International Travel: ATM Fees

The first time I ever flew to Orlando was not to go to Disneyland.  I was on assignment to do some work at the Kennedy Space Center on the coast.  Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think; Orlando is not on the Florida coast, rather, it’s about 50 miles from Cocoa Beach.  To make the drive from Orlando to my hotel near KSC, I had to travel via several toll roads.  At the first toll booth, they charged me fifteen cents.  No kidding!  I had to stop, roll down my window, give the toll person a dime and a nickel, and they gave me a receipt.  I promptly threw the receipt away, thinking that it wouldn’t be worth the time to do the paperwork to get it back through an expense report.  Well… by the end of the week, I must have passed through 20 similar booths.  They all charged anywhere from fifteen to fifty cents and had I been keeping all of those receipts, the stack of them might have totaled $7 or more.  That’s certainly not a king’s ransom, but it is worth adding as a line item to an expense report.

Those little charges had a way of adding up.  Consider the charges at an ATM machine.  Two or three dollars per transaction doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you get your statement at the end of the month and you see that you spent $20 for the privilege of using an automated teller, it does seem a bit high.  Now, consider the same fees overseas.  The ATM may charge you a fee (like the two dollar service fee) from the local bank, but when you get home you’ll find more fees from your domestic bank here.  One connection fee for giving you the privilege of having a bank that can connect to a foreign bank’s accounting system, and another percentage fee that is charged to you for the bank’s computer so it can convert the currency to U.S. dollars.  When it’s all said and done, you can easily spend $5 to $7 pulling money out of your account.  Similar fees apply to getting cash advances out of a credit card account.

Actually, I don’t mind paying the fees if my company allows me to expense them.  There’s the rub; some companies allow it, some don’t.  I can see the argument for both sides.  It’s certainly safer to not carry a bunch of cash around with you, but then going to the ATM to make a lot of withdrawals can be unnecessarily expensive.

One last point, ATMs in foreign countries don’t always have English translation on the buttons or on the touch-screen.  Imagine, instead of withdrawing one hundred Euros, you transfer all of your money to some useless account or something, just because you don’t understand the buttons!  

Personally, I work out the budget ahead of time; before I ever leave my home city.  When I have a solid feeling about how much cash I’ll need, I’ll add 15% for “unforeseen circumstances” and I’ll head to the bank to get that cash converted to local currency traveler’s checks.  I’ve used traveler’s checks in British Pounds, Euros, and Yen.  I never have a problem cashing them (in hotels, etc) and they can be easily replaced from local banks if they’re ever stolen.  When I get home, I can run the extra checks back to the bank and they exchange them for cash and credit it to my account.  In any case, be sure to keep all of the receipts.  You may have to correct some mistakes or get some credit from the bank after it’s all said and done.