Should You Change Cash Or Sign To Credit Card During Holidays?

Hi Friends,

Should you change cash or sign to credit card during holidays?

Hong kong cash

This is what I did for the Hong Kong trip.

Before the tour, I plan out the itinerary and estimate the cost. For admission tickets to sightseeing locations, they can usually be paid by credit card.

However, for food and local transport purchases, I will assume that they are settled in cash.

With the estimated travel budget, I estimated the cash I required to have to cater for food, transport and local night market shopping. Can’t expect them to accept credit card!

I did not want to bring so much cash because

1) If I sign purchases to my CitiPremier Miles, I can accumulate air miles for redemption of air tickets

2) Too much cash can be dangerous due to theft. But this problem may be remote in Hong Kong. So far security in Hong Kong is good.

3) I will be disadvantaged if I overestimated that cash I need and will need to exchange the excess HKD into SGD again.

The money exchange stall quoted me every HKD6.06 to get back HKD1.

4) Credit card companies need not necessary give a worse off exchange rate.

My favorite money exchange stall is one at Chinatown. Before buying HKD, I did a search on yahoo to find out the exchange rate. Then I approach the stall. They quoted me HKD5.8 to SGD1

My parents in law who changed their currency elsewhere got a rate of HKD5.5 to SGD1.

When I signed my purchases to CitiPremier miles, I got an average exchange rate of HKD5.85 to SGD1.00, which is even better than what my parents in law obtained.

So for me, I will just carry minimum cash and sign my overseas purchases to my credit card. I may bring along few hundred of SGD just in case I overspend my cash and needed to change more local currency.

Do note that this is only applicable to countries which widely accept credit card a mode of payment. I understand that in Japan, only limited type of credit cards are accepted there. Thus, I will have to bring more cash.

Hope the above tip helps!

Cheers,

Karen