How to Take care of Your Finances for Travel
Since Dave and I are going through this again right now, we thought that it would be a good time to let you know how we prepare all of our banking and financing before a world travel.
It can be a little overwhelming when you leave for a trip putting all of your accounts in order, but if you take it step-by-step, things can go pretty smoothly and you can travel worry free.
The first thing that I do is go through our wallets to see what cards we will be taking and what we will leave behind. I make a note to contact every account to tell them that we will be overseas. Some banks and credit cards will freeze accounts when they see them being used in a foreign country unless they are notified.
Next I make sure that we have a variety of cards that will be compatible worldwide. We have found that cards that use the Cirrus system work well, but we also use Plus and Maestro.
I write down all of the important numbers and contact information that I will need for each account.
I then write down account numbers to store in a safe place. You need to have this on hand in case anything goes missing.
We have several different accounts with different pin numbers. I make sure to write down little hints as to what each pin is. If anything gets stolen, they won’t be able to figure out what all of these random numbers and words mean, but I know what it all means. We also email ourselves the same hints just in case.
- I have heard of the online pin storage sites, but I have yet to use them. Maybe we will this trip after some more investigation. But there is nothing safer in my opinion than not having pins stored anywhere, just some random hints that don’t make sense to anyone but me.
The next thing we do is get our online banking in order and set up pre-authorized and scheduled payments. We basically set up all of our banking for the time that we will be gone. Bill payments, investments, money transfers…they are all done ahead of time so that we are not worrying about monthly expenses while we are away.
Organizing your Finances Before Leaving the Country is the Key
We also use a separate account for bills at home from the account we will be using on the road.
This is not mandatory, but we make sure to have a monthly payment to our credit card that we use for travel whether we use it or not. Just in case we can’t get to an internet by the time the due date comes around, we are content in knowing that at least the minimum payment will be taken care of. We would hate to miss a payment and have our cards declined if we needed them.
We also make sure that we have a savings account that is linked to our account that we are using to travel that we can transfer money to and from. We don’t keep a lot of money in our travel account at one time as ATM’s can be greatly compromised. Transfers are set up before leaving home to go into our account monthly to fit our budget.
We pay very close attention to our finances while traveling. We have our credit monitored to make sure nobody has gotten our information and we check our accounts regularly to make sure that things haven’t come out that shouldn’t have.
We also leave a banking account number with a family member at home in case we need them to put money into our account. It is good to have all avenues covered in case of an emergency.
So that is what we do to prepare our finances while we are traveling. Knock on wood, all has gone well, but we are always learning new tricks.
Do you have any hints or suggestions to make your banking while traveling easier?
19 Responses to How to Take care of Your Finances for Travel
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This is great! It can also be applied to normal vacation as well. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Automation is step one when it comes to taking control of your finances. Nice outline of what you two are going through. For anyone reading this, the blog archives of getrichslowly.org and iwillteachyoutoberich.com have been quite helpful when it comes to any financial question I have.
Cheers! Happy Friday!
Here’s my only thought about “linked” accounts: let’s say that you have a checking account with X Bank and you also have a savings account with X bank. If someone steals your checking account ATM to get into your funds and creates an overdraft, X bank will likely dump the money in your savings account to cover the overdraft and may be unwilling to reimburse you for both. This happened to a good friend: his Citibank ATM card was stolen while traveling but he only had about $500 in the checking account. The thief took about $5000 from the checking ATM using a fraudulent “check deposit” and Citibank took the money out of his savings account and refused to reimburse him for the stolen amounts (this was right before all the banks went completely kaput and they were being tight-fisted and ridiculous — they refused to return his calls or letters).
My advice is to do the following: keep 1 checking account at a bank which reimburses you world-wide for ATM charges. We are likely going to use Schwab’s High Yield Checking (though I am still researching a couple of other options). Then have a completely separate savings account, preferably through an online bank, that allows free money transfers to the other checking account (examples are ING, Capital One Direct Banking, Schwab, etc.). As you mention, keep a small amount of money in the checking account and make transfers from the online savings account as needed.
In addition, I suggest having at least one credit card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees because those build up very quickly. We love our Capital One No Hassle Miles card and I highly, highly recommend that any American travelers consider using it for international travel.
Goodness – sorry for the long comment. I didn’t realize I had so much to say on travel finances.
Really useful information! Securing my finances is something I often tend to overlook but really should pay more attention to. Prevention is so much easier than cleaning up a mess later on.
Akila,
That is great advice. Thanks for the heads up. We definitely don’t do everything perfect yet for sure, so it is great to have advice about what has happened to other people. It is so scary out there you don’t want to make any wrong moves and loose all of your money. With help like this, we can all keep our finances safe.
Alan,
thanks for the links to those two blogs I will check them out for sure because as I said, we still have a lot to learn.
This is very good advice, especially the part to make sure a monthly payment or deposit is made to the card even if not used when you’re on the road…I travel a lot for business and that’s exactly the way it’s done.
Thank you for sharing your houghts and experience with the rest of us
Sound advice, and can be applied to shorter period of travel. I do the PIN and password hints as well but not via email.
During one trip, we got in touch with Amex before we left and told them we were travelling and we didn’t have any problems with any large amounts in any country. The weekend we got back home and used the card, they stopped the transaction and asked for identity verification. Small price to pay for security and peace of mind.
Just yesterday, friend just asked me how to prepare her finances for a trip — thank you for writing it all up so I can just refer her to The Planet D!
We, too, alert our credit card companies to our trip dates and our bill payments are always automated through our credit cards. We love that we don’t have to stress about missing bills…and, to boot, we earn miles for every scheduled payment.
A separate trip account is a wonderful idea, though. If we’re ever away longer than three weeks (sigh), we’re going to give this a try to streamline our end-of-year accounting!
Akila, thanks for the heads up on the Capital One No Hassles Miles card — I’ll be checking it out in anticipation of our next international trips.
I did what Akila is doing. I got Schwab account which has no ATM or international fees. I also have a HSBC online only account which i carry most of my money. I transfer from HSBC into Schwab every month so even if my Schwab card gets stolen, I’ve only lost a little and not all my money. I also have a Capital One credit card which is also no fees internationally. Good advice here. It’s extremely important to do research on the best cards before traveling to make sure you’re safe and saving money using the card abroad.
That is excellent advice. I agree. Never keep too much money in your travel account. We have different accounts linked as well. Every month money is scheduled to come out of one into the other. Fees are very important to look into for sure! Thanks for sharing your experiences with everyone!
These are some great tips for dealing with finances while traveling. We were down in the states when my credit card stopped working, found out later they had put a freeze on it. Will definitely contact them in advance next time!
.-= Tom @ Canadian Finance Blog´s last blog ..Friday Links =-.
I personally use a credit monitoring service that costs about $12 a month and it alerts me every time anything happens to my credit report.
.-= Credit Card Chaser´s last blog ..Credit Cards & Bankruptcy: A Visual Tragedy =-.
As a precaution I always bring at least 500USD in American Express Travlers Checks in 20 or 50 denomination. These I keep in a safe place to be used only if a problem with credit cards, lost, rejected or cash stolen. I have had the same TC’s for years, there are no expiration dates on the checks.
That is great advice Marylouise. Good to know that they don’t expire. We really should add travelers cheques to our item list.
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