Euro for beginners

Tip of the day: Learn about the Euro and coverting the USD to Euro

A very important part of planning your trip is deciding how you will carry currency abroad.

One way to start educating yourself is to bookmark the link below, or a similar graph and start watching Euro-USD fluctuations:


Important note: This graph, and similar internet conversion tools give you the BANK rate - which we DO NOT get when we simple humans convert currency. The bank rate is for the big banks moving big money. Apparently there is also business in currency trading as you'll find when you surf the internet, but again, that isn't what we mere mortal travelers are getting into.

So Bank rate today is about $1.42. That means it costs $1.42 to buy 1 Euro.

And in reality terms, that means that if you go to a Travelex or American Express branch here in the Dallas area, you will buy one Euro for about $1.60. Thus, you can add about 20 cents to the bank rate and you'll get close to the actual Euro buy rate (when buying Euro here in the US at a currency exchange branch).

That's the beginning of the story....




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