How to spend money in Canada
My wife and I will be in Canada for 7 days. This will be the middle part of a longer trip. We are wondering what the best way to handle finances would be. We would like to have cash on hand for inc...
Forum Discussion
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.
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.
OK, but don't you still pay an ATM fee since it isn't "your" bank?
Our preferred method is to use a BMO US dollar MasterCard which has no fee if your purchases are over $1000 US per year. Otherwise, the fee is $35 per year. This way, we carry a minimum amount of US currency but are still able to buy what we need. When it's time to pay the bill from MasterCard, we transfer some money from our Tangerine (ING) US dollar savings account to a BMO US dollar chequing account which is linked to the BMO MasterCard. (Sounds complicated but it's really quite easy).
The OP asked about how they would do the reverse while traveling in Canada. Maybe there are US financial institutions that enable an American to have a Canadian dollar credit card???
