Using Foreign Currency when Traveling Abroad

"Hi! I’m Stephanie Phillips with expertvillage.com we’re going to talk about currency. Yes you know about the U.S. dollar, you know about the penny, the nickel, the dime but what is a euro? If you haven’t traveled to Europe it use to be about 10 years ago you had drachmas in Greece, you had lira in Italy, you had francs in Belgium and France, right now you have the euro, what’s it worth? Well the exchange rate can change at anytime but predominately you’re talking about for one euro, now it’s about 1.28 U.S. dollars, my gosh how do you keep that straight? You’ve got the currency, you have to buy it, you have to use it, you want to get something really essential, now what do you do? How much are you giving them? I’ve actually seeing people take money out of their wallet and put it in their hand and say, “take what you need”, believe me that’s not the way to do it. One way you can do is carry your own calculator, it’s a little handheld, it’ll fold over, go into your purse, go into your pocket for that matter, you can keep track that long. Another way is if you’re really good at math try and divide equally, for instance let’s say the euro is one euro for 1.28 U.S. dollars trying to calculate that in head can be difficult, take it up the next nearest way you can calculate, make it a dollar and a half if you think that you can afford to pay for that item by dividing it by a dollar and a half, for instance oh okay I can afford $25 by dividing by a dollar and a half which you’ll find out is you’re actually paying a little less, you gave yourself some gravy but the bargain was worth it because you took it up to the next amount that you need it. Make it simple on yourself please do not take money in your hand and ask somebody to take as much as they want, it is really a recipe for disaster, learn a little bit about the currency you’re going to, make sure that you have it, have a little bit before you go just enough to get yourself over the next couple of days that’ll work well. In internationally they have currency exchanges in banks, hotels, everywhere it would be easy to exchange money, know what you’re dealing with, make sure you protect yourself."