I don’t really carry cash. When I’m at home, I try to put all of my purchases on credit cards so I can earn more points and miles to help fund my travels. When I am traveling, in many cases, I can apply the same strategies to earn points abroad, mainly by making sure that I am using a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees. Sometimes, however, cash is king. Usually while traveling I carry some small amount of cash on me that I can have exchanged into local currency, and if I need more I bite the bullet and pay the ATM fee to withdraw money from my checking account.
Thanks to my friend The Flying Consultant, I now have a better solution.
Charles Schwab Bank has a High Yield Investor Checking Account with a $0 minimum, and a $0 monthly service fee, that provides unlimited fee rebates from any ATM worldwide! You must also open a linked Schwab One Brokerage Account, but this account also has no fees and no minimums.
You will receive an ATM card in the mail after you have deposited any amount of money into your account. I wanted to link this checking account with my primary one, and that is the most annoying part of the whole process… It can’t be done online. You have to fill out a few things on a form and mail it in to them. But with the payout of no more ATM fees, especially abroad, it is a small annoyance that is more than worth it to me!
A Word of Caution: If you are using MoneyLink to transfer money, be careful of the 3 business day hold on your funds, especially around national holidays! You don’t want to end up in Beijing with very little money like I did.
Nice, but you should also check the banks in your area. In Maine Bangor Savings Bank offers unlimited free ATM fee rebates world-wide also. In fact on foreign ATM withdrawals where the fee is not always disclosed they will rebate up to $3 per transaction.
Definitely a good idea to check into local banks as well. I’m planning on moving in the next few months so a national chain is a better option for me at this time (and it’s impossible to cover local chains all over the country in one post!)
USAA is a very strong national bank that offers free ATM use and ATM fee rebates. You don’t have to have a military relationship to have a bank account with them. Excellent mobile app that lets you do just about everything.
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Fidelity is also fee free AT MS worldwide, been using them for 10+years and regardless the amount of three at fee, it’s refunded.
Good to know Kerri!