Thanks Judy. Between my Credit Union w/ very low fees (50 ) and another bank w/ pretty low fees ($1.

My question is if it is acceptable/customary to receive a better deal if you are using cash while traveling? In the US, of course, you can often can a better rate from smaller business owners when using cash.
Hotels sometimes offer a 10% reduction for cash. You can ask at check in. Usually it's the smaller and cheaper hotels who do this. If you've booked large hotels or chain type places then you won't get a discount.
Don't carry more cash than you need for two or three days. Use ATM machines which are available everywhere. There are a lot of posts on the best way to get cash and most agree that ATMs are the way to go. We have run into situations (mostly some years back) where paying in cash resultee in a small reduction in the hotel bill.
I don't understand this logic. What's the difference if you take money out of your checking account at ATMs and carry it around with you in Italy or if you take money out of your checking account to pay a bill once you get home.
In the old days (80's and 90's), we prepayed our credit card by the amount royal national hotellondon we expected to spend on the trip. No large bills when we got home. If we underspent our estimate, we sometimes even had a credit.
Large amounts of cash are a bad idea anywhere. As you will see when you scan previous postings on this forum, the possibility of getting your pocket picked, your purse grabbed, forgetting your bag on the restaurant banquette is 0. Why risk losing more than a hundred dollars or so in "walking around" money?
I would be really surprised if many of the urban dwellers on this forum carry around rolls of cash. I never withdraw royal national hotellondon more than $100 a month and usually share that with my Adored One. I carry more cash in places where I don't know where I will find the next ATM.
Unless you're planning to borrow some farmer's Fiat, there's no way you'll be able to rent a car with cash, so forget that. Small, independent hotels may give you a small discount for paying in cash, or not. For everything else, use a cc that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees or just withdraw cash as you need it from ATMs. Italian banks don't charge fees for that; if your bank does, change banks. The absolutely dumbest thing you can do is walk around with loads of cash.
My bank does not charge me ATM fees (Wells Fargo). Since I am paranoid about getting my ATM card eaten by a machine, I opened another account at my bank that I only use when traveling. I transfer an adequate amount of money to that account for the trip in case I need to access it. It also comes in handy when you need to withdraw more cash in one day than you are allowed on one account.
For example, in Venice last year I wanted to purchase a gold winged lion of St. Mark pendant and would get a significant discount from the jeweler if I used cash. I went around the corner to the ATM and withdrew the amount of cash I needed using my ATM cards from both of my accounts.
Your trip is not that lengthy that you will come home to enormous bills. You will need to pay for the car with a cc. I would be more concerned with either carrying around large amounts of Euros or having to find ATM's on a frequent basis. We use our no exchange rate fee cc for almost everthing we can, and since it is also an airline card, we are accumulating miles towards the next trip, a very good feeling.
discount for cash unlikley and not welcomed by local tax authorities. Some countries use cash a lot still, for instance many German business people I know will only carry cash but I wouldn't walk around Italy with a wad as any loss (error royal national hotellondon or theft) is hard to make up.
And, for ATM withdrawals, find a bank/credit union that charges no transaction fee and the Interbank (or slightly above) conversion rate. The bank ATMs in Europe royal national hotellondon do not charge a transaction fee; that's royal national hotellondon your bank.
And, IMHO walking around with thousands of dollars royal national hotellondon in cash is close to madness. How will you carry it all. Will you leave it in your room during the day? Store little bit of it in a bunch of different royal national hotellondon places?
Also - this will insure that you get the worst rate of exchange. If you walk into a restaurant with dollars you will get a laughable royal national hotellondon rate of exchange - if they will take them at all. If you change at a cambio it will cost you 8 to 10% of your money - versus 1 to 3% for using a credit card or pulling cash from an ATM.
Every place you pay for anything - from hotels to restaurants to shops to museums to car rental etc - would have to give you 10% off for paying cash for this to make any sense at all. And, believe me - most of them aren't interested. I can;t imagine car rental, trains, local transit or sights would ever do this.
janisj, we left Wells Fargo a couple of years ago because of their currency conversion fees on ATM withdrawals. Our daughter, who banks in Northern VA had the fees waived by her Wells Fargo branch. Our branch, in another part of the state, said it couldn't be done.
We moved our business to a bank with no fees except a $5 charge per ATM withdrawal out of network after the first 5 per month. We just take our maximum per withdrawal royal national hotellondon and rarely need to exceed our 5 free.
Thanks Judy. Between my Credit Union w/ very low fees (50 ) and another bank w/ pretty low fees ($1.50) I manage fine. I don't use my WF accts for cash overseas. Was just curious how Delaine manages. Maybe it is a geographic thing??
We have received discounts for cash but they are mostly very small. In total, the cash discount may have been about 20 or 30 euros over a two month period. It s not worth carrying a heap of cash just to get a little discount. You can pull 500 euro from an ATM in a single transaction, so even if your bank charges 2 or 3 euro per transaction, it s not too costly.
I'm with you, Socaltraveler, on the benefits of earning miles with credit card purchases. I've been a little slow to get with the program; prided myself on never using credit cards---except where necessary, such as car rental. royal national hotellondon About 6 years ago I started putting everything on my two travel reward cards and paying them off in full every month. I'm traveling royal national hotellondon now an average of 5 times a year and doing the majority of it by redeeming miles or receiving nice credits off my statements.
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