Retirement Travel School: How to Manage Your MONEY when You Travel Abroad

we get lots of questions about how we manage our money while traveling now you might not think much about this topic when you're going on a short trip of just a week or two but when you travel for a month or more you need to be prepared to handle issues that come up now if you're like most retirees or travel you have a nest egg that needs to be protected you have taxes that need to be filed and money that needs to be moved around occasionally and unfortunately bills that need to be paid now you will want to also convert cash into different currencies respond to credit card fraud alerts and react if your credit card ever gets stolen so whether you're traveling full-time or part-time retired or just dreaming of retirement we want you to be as prepared as possible for the unexpected issues that can arise while we have a great time every day we have to be alert to Money Matters So today we're going to tell you how we manage our money while we travel so let's go we're John and Beth and we are the retirement Travelers if you've just found us we are a senior travel couple who are traveling the world full-time in retirement now we've been working on a series of videos called travel school where we share our experiences on World Travel and help you become a better traveler you can find all of them on our website retirement travelers.com this is the sixth video in the series if you're wondering where we are as we travel you can always find us on Instagram we keep it updated to our current location we're now in the amazingly beautiful country of Shir Lanka and we'll be heading to Africa next the first thing you need to do if you're traveling abroad is to have a VPN now this is a virtual private Network and what this does is it allows your VPN provider to encrypt your internet traffic and disguise your online identity it makes it more difficult for third parties to steal your data or track your activities online you know this encryption takes place in real time we use expressvpn a highly rated company we downloaded it to our phones and computers and are able to set our location for a city in the US we have an affiliate Link in our description and you can click on it to see what we use now many banks won't allow us to log into our accounts if they detect that we're out of the country so this VPN essentially tricks them and they believe that we are back in the United States with a VPN we're able to work through all the two-factor authorizations now we rarely watch TV but it does allow us to log into internet streaming services if we want to watch one of our favorite shows or movie this was really important when I wanted to watch the Super Bowl at like 5:30 in the morning a few Sundays ago we know that this is the first step in banking abroad our bank will block us if we don't have it turned on now once we turn it on we're back in business you might ask why don't you just keep it on all the time well sometimes we encounter a hotel or an airport Wi-Fi that won't allow us to upload a file if we have it on so we turn it off now it's not always perfect for file management but overall we need it for banking now you should know that there are 18 countries that forbid VPN or or highly regulate their use so check out this chart now some of these places you're pretty unlikely to go on vacation but it kind of speaks for itself you know we currently do not have North Korea on our bucket list no this one goes without saying but you should know your pen numbers for your debit card and all of your credit cards it's easy to remember your pen if you use your debit card often but if you never withdraw money using a credit card you might not even remember it and while we're on the subject of debit and credit cards never use a credit card to withdraw cash from an ATM unless you are able to pay off the entire balance that month if you withdraw cash your credit card company will consider it a cash advance and will go back to everything you have charged on the card and apply a higher rate to it only use your credit card at an ATM and an absolute emergency Our advice is to carry a debit card for all cash withdrawals at an ATM now we use a Capital One checking account because our account doesn't charge foreign transaction fees this is a cash account and we keep a the balance low to minimize liability if it is stolen now we transfer money into it as needed when we withdraw money from an ATM the local ATM sets the conversion rate so that's why we care about which ATM we choose when we purchase in a store or a restaurant we always select the local currency because our credit card company sets the conversion rate you know the waiter or the store clerk will ask you if you want to pay in local currency or US dollar now the problem is many people are confused with this situation you know what you want to do is always select the local currency our credit card sets the conversion rate and we don't leave it up to the store or restaurant you know selecting a home currency like the US dollar is allowing the store or restaurant Resturant to convert the money and exchange rate is very unfavorable to you you know they don't have to tell you what the rate is so you can be assured it's not in your favor you know we think this is a trick and and we think it's kind of a scam another issue you should know about when you travel is that there are two types of ATMs one is hoping to attract The Tourist and the other one is for locals airport ATMs are notorious for having bad conversion rates as are the low at TMS located in tourist hotspots now once you start looking for these you'll be able to spot them quickly they are never attached to a bank and they often just appear out of nowhere we've seen some that stand alone on the sidewalk and some that are inserted into a wall we never stop at these now as a side note we use Uber instead of paying cash for a taxi because it helps us avoid the a airport ATM with the bad conversion rate be sure you know before you land if they have Uber or another ride share what we look for is an ATM attached to a bank and we look for one that we see locals using you know if you can withdraw during business hours you'll have a better chance of having someone there that can help you if you have a problem or you get your card stuck you know we've withdrawn cash at the counter too but we usually are able to find an ATM one more thing about currency if you're going on a trip like to Europe you can go to your local bank and ask them to order you some Euros or other currency so you'll have cash when you land when we live near Palm Beach in Florida the currency exchange at the airport told us that they could order money for us in any currency and they would give us a better rate than what was posted now we never did this but we thought it was interesting we never considered the rate negotiable one of the best things you can do when you travel is set up Apple pay or Google pay on your phone phone before you leave now add your credit cards and debit cards but designate which one you want to