Cash Money

Something that I found really irritating when we spent a year in Australia was getting cash out from my UK accounts. It wasn't so bad because we were able to transfer money to Australian accounts that we set up whilst there. There were occasions when we needed cash in more of a hurry and had to take it out of our UK accounts from an ATM. Not only did we have to pay an ATM usage fee, but also a handling fee from the UK bank and a currency conversion fee. This is despite being a customer of HSBC (who market themselves as the world bank) and making the withdrawl at an HSBC ATM. Daylight robbery if you ask me. The total cost of these transactions can dd up if you use the ATM a lot.

I noticed in planning this trip that the Nationwide do an account with no fees (other than those imposed by the bank you are withdrawing from) for foreign withdrawls -so no processing or currency conversion fees, only ATM fees. I can live with that, so I've opened a joint account with them for use while we are away. We'll keep moving chunks of cash in from our savings accounts every month or so and hopefully avoid the fees.