Travel money guides
Short, practical, and free of the affiliate links that shape most writing on this subject. Several of them tell you not to buy our app.
If you read one, read the one about card fees. A typical card adds around 3% to everything you buy abroad, which over a single trip outweighs the cost of every travel app you will ever buy.
Getting a fair rate
Always pay in the local currency
The card terminal offers to charge you in your own currency. Saying yes typically costs 3–7%.
How to stop paying 3% on everything
The three separate charges on a foreign purchase, and how to get rid of two of them before you fly.
The rate in your app is not the rate you get
What the mid-market rate means, where the difference goes, and how to read a bureau's board.
The most expensive place to change money
Why airport rates are what they are, and why "0% commission" is not the good news it looks like.
Getting cash out abroad
Three charges can apply to one withdrawal. Two of them are avoidable.
Cash, cards and what to carry
Cash or card?
Mostly card, never zero cash — and the ratio depends entirely on where you are going.
How much cash to actually bring
Enough for a day, plus a reserve. When to bring considerably more, and the declaration limits.
Money you cannot take home
Some currencies cannot legally leave the country. The reason to withdraw less on your last day.
The notes at the bottom of the bag
Six options, ranked by how much value you actually get back.
Not being overcharged
Tourist prices, and when to push back
A rough scale from "normal premium" to "not a price, a test", and how to tell where you are on it.
Haggling without being rude about it
The skill is knowing when it applies at all. Get that wrong in either direction and it goes badly.
The handful worth recognising
Short-changing, the note swap, the friendly street rate. All of them rely on you being rushed.
The zero problem
Where lunch costs six figures, the arithmetic is easy and the digits are the danger.
Converting, with or without a phone
How to convert currency in your head
A five-minute method for any currency: round the rate, learn which way it lies to you, anchor on three real prices.
Converting with no internet
What to set up before you fly so landing without a connection is uneventful.
Apps that work when the data does not
Maps, translation, documents and conversion — plus the ten-second test that tells you if an app is genuinely offline.
The rates you only learn once
Most conversion rules rot. Pegged currencies do not, which makes them worth memorising properly.
Budgeting and longer stays
A daily budget that actually holds
Build it from five lines, and account for the three things that break every travel budget.
The first hour, in order
Most of the money lost on a trip is lost in the first ninety minutes, by tired people.
When the trip becomes a stay
Different problems from a holiday: compounding fees, currency exposure, local accounts, insurance that quietly expired.
Currency cheat sheets
One rule per currency, its error band, and the point at which it stops being the right rule.
If there is something you keep having to look up while travelling, tell us at hello@roamrate.app and we will write it.