How to spend money in Canada

We used credit card. Monetary exchanges are all taken care of. We used very little cash. When you come back home exchange your Canadian money near or at the border. We found it to be difficult at home.

Mike

RZAR66 wrote:
.....What is the best approach? We bank with a small local credit union (not even state wide), that may make a difference.

Call your Credit union. They(you) might be apart of the "credit union" Co-Op or whatever they call it. As in other credit union and use your ATM and you can use others. Maybe works north of border. http://co-opatm.org/

Call credit card company. Tell them. We were cut off, credit card company thought it was fraud going on with charges where we didn't charge before. We were in Karcher Caverns in AZ and no cell service and was purchase declined. Had to travel back to cell service and wife spent about 20 min on phone verifying every purchase last 5 days.

All would of been OK if we called first.

We found everyone took dollars one for one when we came up through Canada in May. Check the exchange rate and what you will loose on the one for one exchange might equal what you will pay in ATM, bank fees, etc.
Also, call your credit card companies before you get there to advise of your itinerary and to find out which ones do not charge a fee for usage in Canada. Some charge 3% and others don't charge anything.
Have a good trip!

mike-uswest wrote:
We used credit card. Monetary exchanges are all taken care of. We used very little cash. When you come back home exchange your Canadian money near or at the border. We found it to be difficult at home.

Mike

x2

Yup......Credit Cards

I found when travelling to the US, my debit card wouldnt work in stores, but I could go to a bank and get cash out of my account (fees of course)

mike-uswest wrote:

We used credit card. Monetary exchanges are all taken care of. We used very little cash. When you come back home exchange your Canadian money near or at the border. We found it to be difficult at home.
Mike

X3

Here's what I do when I travel to the USA:
I overpay my credit card bill. Let's say I pay 2000$ for a 1000$. Now I have 1000$ I can withdraw from ATMs without paying a cent in interest.
There are still some small shops that only take cash but 99.9% take credit cards. You will be fine with just VISA or master card. AMEX will not help you much outside of tourist areas.

Fastfwd75 wrote:
Here's what I do when I travel to the USA:
I overpay my credit card bill. Let's say I pay 2000$ for a 1000$. Now I have 1000$ I can withdraw from ATMs without paying a cent in interest.
..... .

Yeah, several of my Canadian buddies in South Carolina do exactly that.

rag-ftw wrote:
We found everyone took dollars one for one when we came up through Canada in May. Check the exchange rate and what you will loose on the one for one exchange might equal what you will pay in ATM, bank fees, etc.

The C$ is sitting around 91 cents US, and probably will stay at that level, so a one-for-one exchange is costing you almost 10%. That's OK for small purchases but using an ATM or CC and eating the $5.00 or so fee per transaction is still a better bet for larger purchases.

Is a 5$ fee per transaction typical for US credit cards? I don't pay any fees on my side and I get 2% cash back. ATM card on the other hand has fees for every transaction in a bank different from my own.