Best Money Tips For Traveling Abroad

If you are like most people, you can’t help but look forward to that time of the year when you finally get the chance to go on a vacation, relax, explore, and have fun in a new travel destination. It’s even merrier if your chosen destination is far away from home. You get a chance to learn new cultures, have a taste of cuisines, interact with different people, make new distant friends, and perhaps even learn a new language if you’re lucky enough!

However, long-distance trips don’t usually come cheap. A lot goes into the planning, and you might even have to take out a loan just to tick off an item from your “overseas travel wishlist”. Thankfully, here are a few money tips you could use to reduce money-related woes when planning to travel abroad.

Have a Realistic Travel Budget

Planning a trip abroad can be downright exhausting. There are numerous things to think about, from choosing a travel agency to booking flights, planning your itinerary, and booking hotel stays. However, the denominator among all these is that they all cost money.

How much you enjoy your trip abroad will outrightly depend on how well you budget for it. This means getting a good grasp on your expenses at home and having a clear budget for your trip.

Get Travel Insurance

Traveling doesn’t come without a fair share of substantial risks. For instance, you could get into an accident, fall sick, lose your luggage at some point, or even get arrested while abroad on a trip. While it might not appear extremely important at first, it’s good to make sure you have a good travel insurance policy in place before you leave. It will protect you financially if something goes wrong while you’re away.

Bring Some Cash in Local Currency

As exciting as it may be to get on board that plane and start enjoying your vacation as soon as it lands, it’s always wise to have some hard cash on you. Not all places accept paperless cash, and you never know when a few coins or notes will save your life or get you out of an emergency situation. This is all the more reason to bring some cash with you in the local currency during your trip abroad.

Stay Abreast of Currency Exchange Rates

The strength of currencies fluctuates from time to time, and this is inevitable considering factors such as an economy’s GDP, market performance, inflation, and so forth. It is thus wise to know how to get the best exchange rates in your destination just before you leave for your trip abroad.

Besides helping you to budget accordingly for your travel expenses, understanding the current exchange rates can help you avoid nasty surprises when you get your bill at the end of a meal or purchase something.

Take Advantage of Your Credit Card

Credit cards can help fund your travel in many ways besides just helping take care of your bills. For instance, many credit cards provide travel rewards such as redeemable points or air flight miles and cash back on purchases. While some won’t subject you to foreign transaction fees, a credit card like SoFi doesn’t usually require you to pay annual fees, can be applied online, and comes with cash-back rewards.

This can end up saving you a lot of money in the long run, as credit card fees can add up quickly. But let’s break it down a tad further.

When choosing a credit card that you can use while traveling abroad, some of the crucial things to look out for include:

• Low-interest rates
• Easy application and fast approval
• Little to no foreign transaction fees
• Minimal to no annual fees
• Low cash advance fees
• Impeccable support customer service from the issuer
• International credit card acceptability

If you’re headed on a trip abroad or you’re at least considering planning one, getting your finances in order is something you can’t afford to run away from. The above few money tips can go a long way in making your overseas travel smooth, merrier, and more enjoyable.