The Joke Is On Me: ATM Cards

Last time I was an idiot, it was travelers checks that almost did me in. As I grew up and got smarter and more with the times, I stopped carrying traveler's checks and almost exclusively used my ATM card. A lot of countries take credit cards now, but there are still some countries where having cash is a necessary thing and sometime the rate is better through the ATM (unless you get charged ATM fees, but we can talk about how to avoid that in a different post). So I always take an ATM card and a credit card with me when I travel, no matter where I am going. 

Gratuitous Slovenian mountain scene. 

Last year I went to Slovenia. The plan was that I was going to be in a city probably four or five of the fourteen days and would be hiking a point to point hike for the other ten days. This meant that I would not be able to leave things somewhere to pick up; I would have to carry everything I needed for the entire fourteen days on my back. Needless to say, I wanted to pack light. So I carried a lot of items that I could use for both trail and city and I pared down a lot of things, like my toiletries and my wallet, so that I would not be carrying extra stuff. I got rid of my work badge, my extra credit card, my AAA card. I brought bar shampoo. I brought my multi adapter charging station. I was ready and I was excited and I took my pack to work the day before so I could ride my bike to work the next day without the huge pack on my back. I was prepared! 

Then I left the office, got on the BART to the airport, and realized that in paring down my wallet, I had taken out my ATM card. I had only wanted to carry one credit card and I do not think I screwed my head on all the way when I visualized what this meant. I always use a list but this time it was a bit of a hybrid backpacking/city exploring and I did not think about both of them fully. 

You may think that I was headed to Europe, which is not a third world country; why would I even need cash? Well, mon ami, I was going to be backpacking in the remote Alps and there are huts where you can sleep but in my prior experience those huts only took cash. Many of them had no online reservation system, so I could not even reserve them in advance with my credit card. You may think that I could just get out cash with my credit card. That would be true if I knew my pin, which I don't because I have never ever used my credit card to get cash. 

So I sat on the BART as it hurtled towards SFO, wondering how I was going to solve this issue. I did not have time to go home and get the card; I had my emergency $20 with me, but that would not get me far. I knew there were solutions, but what would be the best one, given I was going to be on a plane for twelve hours and then out of the country soon!? I noodled for a minute while sweating slightly due to my own stupidity. 

The solution ended up being the following: luckily (or stupidly, you choose) I had taken a photo of my ATM card, which I kept in a travel folder on the cloud. I would like to say that it was a protected folder, but it wasn't. However, I did use this photo to get the number off of the card, which I then typed into Google wallet. Then, when I got to the airport, I used the tap to pay from Google wallet to get money out of the ATM! Can you believe the technology today? Sometimes when I am wishing that we did not spend so much time on our phones, I think of hacks like this and am so glad that our phones are so dang handy. 

But wait, the story is not to the happily ever after stage yet! I arrived in Amsterdam and went straight to the money exchange counter. A slight side note, I like to cram as much as I can into my vacations, so had booked a flight to Vienna with a layover in Amsterdam. Once arriving in Vienna, I would need to get on the first train out to get to my destination. However, my flight into Vienna was kind of late at night and if I missed the first train, I only had one other option, so I probably would not have time to get money out there. I love to live on the edge, people. 

I work in finance so I know what the exchange rates are and let me tell you, the kiosk at the airport in Amsterdam was NOT a good rate. Of course, what options did I have, given I would be basically going straight up into the mountains as soon as I got to Slovenia. So I got completely ripped off and my dollars barely got me enough to pay for my estimated cost for ten nights at a hut in the mountains. So I knew I was going to have to be frugal. 

Fast forward to day ten of my fourteen day vacation and you will find me at the end of my hike, ensconced in a small guesthouse in the hills near lake Bohinj, one that I booked using Booking.com. Little did I realize, since I booked it from the one spot that had cell service on my way down the mountain, that I did NOT read the fine print and this place...you guessed it...only took cash! Luckily, some of the mountain huts had taken credit cards and I had taken advantage of that to use my card instead, just in case I needed the cash later. However, I had used most of my cash and I literally had to pay the last lady with all of my pocket change, leaving me with about 2 euros to my name. I hoped that when I was in Lublijana I would not need ANY cash or I would be screwed! 

Literally the last of my cash!

