Money Matters

My wife, Glenda, and I traveled in Central Europe for a month in fall 2005 and used two credit cards for purchases and services (an American Express card and a Citibank MasterCard) and one debit card for ATM cash withdrawals (a Visa card obtained from our credit union). After returning home, we compared the exchange rates we obtained when we used two cards on the same day. We did not use all three cards on the same day so don’t have a valid 3-way comparison.

I agree in general with many of the readers’ “Money Matters” comments in the December ’05 and January ’06 (pg. 92) issues.

For several years my wife, Paula, and I have used the same airline-affiliated Visa cards without incident, traveling to Malaysia, Chile, Slovakia, etc. Recently, the airline began transitioning to a MasterCard issued by a different bank than the Visa issuer. During the application process for the new MasterCard, I told a representative of the bank’s credit card operation that we would soon leave for Spain and that we intended to use our new credit cards there.

STEVE, in your January ‘06 column you listed a number of airlines “that have not lost a single passenger since they were founded.” Just wondering if Aloha Airlines doesn’t consider flight attendants to be passengers. I recall the loss of one Aloha Airlines flight attendant, in flight, when the airframe came open about seven years ago. — Greg Lucas, Vancouver, WA

Protecting your money while traveling abroad has gotten more complicated over the years, but not for me.

Trimming waist and cost

If you are traveling to Russia, here are some things I learned during my trip in October ’04.

Here are a few tips from our travels in late April-May ’05. We spent seven days in Budapest, three in Kraków, seven in Praha and five in Berlin.

Having traveled abroad over 33 times in the past 13 years, I heartily concurred and empathized with the preponderance of opinions expressed in the October ’05 issue regarding money.

(Second of two parts)

In the last issue I analyzed the ins and outs of bill paying abroad. In this issue, I offer additional suggestions on this topic.

Debit card checklist