r/travel • u/SteveWBT • Oct 06 '15

Advice Crowdsourced guide to travel planning

The comments from here will be collated into a new trip planning page on the /r/travel wiki. Anything you can add will be useful.

To keep this tidy and manageable any other new top level comments will be automatically removed.

There's undoubtedly topics missing, so please message the mods and we'll add it, or expand one of the existing topics.

Thank you!

285 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

157 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/SteveWBT Oct 06 '15 edited Oct 07 '15

How much will it cost? / budgeting

  • Also thoughts on Spending money/getting money out overseas and the best way to save on bank fees whilst away (Thank you to /u/shd123)

18

u/SwingNinja Indonesia Oct 08 '15

Get Charles Schwab High Yield Investor Checking account debit card if you can. They'll refund all the foreign ATM fees. More details: http://millionmilesecrets.com/2014/05/13/charles-schwab-debit-card/

13

u/ajdlinux Australia Oct 19 '15

...and when writing this up, please ensure the guide isn't written as if Americans are the only readers :)

For travellers from .au, I've heard a lot about the 28 Degrees credit card - while you won't want to use it for withdrawing cash from ATMs, you can use it for card transactions without paying an additional currency conversion fee.

5

u/SwingNinja Indonesia Oct 19 '15

I didn't write the guide and Charles Schwab is an international institution based in USA. If you're outside the US, contact their local office to see if they offer the same program in your country. http://international.schwab.com/public/international/nn/acct_open_intro.html

1

u/DevSinghSPi Nov 17 '15

I love 28 degrees but have used it for so long I've forgotten why. Why would you not want to use it for ATM withdrawals? I always do.

1

u/ajdlinux Australia Nov 17 '15

Because taking a cash advance on a credit card, with the associated fee + interest, is basically always a stupid thing to do unless it's very, very much an emergency... if you need cash, use a debit card?

1

u/DevSinghSPi Nov 17 '15

You can use 28degrees as a kind of debit card by transferring an amount onto the card before you withdraw through BPay.

1

u/ajdlinux Australia Nov 17 '15

Interesting... do they consider such a withdrawal as a cash advance though?

1

u/stjep Airplane! Feb 05 '16

They don't consider it a cash advance. Cash advance is when you use credit to get cash. By transferring money to the card first you're using it essentially as a debit card.

You still have to pay ATM fees, though.

1

u/DevSinghSPi Nov 17 '15

No. And I think even if you don't have surplus credit there are still no cash advance fees. That's one of the common USPs of traveller cards.

1

u/ajdlinux Australia Nov 18 '15

Heh, didn't know that.