What is the best way to carry currency internationally?

[froldt]

My wife and I are leaving for 6 months in Ireland soon. We are debating on whether we should get traveler's cheques or not.

We will be taking enough Euros for a few days expenses. Upon arriving we will be locating a place to live, so we will need enough money (cheques, personal checks, whatever) to pay for that.

What is the cheapest/safest way to carry our currency, before we open a local bank account there? We're not positive our US checks will be accepted, and are similarly not positive about the traveler's cheques. Our debit cards charge too much to withdraw needed money from ATM's, and there are extra charges every time we use them to purchase items from stores.

Any suggestions?

[JKohlbach]

Don't bother with Traveller's Cheques they aren't as widely accepted as they used to be.

My advice is get a credit card and use it for as much as you can. (And of course, paying it off in full every month)

Also, here in Australia we have an ATM system called Maestro which is used around the world as well. It means I can withdraw cash from my Regular Savings account while overseas for a small fee (a couple of dollars) and the cost of the conversion rate at many ATMs around the world.

I was in Japan in August and this worked at all international ATMs (they have a Maestro sign).. from where we just withdrew Yen whenever we needed a top up.

[sub8hr]

Bring cash.

You're allowed to carry the equivalent of $10,000 USD cash duty free when you go abroad. If you're going to be there that long you might as well bring the max.

The last thing you want to happen is to get there and have a problem extracting your money. You will have enough to do with getting to your temporary accommodations, finding a place to live, and getting whatever other phones, utilities, etc. set up that the last thing you want to worry about is whether you can get to your money or not. You might also look in to a bank that has branches in Ireland as well.

I might as well tell my horror story. When I went to Korea a few years ago I was planning to just open an account when I got there and transfer funds from my US account. When I actually got there I ran into two major problems. There was no way to initiate a wire transfer into a Korean account from my US account. And not only that, they required an address in Korea to open the account. But of course I could not access my money so I couldn't rent an apartment to have an address.

I wound up spending a week in a hostel while hitting up the daily max on my ATM card every day until I had enough money to put up a security deposit and first month's rent on an apartment. At which point I had my address to open my account, and did some jiggery pokery to get someone in the US to wire funds in to my account. Thank goodness I at least knew Korean at this point or I would have been totally screwed.

[CashCache]

Carry as much cash as you feel comfortable carrying but keep it limited to $10k or less. Before you leave, make sure your bank can send an internation wire transfer to your destination country without requiring a bunch of red tape. Once you have arived open a local account and have your money transfered over. I have found it is much easier to just call your local branch to get this going - it helps if they know you already.

That's one way to get the money to where you want it, but I recomend using a credit card as much as possible. I travel to Europe quite a bit, and I can guarantee Bank of America negotiates a better exchange rate than I can. It just makes it easy.