wherever they could since, as Aviator said, there's no load on the exchange rate and no foreign FX fee, just the rate of the day. There are a handful of other cards that have a similar setup. Most have a fee, but often the fee is waived for the first year so if you look around you can find some decent bonuses.

(For example, the Marriott Rewards Visa had a promo going on where you got the first year free, and as a signing up bonus you got enough Marriott points for two free nights in a hotel, plus an additional free night in a certain subset of their various chains. We signed up for that card and had 3 of our 6 nights away last year free. We used that card while we travelled to save on any FX charges, then paid off and closed the card when we got back.)

bgpz

It's worth noting that in the first year, it's a category 1-4 certificate - but if you keep the card ($120 charge), you get a cat 1-5 certificate on renewal.

This covers pretty much all of the Marriott group airport hotels around YYZ and BUF, for example (YVR/LHR area are all Cat 7 now).

In general (even more so, with the USD exchange rate being so dire right now), US airport hotels can be a very good use of Marriott certificates. Particularly if you can save a bundle on a flight that gets in late or leaves early in the morning ...

(YMMV, but as a family this arrangement works for us - and the $120 CAD fee is less than the out-of-pocket expense of a US airport hotel, and we've saved a *lot* more than that in taking advantage of cheap airline tickets that we'd only consider with an airport hotel stay to make it bearable).

It's a decent "travel" card to keep hold of, if you can work the free night like this - and even more so with the zero-loading on currency rates. I think it's got fairly good CDW cover on hire cars, so that's another potential saving there (although you may have this on other c/cards - worth checking the fine print on 'em, as if you have it this can save you a packet too!)

SchnookoLoly

Thanks for clarifying! I was just posting this as an option/example of a good credit card that gives FX purchases with a few other perks. We also have the BMO World Elite card which also has no FX rate, doesn't charge for an extra cardholder (not joint), earns 2% into a travel rewards account, and has fantastic car rental insurance, as well as travel insurance and a few other bits and bobs.

We also signed up for the TD Aeroplan card just to get the Aeroplan bonus points - normally I don't bother with that card, but we had a flight booked using Aeroplan points and if you used that card then you got lounge access and free checked baggage, so that was worth it. Cancelled it after the trip to avoid the annual fee.

https://www.ratehub.ca/credit-cards has a good comparison of credit cards with various perks/rewards/terms depending on what you're looking for.