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40 Years of Traveling to Europe. Have I Been Converting Money Wrong?
Travel Tips

40 Years of Traveling to Europe. Have I Been Converting Money Wrong?

Travel Tips

For years, I have done the same thing before every trip to Europe. I walk into my local Citizens Bank about two weeks before departure, order a few hundred dollars' worth of euros, and pick them up over the counter. Then I travel with a credit card that charges no foreign transaction fee, and I always pay in the local currency rather than dollars.

I felt good about this system. Organized. Prepared. The kind of thing I tell clients to do. And then I started reading articles about converting money — and I started to question everything.

Travel credit cards and passport

Paying with a credit card is the easy part. A few rules cover it:

  • Use a credit card, not a debit card.
  • Make sure the card has no foreign transaction fees.
  • Always pay in the local currency, never dollars.
  • Know that the exchange rate may shift slightly between the day you buy something and the day the card company processes it, but that difference is small enough that it should not meaningfully change your final cost.
  • Never use the currency exchange services at the airport.

What caught my attention was the advice about converting dollars to euros once you arrive in country — and that got me wondering whether I had been doing it wrong for 40 years. So I decided to actually run the numbers.

Amsterdam canal houses and bridges Netherlands

I have a trip to Amsterdam in about two months, which makes this the perfect time to do some research. I set up a simple comparison using the two ways I would realistically get euros, with my own two cards:

  • Method one is what I always do: order $300 worth of euros from Citizens Bank before I leave home.
  • Method two is what the articles recommend: withdraw $300 worth of euros from a bank ATM after I land in Amsterdam, using my Chase Ink Business Preferred.

To compare them fairly, I needed a single honest benchmark — the mid-market rate, the true value of a dollar in euros before anyone adds a markup. On the day I ran these numbers, one dollar was worth about 0.865 euros. At that rate, $300 would buy roughly 259 euros in a perfect world. No method actually hits that number.

Method one — Citizens Bank, before I leave: When you order euros at your home bank, the bank gives you its own retail exchange rate, which includes a markup over the mid-market rate. Banks typically build in somewhere around two to five percent. At a middle estimate of about four percent, my $300 comes back as roughly 249 euros, picked up at the counter with no drama.

The rate is not the best available. But there are no other fees stacked on top, no interest, and no math to do while jet-lagged in a foreign city. I hand over dollars, I get euros, I go home.

ATM machine on a street in Amsterdam Netherlands

Method two — ATM in Amsterdam: This is where I expected to feel foolish, and where the surprise showed up instead — though not in the way I anticipated.

First, a fact worth knowing: the Geldmaat network — the yellow ATMs run by the Dutch banks — now charges a fee to foreign cardholders. As of 2023, that fee is €2.00 per withdrawal for cards issued outside the EU and EEA, which includes every US-issued card. It is a small line item in isolation, but it is real, it was not there a few years ago, and most of the articles recommending ATM withdrawals in Amsterdam were written before this change.

Even setting that fee aside, there is a bigger issue for anyone using a credit card. When you pull cash from an ATM with a credit card, it is not a purchase — it is a cash advance. On my Chase Ink Business Preferred, a cash advance costs fifteen dollars or five percent, whichever is greater, plus interest of around twenty-nine percent that starts the very moment the cash leaves the machine.

So on that $300 withdrawal, here is how the math actually works:

  • The ATM's exchange rate saves me roughly ten euros over my home bank.
  • The Geldmaat fee for a US-issued card costs me €2.00 off the top — not €0.50 like European foreign cards pay.
  • The cash advance fee on my Chase card costs me fifteen dollars immediately.
  • Interest at 29% begins accruing from the moment of withdrawal.
  • Net result: I spent roughly twenty-five dollars more than I would have at Citizens Bank — to get ten dollars' worth of better exchange rate.

The math is not close.

The method everyone online told me was better turned out to be the more expensive one for me. Not because the articles are wrong, exactly — the ATM really does give a better base exchange rate. But that advice quietly assumes you are using a debit card, where an ATM withdrawal is free or nearly free.

I do not travel with a debit card, and I do not recommend it. Here is why:

  • If a debit card is compromised, thieves are pulling straight from your bank account — and you are the one waiting to be made whole.
  • If a credit card is compromised, it is the bank's money at risk until you dispute the charge.

That safety choice is worth far more to me than ten dollars. And once you make that choice, the credit card turns every ATM withdrawal into a cash advance — and the whole 'better rate' argument collapses.

I was wrong about being wrong. For the way I travel — with a credit card I trust and no debit card in my wallet — converting a set amount of euros at my home bank before I leave is not the lazy, expensive option I feared it was. It is convenient, it is safe, and it is competitive on cost.

A few honest caveats:

  • If you are comfortable carrying a travel debit card, especially one that reimburses ATM fees, the ATM method likely does still win for you — just factor in the Geldmaat foreign fee now.
  • Different card, different answer.
  • No matter which method you choose: if you do use an ATM abroad, look for machines attached to an actual bank — not the bright blue Euronet ones clustered in tourist streets.
  • Whenever any machine or reader offers to charge you in dollars instead of euros, always choose euros, so your own bank sets the rate rather than the machine.

One more note on ATM safety. Going inside a bank protects you from card skimmers — the little devices thieves attach to a machine's card slot to copy your information. Chip cards have made skimming less common in the Netherlands than it once was, but covering the keypad as you enter your PIN is still a good habit.

Also be aware of a scam where someone dressed as a police officer approaches a tourist, claims to be checking for counterfeit bills, and asks to inspect your wallet. Real police do not stop you on the street and ask to see your money. If it ever happens, you are well within your rights to decline and ask to walk to the nearest police station.

One last tip: if you come home with euros left over, keep them. Euros do not expire, so tuck them away for your next trip rather than losing money converting them back. Whatever you do, do not exchange them at the airport, where the rates are at their worst.

If all of this makes your head spin, here is my real reassurance: it is perfectly fine to walk into your bank, order your euros, and get on the plane. That is what I will be doing, and I ran the numbers to prove it to myself.

If you have a trip coming up and you are not sure which cards to carry or how to handle money once you land, reach out. Sorting out these small logistics before you go is one of the least glamorous parts of what I do — and one of the most useful. My travel planning services are always completely free.

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