Each to their own @august 
We have both Wise AND Revolut. Plus no fees credit and debit cards. You really can’t have too many options when travelling full time if they are free cards, fee-free, great rates and no (or minimal) cash withdrawal fees.
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Quite right. I also have both. Keep Wise as an emergency. Never use it, though. Only signed up to receive a transfer from another Wise user. And Wise charged me a fee. Didn´t like it at all. Revolut to Revolut transfers are completely free.
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We are the reverse. Wise is ONE of our main debit cards. Revolut our emergency. The fees must depend on the country…
Foreign exchange rates on all ATM cards are virtually identical to the official end-of-business-day exchange rate (unless you accept the ATM’s offered DCC exchange rate which is universally terrible). Where ATM debit cards get expensive is when you add up the ATM fee at the point of withdrawal plus the out-of-network fee charged by many banks plus the foreign exchange fee charged by some banks that runs as much as 3%. Some debit and credit cards have no foreign exchange fee.
We have a Wise account but passed on their ATM card because fees kick in when monthly charges exceed $100 in a month. We use our Wise account to do currency exchanges with funds going to a foreign bank account. Though the Wise ATM fees aren’t bad, our Schwab card has $0 in fees and reimburses all fees charged at the ATM machine. Not sure how Fidelity compares these days since it was so long ago that I looked into their card.
Interesting. One of the aspects of most travel sites I hate most is that they force you to specify departure and destination … And precise dates. Which is maddening, when you just want to get a rough idea of the fares and which lines fly where - and when.
I am in the UK and Stansted is my nerarest airport. I always buy direct from the airline. Such as Ryaniar if Europe. If going to somehwre such as Indonesia I will book direct with Emirates. I have booked direct with other airlines in the past when needing to depart from other airports.
Sometimes, I book direct, sometimes not. That’s because I have used an aggregator travel platform for decades that not only gives me points for any travel I book through it, it also has taken care of me when I’ve made errors in booking, when I’ve wanted to cancel or get credit, etc. Because it’s an aggregator, it has greater power than any individual to push back on vendors, including airlines and hotels.
Personally, I prefer that, because they always can get me a human to deal with my request quickly, rather than my wasting time and energy pursuing anything.
When I’ve occasionally checked its prices against airlines and hotels, it’s never been higher — it’s actually occasionally been lower and sometimes it has availability for what I want, even when the hotel website itself or the hotel isn’t offering that in person. (I often book last minute, including road trips when I might be booking 30 mins before I decide to stop overnight or just show up at a hotel.)
And it gives me points for any hotel, airline or rental car agency it sells, so I never have to optimize for loyalty.
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Hi guys…late to the convo about Wise et al (been doing some chaotic int’l travel lately), but did I understand correctly that this is only available for non-US customers? Or, if you have a European-based bank account, does it become an option for US folks also?
(I’ll check out the site you linked, but admit I’m being mildly lazy atm as it’s 3:30am & I have another flight in a few hours.)
Insofar as ATM cards, I concur that most banks I deal with are giving me pretty close to the going exchange rate these days; the fees are mainly the ATM transaction fee at both ends — so I just try to gauge what I need up front & do one transaction per country to minimize the double-whammies. But I’d still say it’s a serious improvement over the days of having to buy AmEx traveler’s checks ahead of time, or hitting the currency exchange booths on arrival 
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Can you name names, @Maggie8K ? Always love a new tool/option.
I’ve used Expedia, who gives points, but only rarely (and I do mean rarely) did it have a lower price — always in the very last minute when everything in the area was booked solid — and in those cases it was still only by a few dollars. (The hotel clerk told me that “wasn’t supposed to happen” when I mentioned it to her, as well )
Interestingly, just came across this article, somewhat timely to this conversation:
Hopefully the link isn’t paywalled; not sure what USA Today’s model is these days. But if it doesn’t work I’ll see if I can find a free version somewhere & re-post. (Flight in a couple hours.)
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I’m a US customer with Wise funds in $, pesos, € and £. But I’d only use Wise for bank to bank transactions, never for ATM withdrawals. When I need to pay someone outside the US say in Mexico, I transfer pesos in my account to the payee’s bank account without concurrent currency exchanges. It is a useful tool for certain types of currency transfers.
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Just a quick tip, the FIFA football world cup starts on 11th June, in USA, CANADA, and MEXICO.
I booked a flight from Glasgow to Toronto the day before World Cup starts, 10th June for £652, on Sunday morning, and by Monday evening same flight cost £1302.
All the flights to North America, from Europe, will go up after 5th December when the FIFA draw is made, and we see where all 48 countries will be playing.
If you plan to travel around those dates, Act now, save yourself a huge expense.
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Kiwi can be useful for searching, but please don’t ever book via this site. Once they have your money, they are done with you. My husband rocked up for an international flight and there was no record of him. Kiwi cancelled his flight and didn’t tell him, he had to fork out $1500 for a new ticket on the spot, and fight for weeks to get a refund from Kiwi, but only for his original $800 ticket. Read their Ts&Cs and reviews, they are a shoddy company.
@amyk100 agreed, they have a bad reputation (although weve used them quute successfully years ago.). But they do have a handy ‘nomad’ search mode on their drop down (One-Way/return/multicity/nomad) that helps plan multi city trips (not quite the same as multi-city rhough) as a starting point for planning longer trips. I then price the routes on Trip dot com, Skyscanner and direct with airlines before booking the best deals.
We almost always book directly with airlines but stopped using airline websites for searches after we discovered (first and second hand) that a price quoted one minute by an airline often increased if the same search was done soon thereafter. Friends were nailed by this pricing strategy when they were desperately trying to get somewhere for a family emergency. Over the course of a single day, they ended up panic paying nearly double the first quoted price and the prices I was finding with my searches.
That’s the 2nd cheesy pricing behavior by airlines I’d personally encountered up to that point. I’ve recently read that airlines have quoted different prices based on where your IP address says you’re physically located. Now AI will amplify those pricing practices.
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@OnTheRoadAgain Yes. Once ai get close to the route I want, I usually check the mobile site and app. Sometimes a difference. VPN on and change the location to a “cheaper” country AND with budget airlines like Wizz..change the currency. Ive had a 10% or more difference say booking in Hungarian Forints (Valencia to Budapest) and converting back to Aussie dollars than booking in Euro. I guess it depends on how much time and enthusiasm you have to get the best price. I have plenty. Of our 18 flights this year, I ended up booking about 30:70 on Trip dot com and direct…but the majority were super budget airlines like RyanAir, Easyjet, Vietjet and weird ones like Turkmenistan Airlines where its hard to get a better deal than the company site. Most years we have more flighrs on more mainstream companies and the prices (and support) are usually way better on Trip dot com. But we are super flexible with dates, times and routes which is why I typically get awesome deals.
“Aggregator travel platform” ??
@Brightlight can you tell me about your experience with Turkmenistan Airlines? Always looking for interesting routes Australia to Europe and maybe that’s one of them.
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@cathie super cheap and fine. Even split between Asia and Europe (flight time) and layover reasonable. Definitely not 5 star but for 242 USD Milan to HCMC including 40kg luggage (308 USD KL to GTW)…I’m not complaining. I wrote up the full experience in our newsletter and socials if you want to read it. HOWEVER…. I was looking for a.flight for a friend yesterday and couldn’t find any…Not sure if they are still doing the Asian route OR maybe just stopped for winter.
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