April 14, 2009

Protecting finances when travelling abroad

The Nationwide Building Society no longer offers free rates of overseas use of its credit cards.

However, it still offers some of the best credit card fees for travel - but it would have been nicer if it was still free.

It’s a shame, really - I bought into a Nationwide Flexaccount and Nationwide credit card precisely for going on holiday last year - after all, if you can save on extra fees then it makes sense to do so.

Also, I wanted to ensure I was using an account with just holiday money in, so that in the event of card theft or identity theft, then it was only the holiday money at risk - not my normal personal account or savings.

Last year in Luxor there was one point when I thought I’d lost my normal HSBC debit card, and trying to contact a bank or card service via local support numbers can be a nightmare.

Luckily, I hadn’t lost it - I’d just put it in the room safe and forgot about it - but it has made me more aware of the need to keep contact details separate and carry these around for emergencies. After all, the emergency contact for your card is - on your card. So lose that, you lose the phone number.

I’m tempted to do that regardless, though I’m minded of John Richmond’s point about ensuring you get the right cover on insurance, rather than buy on price, so I’ll check the policy details first before signing up.

In the meantime, I’m already making preparations for Turkey, and just need to book the connecting flights to London and hotel stay for when we come back before returning back north to Scotland.

UPDATE: In the end, I took out travel insurance with Aviva, namely due to the very positive review of Aviva Travel Insurance on Finance Markets.

Filed Under General