Best Credit/Debit Card?
Always on the lookout for a bargain and wary of my past experiences with travellers cheques, debit cards and exchange rates, I decided to for once prepare myself for my upcoming adventure and do some research into the best credit or debit card for travelling around Europe. Here are the results:
Wizard Clear Advantage Mastercard
Available here, the Wizard Clear Advantage Mastercard was the card I was almost about to sign up for - unlimited overseas transactions and ATM withdrawals for free, no monthly or annual fee, as well as some other nice perks. The only problem I found was that Wizard was recently taken over by Aussie (they used to be owned completely by GE Money) and since the takeover their terms and promotion of the free overseas transactions has "gone missing" - something that used to be a big selling point for them. That, combined with several unconfirmed reports of issues (Wizard blocking cards that have a positive balance; no insurance on any positive balance you have if you lose your card; and so on) made me continue looking. That and I never really wanted a credit card in the first place.
NAB Visa Debit Card - Gold Banking
When I stumbled upon this card (make sure you select the Gold Banking option) I thought there had to be some catch. As with the Wizard card they had no fees for overseas banking, great exchange rates and it's a debit not a credit card! It's also a Visa, which means I can keep my current Westpac debit Mastercard hidden away for emergencies and effectively have my bases covered. The only catch with this card is that there's a $10 monthly fee, quite a bit for Australia but when most Debit cards charge approx. 1.5% + $5.00 per ATM withdrawal, it's not such a bad deal. They will also waive the fee if you deposit $5,000 each month into the account and the balance is irrelevant, meaning you can transfer $5,000 in on one day and send it straight out the next and still pay nothing for your account. For the two months I'm travelling though, $10,000 is approximately my budget so there shouldn't be any issues. I'll simply cancel or downgrade the card when I return!
I hope this helps someone else who's frustrated with bank fees while travelling. In the meantime, I've yet to buy any insurance and I'm open to suggestions!
Travel Blog? Bugger that!
As everyone is aware - yes, I know no one reads this blog, so everyone (me), is aware - I was intending to use this space to blog as I travelled from country to country around Eastern Europe this July/August. However, over the past few days I've come to reconsider this idea: in fact, I've decided to scrap it entirely. Why, you might ask, have I decided to scrap my journal? A few reasons.
Reason One: Past experience has taught me that I just don't have the willpower to sit down for an hour every day and write about what I did, where I travelled, what I ate, who I saw and so on. I don't even have the willpower to write those things down in note form, let alone the desire to then transform them into some kind of coherant blog post.
Reason Two: My travels tend to be a bit...x-rated. When I say that I don't mean that I go around participating in satanic rituals, animal sacrifice or mass orgy's; but nonetheless, I would likely have to censor a lot. As everyone who knows me knows, I hate censorship. But, unfortuantely, when publishing for the "public domain", it's sometimes necessary - some things I think are perfectly normal, like pissing in the shower, a lot of people take offense to (yeh bad example). If my travel experience was going to be like something out of "Euro Trip" or "How I Met Your Mother" then I'd be perfectly happy to blog about it. However, in the real world nothing is that corny and Americanised (repeated spousing of words such as "awesome" and high fives left-right-and-center to go with the rest of the PC humour), so I'm not going to even try to lower myself to that level.
Reason Three: No one cares. Really, who cares? Anyone who actually gives a toss will just ask me when I get back and I'll be happy to give them a rundown.
Finally, rather than waste an hour every day jotting down what I did in a notebook then spending a considerable amount of time finding a LAN cafe, typing it all up, formatting it and publishing it, I can spend that time reading, sleeping, drinking or doing something more productive than blogging about the blur that was the night before, the most recent epic queue or the latest statue I saw. So with that covered, don't expect to see anything substantial posted in the "body" section of this blog while I'm travelling (I may post a summary when I return). However, please do remember to check the right side of this page often -- I'll be posting quick notes, or status updates to show I'm still alive, as well as my latest phone number so you can call me while I'm away (I decided global roaming was a pain in the backside I just didn't want!).
Adios!
Looking Good!
The blog's starting to look pretty good...this is basically just a test post for what my posts when travelling around Europe will look like. I'll keep my current phone number updated (top right) depending on where I am and I'll also start my blog posts with something like this -- a picture of whatever country I'm in to the left!
Lets hope this works out..
Perth
In the meantime, feel free to send me a tweet. I'm not sure whether or not to include public tweets on the right side of this page.
Thoughts?
P.S. I'd better note that the site is under HEAVY CONSTRUCTION. A lot of stuff won't work! I'll let you know when it's functional.