I travel a lot, so my CITI Visa is chip and pin.

The only way to go - it's the most universally useful format.

Like others have said, I just hit the cash machines in country and try to minimize cash withdrawals, pretty much using the card for everything. The only time I use cash is when they will not accept a card.

I use an Amex Global Travel Card, you can load it up when the exchange rate is beneficial :
American Express GlobalTravel Card - Home

My Chase visa card has a chip. Do I need to get a pin number before travel to Europe?

Chase offered me a travel card with no foreign transaction fees. But I'll take the 5% interest rate of my current card vs the 15% rate of the travel card over the few fees I get once a year!

Buy on the street or from a friendly local..... best exchange rates.

In France and Spain recently we used our ordinary day-to-day Visa and Master Cards with no problems at all. Mind you, all of them are chipped. We carried no cash from home, whether dollars, or Euros. ATMs all the way when we could not use the card directly, or when it was inconvenient to do so.

As some have said, when you are laying out serious money for everything while traveling, why fuss over pennies?

This is a very good idea. We do this for wire transfers, so that funds hit the account and are swept to another account.

Oh, and for anyone traveling out of the country, GET A PIN for your credit cards. It is required in some countries.

Attention Canadian Shoppers...
 

My Sears Financial card does not take a cut on my US transaction. They charge the exact Exchange rate that the Bank of Canada use.

My American Express charge 2.5% above the BoC rate :rolleyes::rolleyes:

As for Non Chipped Card, American Express Costco was the last one, all my other cards are Chipped and Pinned.

With everyone talking about ATM cards, it's always a small risk showing up with no Euros so even more important to know all the tricks.
The US encourages longer PIN numbers but in some corners of Europe they only accept up to 4 numbers. Even if the ATM screen shows 6 blank spaces. Ask me how I know.
You don't need to change your PIN, just remember that if it fails (twice) and you are sure you entered it in properly, then try entering only the first 4 numbers of your PIN.

I see a trend in German and Austrian hotels to not accept any credit cards, only cash or debit card. This can really put you in a tight spot if you are not aware of this practise. Never had this problem in italy or spain

If you book online, you're covered. I got surprised once in the Czech Republic and it almost cleaned me out when I had to pay in cash. But just go with the places that take online booking and payment with CC.

Booked last years family ski-trip through booking.com and still had to pay cash or debit card. We had to use two debit cards to settle the bill as it was over the limit of a single card (typically 2500 over here). This year it is the same, either pay upfront by wire transfer or settle cash/dc.

If you are going to France BNP Paribus (or whatever) is owned by Bank of America and you can use you bank card for free to get cash.

I was involved in the global business and forex side of banking for a long time. Best rate you can possibly get is on your credit card, as banks settle these flows of cash between them in bulk, which brings about lowest cost. You typically look at around spot exchange rate plus 5% for your transaction, which is actually not all that bad.

Hard currency is always going to be more expensive as holding onto cash brings risk risk and interest into play for the bank, and they will want to recover this from you. You actually get nailed twice with it as you buy it at their high "sell" rate, and sell what you have left over at their low "buy" rate.

Travel wallets (where you buy forex onto a card in advance) are also nice, but does not provide any real benefit over a per transaction conversion.

What works really nice for me is a VISA or Mastercard based (chipped) debit card with an overdraft facility. It gives me the same good rate as a credit card, but covers me in instances where debit cards only are accepted. The cash I need I withdraw from ATMs (never forex windows!), but stick to single large amounts as opposed to multiple small amounts as the forex surcharge is typically fixed no matter the amount.

On a semi-related note, anyone know a reliable place to buy foreign currency, besides eBay?

For example, if I wanted:

$10 Canada bill
$100 Mexico pesos bill
$10 Euro bill
etc

Leary of the eBay sellers - pricing is all over the place and I'm assuming some of it is replica.