Name: 10 Travel MONEY MISTAKES Everyone Makes & How to Avoid Them! 💸💰😳 Essential Hacks and Travel Tips ✈️🌎
Uploaded: 2025-10-08T18:36:13.000Z
Duration: 11 min 44 s
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Present continuous

Today I'm going to be sharing 10 common travel money mistakes and how to avoid them.

In case you're new here, my name is Audrey.

I've been traveling for almost two decades, and

I've made a lot of money travel mistakes along the way, some of them quite embarrassing.

So today I'm going to be sharing those with you so you don't make the same mistakes.

And I'm going to be providing solutions and workarounds for each of them.

So mistake number one is relying solely on one payment method.

So I remember a trip where I went to Portugal and I only took one debit card and one credit card, and

that's how I was planning to get by during the course of that trip.

Now, on day two of my trip, so right at the beginning, my credit card got blocked.

So that only left me with one debit card, which was a super stressful situation because then I was thinking the whole time, why, what happens if my debit card also gets blocked?

I have no way of taking out money now because this was over a decade ago.

I was able to get my sister to call the bank, pretend to be me.

This was way before voice recognition and all that technology.

So I was able to get my Visa card working again.

Now I travel with multiple means of accessing money.

I tend to have cash, debit card, and multiple credit cards just in case.

Mistake number two is exchanging money at the airport.

Now, I realize that when you first land in a new destination, you're probably not going to have any of the local currency.

So what I tend to do is just withdraw money from an ATM or exchange money, but

just enough for like the first couple of days to grab a taxi into the city, pay for my first meal there.

So it's always better to use a local ATM to take money out.

You can also find a currency house and exchange money.

Once you're in the city, the rates are going to be way better than what you're going to get at the airport.

So mistake number three is carrying an excessive amount of cash, because if you lose your wallet or it gets stolen, you're going to be losing a lot of money.

And unfortunately, I do have a story for this one as well.

So a few years ago, we were traveling with family in Greece, and

They had withdrawn something like 3 or €400, and it was a lot of money.

Because the idea was this money is going to last me for my entire stay.

Now, unfortunately, right after going to the atm, we got on the subway and this person's wallet got stolen and all the money with it was lost.

So that's another reason not to carry a lot of cash on you.

Mistake number four is not having any emergency cash.

Now, I know it's going to sound like I'm contradicting myself because I just you told told you don't carry a lot of money on you, but

I think it's important that you keep a little stash of hidden cash just in case of an emergency, just in case, you know, your wallet gets stolen and you lose your credit cards, your debit cards.

It's good to have some cash that you can resort to until you're able to resolve the situation and get new cards sent to you.

Mistake number five is not getting travel insurance.

Now, I know, I know travel insurance sounds super boring.

The chances of anything happening are so, so minimal.

I have ended up in hospitals or clinics a handful of times over the years while I've been traveling.

Now, thankfully, it was in countries where the cost of medical attention was super affordable, so it wasn't a big deal.

But then I always think, what if this happens to me in a country where medical attention is not so accessible, like, say, the United States?

So my rule is that I always get travel insurance.

It doesn't matter if I'm traveling to the US To Germany, to Thailand.

I always have travel insurance just in case.

If you want to bring the cost of your insurance down, you can have a higher deductible, but

just have it just in case because you never know what can happen.

Mistake number six, getting caught with your phone on roaming and accruing really high charges while you're away on your trip.

Now, I'm Canadian and our phone plans here, for some reason are super, super expensive.

Maybe it's because there's not a lot of competition, so a few companies have a bit of a monopoly.

But I do have another story for this one.

So this didn't happen to me, but it happened to a friend of mine.

So a few years ago, she traveled to Europe for a week and didn't realize that her phone was on roaming the whole time she was abroad.

So then once she got back home, she ended up getting a bill for over 800 Canadian dollars, and

that's just an exorbitant amount for a week away.

So she ended up calling the phone company and she was able to talk them down on the charges that she had accrued.

What if they were like, no, sorry, your phone was roaming, you used our data.

the way to avoid the mistake is to just buy a local SIM card.

Or nowadays you can just buy an E sim, which is so much easier.

You just download an app, we usually use Saily, and

you can buy data for almost any country in the world, and the prices are quite affordable.

And then you don't have to worry about these crazy roaming charges.

Mistake number seven is opting for dynamic currency conversion when you are paying for something with your credit card or your debit card overseas.

So you may have noticed that sometimes when they hand you the payment terminal, it'll ask you, do you want to pay in your home currency or do you want to pay in the local currency?

if you select your home currency, in my case Canadian dollars, you are getting a horrible exchange rate and your bank is just making money.

So you always want to select that you want to pay in the local currency.

Sam taught me just a few years ago when he saw me making a payment and selecting the wrong option.

Always select local currency, not your home currency, because you'll be getting a bad deal.

Mistake number eight, forgetting your debit card at an ATM machine.

I was traveling in Patagonia a few years ago in a little remote town in Argentina, and

So I went to the ATM machine, put in my card, took out the cash and grabbed my money and just walked away from the machine and left my debit card in there.

Because the thing is, when you do a cash withdrawal in Canada, you always get your card first and then your cash second.

So you're less likely to forget the cash because that's what you came for, that's what you're waiting for.

However, in Argentina and in many other countries around the world, they give you the cash first and, and

And sometimes there's a bit of a lapse, there's a bit of a delay before they ask you, like, are you done with your transaction?