Luckily I did not need cash, but this experience made me realize that we have become way too dependent on our phones, upon being able to get things easily at any time and to having the convenience of tap to pay pretty much everywhere in the US (even the street vendors sometimes have a credit card pay option!) As I may have mentioned, my trail name is Prepper because I am generally overprepared, but even I have my moments. So, bottom line is, make a list and always have an emergency stash of cash!! 

Do you use cash when you travel? If so, what is your procedure for getting it? If not, have you ever run into any issues due to not having cash? 

The Joke Is On Me: Traveler's Checks

The first time I traveled abroad, I went equipped with several hundreds of dollars worth of traveler's checks. In case you have no idea what I am talking about, or forgot about these (it has been a while!) they are a check that you pay cash for and when you get them from the bank, you sign them once. Then when you want to exchange money, you give the teller in a foreign country the check, you countersign and date and they give you foreign currency in exchange. If I recall, they were a little safer than cash because they had a serial number so if you lost one or it got stolen, you may have been able to get your money back. I think this is true. 

Anyway, I did not use all of my travelers checks and I came back to the US and put them somewhere safe and then proceeded to move a few times, travel for work, move again and travel more until finally I bought my house and unpacked some boxes that had been sitting in storage for well over a dozen years and guess what I found? Two hundred dollars worth of travelers checks. So I put them in the "paperwork that needs attention eventually" pile and they sat there for about seven more years. I would look at them from time to time and think that I should probably just take them to the bank, but I was not in a rush, since they were issued by my bank where I still bank and hey, they are the equivalent of cash, right? 

Finally I decided to cross some of those long standing tasks off my eight year old to do list (there are still some things on it. I am looking at you, front yard drip system) and I put the checks in my purse with the intention of taking them into the bank as soon as I had the chance. First I tried the bank near my house, which I found out had been closed down about six months ago, which goes to show how often I go to the bank. Then I decided to take the checks to work with me with the intention of taking a lunch break and finally depositing them. You are probably not surprised to hear that they sat in my purse for another week before I finally made my way down to the bank. By the way, do you know how hard it is to find an actual bank that you can walk inside of and talk to a person in San Francisco/Oakland? It is hard. There are tons of ATMs but an actual person is rare! However, I had to take these to an real human, as they had to be countersigned in front of a person in order to be deposited. 

The first time I went down and got in line (where there were no people) I was told by the teller that their systems were down and they could not do any transactions. I felt like maybe someone was plotting against me. I went back the next day and wonder of wonder, the systems were working, the line was short and I was at the teller before you knew it. And then I deposited the checks and walked away whistling Dixie. As Borat would say, this story is NOT true. First of all, the teller had never seen a travelers check. No joke. Never. So she had to get her coworker to come over and explain the process. Then she had me countersign them. 

Then she looked at the two signatures and said that they did not match. I did not disagree with her. One was signed when I was not even legally allowed to drink yet and one was signed....a few...years...or decades....later. My signature is not the same as it was. I used to perfectly swoop every letter and write in perfect cursive; now my signature looks like I am a harried MD with a hot date. So she brought the coworker over again and the coworker said that they could not take the checks. I asked if they could look up the serial number and then verify it against my ID and she said that they do not keep records that long. She finally said that she would check my signature on file and would compare that. Unfortunately, the signature on file (from when I opened my account, which was opened before I could legally vote, or maybe even before I could drive) also did not match. 

She went into this big spiel about how she is doing this for my protection and I was thinking in my head, "lady, I work in finance; you are using MY LINE!" and I made affirmations about how I totally and completely understand, I work in the same industry, I have to tell people the same thing all of the time etc. We finally got around to a point where she said that she would attempt to deposit them if I crossed off and initialed the co-signature I had just done and then signed again but tried to copy the original one, BUT she was not making any guarantees that it would go through, she said. I thanked her profusely, signed again and left the building. 

I know that $200 is not chump change, and I know that I was an idiot and I should not have waited so long to deposit the checks and I know that now I need to go into the bank to sign a new signature card because my signature has changed a lot from the time I was 14. I also really had no expectations that they would get successfully deposited. However, imagine my surprise and glee when the next day I saw that I was $200 richer! 

Verdict: Don't be an idiot. Deposit your checks on time. BUT if you happen to be an idiot, but things end up working out in the end anyway, enjoy the small victories, because they are awfully sweet. 

Have you ever done something silly like this? If so, what was the outcome? Did you end up being successful in the end?