be the primary card now last year we received some charges on our card that we didn't make we contacted our credit card company and they had to deactivate our card we were abroad without the one we wanted to use they told us no problem we'll send your card to your daughter and we'll update your Apple pay right now they did it and boom we were back in business our daughter received the card and told us the entire number and the security code so that we could make purchases online we simply used Apple pay instead of our credit card we traveled to 15 countries without a credit card before coming back to the US to only be shocked that we couldn't use Apple pay at Walmart we had no problem in Europe or Australia using our Apple pay when we got to India this year we've needed the card but usually our habit is to pay with our phone and not pull out our wallet and and that's another thing we don't even have to hide our phone because everyone has one and they just walk around with them in their hands we have a currency app on our phone and it's called currency we look up the uh rate before we arrive and then we watch for the rates at the airport you know as you walk through the airport we want to know what the high and the low is sometimes when you're dealing with a currency that uses a lot of zero it can be very difficult to know the price of something on the spot John's the math whz but still he has to double check his math from time to time and he likes the app yeah I don't know how wizzy I always feel but I would like to add always ask for some small bills when you get cash you will need these for snacks and tips you know many of the small vendors don't keep much small change one of the most important things we did before leaving home was to minimize our paper statements from the bank and from investment accounts we went paperless on everything we could it goes without saying get familiar with your online banking platform and if you have any problems work it out before you leave home we've been doing online banking for about 25 years now this is the only way we have to send a check we do not carry a checkbook with us and have never needed one occasionally we sent money to someone on venmo and we also set up our PayPal and Western Union our bank and all of our credit cards are supported on Quicken so we use this software to keep our accounting now we have an accountant back home who does our taxes and we have set up a signature on our computers that we can sign our tax returns you know it has never been difficult for us to handle banking credit cards or taxes because we prepared ahead of time we should probably add that we'll have another class on travel credit cards in the next few weeks weeks learning about points and how to best select a card is a video all its own so stay tuned for that one of the important things that pertains to our finances is our mailing service we still need a physical address so that the IRS can you know send us some love notes every now and then you know as you know we don't have a home so we use a mail service called myrvmail domcom this was a service that we Ed during our RV days and we really like it you know we'll leave a link below so that you can check them out it's located in Florida so we didn't have to change our residency but a lot of people who live in high tax states that don't have a home like to register in states with no income tax a lot of rvers use South Dakota tennessy or one of the many other tax-free States the way this works is that you set up an account with them and they give you a mailbox your mail goes to them and they send you an email with a picture of the piece of mail you know you can have them hold it uh open and scan it you can they can forward it or even shred it so they can also deposit checks for you we have our important mail forwarded to our daughter who's an attorney and she helps us when we need some help you know we could also forward an item to our accountant it's really wonderful to have a person back home that you can trust and make decisions for you in your absence we set up a power of attorney for this reason but we mostly just needed someone to help us with minor issues some people are leery about using a mail service because they've heard that the IRS or Banks won't accept a mail service as a is a legal address our suggestion is to just call myrvmail decom and speak to them directly you know American Express was the only company that questioned us we told them that our address was for our business and they accepted it you know we do not anticipate having any other issues going forward with the IRS or banking for us and for many of you you have a retirement nest egg that requires protecting we spent a good amount of time planning for retirement and we completed our estate planning before leaving home we can't imagine trying to DIY our investments as we travel first we're often 10 to 12 hours away from the Eastern Time Zone where the US Stock Market is based we would be completely unable to respond to a market correction or worse a market crash from afar now we work to too hard to save our money over the years to not take the best care of it for us the only answer was to find a financial advisor that we trusted and we found that with URS advisory now Julia and Eric are like kids to us you know we love them dearly and they are completely devoted they will schedule a video call if we're unable to come in for a conference or review and they have jumped through hoops to help us with other matters you know there's very little we could do to manage our own own funds from afar and we rest easy knowing that we've agreed to a plan and they are seeing it through they have also set up a Secure Vault which is a virtual Cloud to back up all of our important documents you know we can see this no matter where we are in the world if you're looking for someone to help you with money reach out to them we'll leave a link below on a side note Julia has recently started her own YouTube channel called retire with Julia to share her knowledge and passion for helping people achieve their retirement goals check out her Channel she's going to be a YouTube star in no time she's already a star to us so this is how we manage our money on the road if you found value in this video please hit the like button our video on how to find cheap business class tickets is up next so stay tuned for that we'll see you next time be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on our retirement Journey around the world

Channel: Retirement Travelers

Views: 31,454

Keywords: online banking vs traditional banking, world travel, retirement travel, retirement travelers, money tips, money saving tips, how to manage money, protecting your nest egg, travel abroad, how to manage money for travel, money and travel, how to bank while traveling, dealing with money when you travel, travel and money 2024, money tips and tricks when traveling, banking and money abroad, dealing with money abroad, retirement, retirement travel school

Id: hOa72Wfhy7Y

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2024