Accessing money when travelling - 'Smart Wallets' - Monzo vs Revolut
Money is always a knotty problem when one is travelling and is completely contextual to where you go and for how long. Bryony and I, as you might have gathered, are going for rather a long time and so we needed to figure out some way to access a large amount of money (relatively) without looking like Saudi princes. Partly, this is for practicality but mostly for safety, no further explanation needed. So we looked around. Most banks will allow international withdrawals, but make sure you tell them first or your account may be blocked! The issue with using ones normal current account is that there are fees associated with foreign atm withdrawals and card use. The fees and exchange rates are dependent on the bank, but generally they are quite steep. Anyone who has used an atm with a £1.99 charge will know, no one wants to pay to access their own money. For the previous generation the obvious choice has been travelers cheques. These are prepaid fixed amounts of money that will not boun...