Which bank cards are best for a long european trip
Comments
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Apart from being able to pre plan how much you spend on holiday what is the advantage of a prepaid card? I know there are some things I can't do with a prepaid card like paying for tolls but what advantage is there over using something like a Halifax Clarity
Card which has no charges (other than a small amount of interest if you make cash withdrawals), you get the top exchange rate.David
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DK, our Caxton is multi currency which mean we can use it when we go to the states or europe + many other currencies. We don't need it for tolls (in France) as we have a fob. We sometimes load it when rates are good, but mostly just load it when we need
cash, it takes seconds to do so from our bank, we then withdraw it as required. We have had a Caxton for many years now, quite happy with it so don't wish to take out another card when we have one we like. We also now have the Nationwide Flex+ card and there
CC, so all ports covered.
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Cards like the Clarity work anywhere in the world so don't need to be "multi currency". And as for "loading when the rates are good" it always beats me how people know they're not going to be even better in the future (unlikely given present circumstances
I know).I'm with David, why tie up your money in advance?
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Cards like the Clarity work anywhere in the world so don't need to be "multi currency". And as for "loading when the rates are good" it always beats me how people know they're not going to be even better in the future (unlikely given present circumstances
I know).I'm with David, why tie up your money in advance?
You don't have to tie up money in advance if you don't want to, as I said you can load it and withdraw it within seconds. When we are going away we watch exchange rates, if it looks like it is a good rate and likely to fall then we will put some money on
the card. Let's face it the banks are not giving good interest so not loosing anything.I know nothing of the Clarity or how it works so couldn't compare it. But as it has a charge for cash withdrawls it wouldn't suit our purpose, as that is what we use the Caxton for.
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But it's not a great problem, is it. We drew all the cash we needed from a Halifax Clarity Credit Card via ATMs - and being too lazy to pay it off promptly I let the debt run on till the direct debit kicked in at the end of the month. The interest was £2. 89. But we got a better rate of exchange than most of the pre paid cards give. So hardly worth worrying about.
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I must admit to us taking large amounts of cash with us, and using our standard cards if the cash budgeting fell a wee short come the final days of our trip. Obviously the large amounts of cash diminished as time went on, but for next year I'm thinking of a loaded Euro card to minimise the risk , so reading this with interest.
Last year I used my standard credit card for fuel in the last two weeks to save our cash and it only amounted to a few £'s in fees, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
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I agree with Iansoady. We have a Halifax Clarity Card as well as a FairFx card, but I like the FairFx as I like to know what I'm spending g before I spend it. With the Clarity card, you have to spend the money in Euros and then find out how much you've spent in pounds. With a prepaid card I know how many Euros I have to spend before I spend them as I have already transferred the pounds to Euros.
David
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I don't think it is worth being bothered what card you have. The cost of obtaining foreign currency pales into insignificance compared to the cost of the holiday. I use a Caxton card and a credit card with a debit card as back up and the last trip I did,
the cost of obtaining currency was less than half of 1 percent of the total cost.peedee
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Thanks for the reasoning regarding pre-paid cards but I am not convinced. We usually return home with a few hundred euro's in cash so more than enough for the first few days when we cross over again if we can't use a card. At a suitable time I will find
an ATM and withdraw cash using the Clarity card. I sometimes pay money into the Clarity account but like ET have left it until the statement and the amounts of interest are pretty small. I also worry that pre-paid cards are not protected in the same way that
credit cards are. I perfectly see DSB's point about the planning aspect.David
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I don't think it is worth being bothered what card you have. The cost of obtaining foreign currency pales into insignificance compared to the cost of the holiday. I use a Caxton card and a credit card with a debit card as back up and the last trip I did,
the cost of obtaining currency was less than half of 1 percent of the total cost.peedee
Same as us then peedee.
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@DK "I also worry that pre-paid cards are not protected in the same way that credit cards are" Not sure what you mean here. Prepaid cards ring fence your money in a separate bank account, so if the card issuer goes bust your money is safe. If the
bank goes bust then maybe....Credit cards protect you on purchases of goods over £100 should the goods be faulty or not arrive, but you're hardly like to be buying expensive consumer goods abroad with a pre-paid card.The best advice imho is to be found on
Moneysavingexpert. They show you how using the wrong card can cost quite a bit, not just with fees, but by giving you derisory exchange rates.I use the HFX Clarity credit card and also the Revolut pre-paid which give you perfect interbank exchange rates. (I loaded up with Euros earlier this year when it was 1.40
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You can also load £££'s and use as a payment card when the rate is calculated on the spot or change to €€'s as and when.0 -
DK, prepaid cards are protected just like other bank cards, the Caxton up to £1000. As I've said before we use it for withdrawing cash. The card didn't cost us anything to take out, it doesn't cost us anything to load, it doesn't cost us anything to use,
the rates are favourable.We pay for fuel with our Nationwide CC which doesn't cost us and we get cash back from it. We load the Caxton when away with a few hundred euros, withdraw it straight away, so no money is on the card if lost or stolen (we have one each differant accounts)
the account that we use to load the card is a Nationwide one and that account doesn't have a lot of money in it either, so if that card was lost or stolen then it wouldn't matter, however it is protected by the bank so no worries there.The main account that
we move money from is within the Nationwide bank so its done online and no card for that account is taken with us so no chance of losing it or it getting stolen. We each carry a differant CC and we each carry a differant debit card.It works for us, other people have there own ways of doing things, there is no right or wrong just differant. If you are happy with the way you work that's fine. We like our way and it works. We don't have a budget when away it costs what it costs.
Geejay, agree that I wouldn't be buying expensive items while away and if I did it would be with a CC not the Caxton, Caxton is just to draw cash.
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We just use Clarity or Nationwide these days.
Several years back we used Nationwide Gold CC for purchases and Nationwide debit card for cash, but then Nationwide started charging a fee for cash as it is not our main account.
Then the Clarity card was brought out and as that (we have a card each) gave us a "Reward" of £5 each per month, we started using that, and have done so for both cash and purchases up till this year.
Now Halifax have withdrawn the"Reward", we have stopped using our cards here and gone over to a TSB credit card with 1% cashback for UK spending, plus our Barclaycards which also have (now very small) rewards.
We are keeping our Clarity cards for use abroad however, and as we have 2, will use one for purchases and one for cash, which will make things easier if we wish to minimise interest on cash withdrawals. The interest is small as said, so we have not bothered
much with early repayment in the past.0
