Travel money: how to avoid every fee, every time — Budge

A two-week trip to Japan for two people involves somewhere between 40 and 60 separate financial transactions: meals, transport tickets, museum entries, convenience store purchases, onsen admissions.

A two-week trip to Japan for two people involves somewhere between 40 and 60 separate financial transactions: meals, transport tickets, museum entries, convenience store purchases, onsen admissions. If each of those transactions carries a 2.5% foreign transaction fee — the UK average for standard bank cards — that's a fee on every single one. On a ¥300,000 total spend, that's ¥7,500 (around €50) paid in fees for the privilege of using your own money.

The travel hacks framework covers the money category at a high level. This post goes through every travel money fee in the specific — what it is, what it costs, how to avoid it — and ends with the positive case for a two-card setup that eliminates most of them entirely.

Foreign transaction fees

What it is: A fee charged by your bank or card issuer on any purchase made in a foreign currency. Typically 1.5–3% of the transaction value. Applied automatically, often not clearly displayed at the point of purchase.

What it costs: On a €2,000 trip spend, a 2.5% foreign transaction fee costs €50. Over a year of international travel, this compounds significantly.

How to avoid it: Use a card with no foreign transaction fee. In the UK: Starling Bank debit card (0%), Wise debit card (0% with a small conversion fee at mid-market rate), Monzo debit card (0% on debit spend). In the US: Charles Schwab Bank debit card (0%, also refunds ATM fees worldwide), Capital One Venture credit card (0%). In the EU: Revolut (0% to a monthly limit, then 0.5%). Get one of these before the trip. This is the single most impactful travel money decision.

ATM fees — the two-part problem

What it is: ATM fees have two components that people frequently confuse. The card issuer fee (charged by your bank for each withdrawal) and the ATM operator fee (charged by the ATM's bank). Both can apply simultaneously.

The card issuer fee: standard UK bank cards typically charge £1.50–2 per overseas ATM withdrawal plus the foreign transaction fee percentage. Over 10 withdrawals on a trip, that's £15–20 in flat fees before the percentage is applied. Starling, Monzo, and Wise charge no card issuer ATM fees (to monthly limits).

The ATM operator fee: standalone ATMs in tourist areas — the Euronet machines that populate European airports and city centres, the standalone machines outside SE Asian 7-Elevens — typically charge a flat fee of €3–7 per withdrawal. Bank-affiliated ATMs in actual bank branches usually charge lower or zero operator fees. Use bank ATMs, not standalone tourist-area machines.

Dynamic Currency Conversion at ATMs: when an ATM offers to charge you in your home currency rather than the local currency, decline. Always. This is Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) and it applies a 3–7% markup that goes to the ATM operator's payment processor. The screen is designed to make "your home currency" sound like a service. It's a fee. Select local currency, every time.

How to avoid ATM fees: use a fee-free card (Starling, Wise, Schwab), withdraw from bank-affiliated ATMs rather than standalone machines, and always decline DCC.

Hotel resort fees

What it is: A mandatory daily fee charged by some hotels (primarily in the US, increasingly in Dubai and some Caribbean destinations) that is not included in the quoted room rate. Typically $25–50/night for "resort amenities" that may include a gym, pool, wifi, or simply nothing specific. The fee is disclosed in the booking small print but not in the headline price.

What it costs: A $35/night resort fee on a 7-night hotel stay adds $245 to a booking that appeared to cost $200 less than it was.

How to avoid it or mitigate it: The fee is often mandatory and cannot be avoided on the standard booking. However: ask at check-in whether it can be waived if you're a loyalty programme member, if you're on a specific corporate rate, or simply as a gesture of goodwill if you're paying in cash or have a complaint about the room. Anecdotally, asking politely produces a waiver or partial waiver in roughly 20–30% of cases — it's a discretionary charge and front desk staff have more flexibility than the policy document suggests. If you can't get it waived, expense the wifi separately (often charged within the resort fee) if your employer covers that.

The longer-term solution: use hotel comparison sites that show total price including fees before the booking confirmation page. Google Hotel Search has improved at including fee disclosures; Booking.com and Expedia show them inconsistently. The TripAdvisor forums for specific properties will have recent guests discussing what the actual all-in rate was.

