Currency Values

Goodbye, MBNA. Hello, Providian. If you use a credit card in a foreign country, you may find yourself saying something like that. Two years ago, this column examined the increasing propensity of credit card-issuing banks to tack on a 1% to 2% fee for...

DURING the early days of international bicycle touring, cyclists would hide coins and valuables in the tubing of their bicycle frames to evade robbers. On a 1,300-mile bike tour of Spain and Portugal last year, Steven Sweedler of Plymouth, N.H., found it...

Geane Dvorak of Ventura frequently travels internationally on business, visits family in Brazil and has a daughter at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, so she often has to change U.S. dollars into the local currency. "You would think, with all...

The main reason people save and invest is that there is something they want that they can't afford today--a new car, a new house or a comfortable retirement, for example. The faster your money grows, the sooner and more effectively you can reach the...

Just off the plane in a strange country, weary and bleary after a long flight, you'll almost immediately encounter a money-changing booth where signs list the buy and sell rates for dozens of currencies. Your jet-lagged state could be bad for your budget:...

Travelers contemplating a trip abroad probably know the bad news about the weakness of the U.S. dollar against many foreign currencies. The British pound, for which Americans paid $1.40 in 2002, now costs about $1.85, and the euro, which was even with the...

WITH the dollar slipping and sliding against the euro and lingering economic malaise, travelers have one eye on their guidebooks, the other on their pocketbooks. As someone who has stashed take-out food in the hotel mini-bar, I can say there are painless...

Pat Booth, a Winter Springs, Fla., travel agent and seasoned traveler, has seen it often: A flustered American tourist in Europe unfolds a fistful of strange bills and lets a cabdriver dig in and take what's owed. Lucky cabby! More often than not,...