exchanging currency

[dougo]

Well, I'm back. More trip details to follow, but first I want to follow up on my tweet from Heathrow yesterday. I asked whether it was better to exchange my pound notes for dollars at Heathrow Airport in London, Logan Airport in Boston, or my local bank at home (Bank of America). The most common advice I got was to keep them for the next time I go back to the UK, but I have no plans to be back anytime soon, and pound notes do expire. Also, my uncle went kind of overboard buying pound notes, and gave me all his leftovers, so it was a not-inconsiderable amount of money to be sitting on indefinitely. So, I ended up checking the exchange rate on the Bank of America website, which was $1.48 per pound, while the Bureau de Change kiosk at Heathrow was showing a $1.42 rate, so I decided to wait until I got home. I went today, and got $1.47 (actually $1.474305), but that included the exchange fees, which may not have been included in the airport rate. Anyway, my conclusion for money-changing is: avoid exchange bureaus, and go straight to a bank. (They also deposit the money directly into your account, which may contribute to the better rate, but is also more convenient than having to make a separate transaction to deposit the cash.)

Comments

[nosrednayduj]

My theory on money changing is that it's part of "bleed the tourists white", just pay the fee.

[wrog]

yep. Bureau de Change est Le Suck. Always use a bank and/or charge as much as you possibly can on the credit cards. My usual advice 20 years ago was to use a bank, preferably a non-American bank because American banks tended to be less clueful about foreign exchange stuff (or at least American banks in the US were). I retained my Barclay's (UK) checking account that I had as a student for the longest time precisely for this reason -- whenever I knew I was going to be traveling to England, I'd guess at how much cash-on-hand I'd be needing, mail my branch in Cambridge a US check for that amount and have them convert and deposit it. It would take several weeks to clear, but the process itself didn't cost anything. Then upon landing at Heathrow/wherever, I'd just show up at a Barclay's branch and withdraw the corresponding pounds.

Admittedly, the last time I tried this (my honeymoon, 1997) they happily converted the check and then proceded to charge me an extra insane foreign-check clearing fee (it was something like £20-30) -- evidently Barclay's must have decided that the prior procedure was entirely too convenient and changed things, at which point the sterling checking account became decidedly less useful and I finally let it lapse.

[lordjulius.livejournal.com]

As a rule of thumb, anything that provides a service conveniently (money exchanges in airports, gas stations at highway offramps, on-call strippers) charge more, so, yeah. Good choice.