Airport currency exchange

What it is: Currency exchange desks at airports, typically operated by Travelex or similar companies, offering to exchange your home currency to local currency.

What it costs: Airport exchange desk rates typically run 10–15% worse than the mid-market rate. On a £500 exchange, that's £50–75 paid in effective fees.

How to avoid it: Never exchange currency at the airport desk. Take cash out from an ATM on arrival — the ATM rate (via a fee-free card) is the mid-market rate with at most a small conversion fee. If you arrive with no local currency and need cash immediately, take out the minimum you need from the airport ATM and get the rest from a bank-branch ATM in the city.

Credit card foreign transaction fees

What it is: Separate from debit card foreign transaction fees, this is the fee charged when you use a credit card for foreign currency purchases. Standard UK credit cards: 2.99% (the Nationwide and HSBC standard). Standard US credit cards: 1–3%.

What it costs: On a €3,000 trip spend on a credit card with a 2.99% fee: €89.70 in fees.

How to avoid it: Travel credit cards with no foreign transaction fee exist and are worth getting specifically for overseas use. UK options: Halifax Clarity (0%, longstanding standard recommendation), Barclaycard Rewards (0%). US options: Chase Sapphire Preferred (0%), Capital One Venture (0%), Schwab Investor Card (0%). These cards have the additional benefit of purchase protection and occasionally travel insurance that standard debit cards don't provide.

The additional case for using a credit card abroad: purchase protection in case of fraud or dispute. A fraudulent charge on a credit card is the card issuer's problem; a fraudulent debit card charge is harder to recover because the money has already left your account. For larger purchases and hotels, using a credit card is the safer option regardless of the fee structure.

Airline seat selection fees

What it is: Not strictly a money fee, but a travel cost that catches people in the same way. Budget carriers (Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz Air) charge for seat selection, ranging from €4 for basic to €20+ for preferred seats. On a return flight for two people, mandatory seat selection adds €16–80 to the advertised fare.

How to avoid it: Don't pay for seat selection on short-haul flights. Accept that you may be separated and check in immediately when online check-in opens (24–48 hours before departure) to select seats from the free remaining allocation at that point. Most budget carriers release blocked seats at check-in. The middle seats in the last rows are usually free; the aisle and window seats near the front cost money. For a 2-hour flight, being in the back row is a trivial inconvenience.

The two-card setup that eliminates most fees

The practical positive case: two cards, both fee-free, covering 95% of travel money situations.

Card one (daily spending and ATM): Wise or Starling debit card. No foreign transaction fee, no ATM fee to the monthly limit, real-time spending notifications, instant freeze if lost. Load before travel or top up from your bank account.

Card two (big purchases, hotel deposits, backup): Chase Sapphire Preferred, Capital One Venture, or Halifax Clarity credit card with no foreign transaction fee. Use for hotel deposits (better fraud protection), flights booked abroad, and any large purchase. Pay off monthly to avoid interest.

The credit card and travel money points section in the flights guide covers how to earn points on the credit card spend and convert them to flights — the two-card setup is where that flywheel starts.

If you want to go deeper on any part of this, Budge is essentially a travel researcher you can have a conversation with — it's what I built because I was tired of piecing together 12 tabs.

The honest truth about travel money

Fees aren't the biggest travel money problem. The biggest problem is not knowing your daily actual spend until you get home — the slow accumulation of meals, taxis, and miscellaneous purchases that adds up to significantly more than the pre-trip estimate, discovered only when the credit card statement arrives.

Track it in real time. The Revolut and Wise apps both show spending by category as it happens, send push notifications on every transaction, and show your running total against any budget you set. This changes spending behaviour immediately — not because you restrict everything, but because awareness changes how you make decisions in the moment. The €12 café that you'd have bought without thinking becomes a visible line item rather than a rounding error.

The travellers who consistently come home having spent close to what they expected are almost all using a fee-free card with a real-time spend tracker. The ones who are consistently surprised are still using their regular bank card and checking the statement three weeks later.