Quote:
Originally Posted by aikochan86
I'm leaving on the 28th of March and come back on the 25th of May.
I’ve decided against travellers cheques because I think they’re going to be too inconvenient.
I had a look at the account fees for withdrawing money from my NAB account. It will cost $4 per transaction plus 2% of the amount I’m taking out for the currency exchange fee. The maximum amount I’ll be able to withdraw is $5000 because that’s all I’ll have and so that will be $100 over the whole trip. As for the $4 transaction fees, I’ll just have to take out large amounts and this wont be a problem when I’m with host families and can keep my money at home.
I was worried about compatibility so looked into that too and found this:
“The big exceptions are the ATMs found at the over 20,000 post offices and over 10,000 7-Eleven convenience stores across the country. These ATMs allow you to withdraw cash by credit and debit cards issued outside of Japan, including Visa, Plus, Mastercard, Maestro, Cirrus, American Express and JCB cards and provide an English user menu.”
So it looks like I won’t have a problem with cards. I think I might keep one card with my passport and the other in my wallet so that way I’ll have a back up if anything happens. Internet access is everywhere and I can transfer from one account to the other so it doesn’t matter which card I use.
That's how I've decided to deal with it and I'll just have to keep an eye on exchange rates. If the exchange rate gets too bad then it will only become a problem for me in the last week or so of my trip as I'll be running low on cash by then. At that point I can either head home early or ask my bf/parents to lend me a couple of hundred dollars to tide me over.
There are travellers atm card things that you can get but they also have fees and are not 100% reliable.
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Exchange your money as early and as much as possible. Do not count on those ATMs to work with foreign credit cards. I cannot tell you how much time I have wasted trying to find one that works. Even though it says VISA it doesn't mean it works with all VISA cards. VISA is safe for using as a credit card when buying things like clothes or meals, but getting cash is another story.