Cash Money

Believe it or not, folks, most foreign countries will not accept the almighty US Dollar. True story! I know this is my 12th foreign country, but we didn't really talk about our ATM process yet when we travel abroad.

Now while we ALWAYS try to use our credit cards to pay for everything (cash doesn't earn you free miles/points!), there are often scenarios where using paper over plastic makes sense, such as (a) when they don't take credit cards or (b) there's an extra % surcharge for using credit cards.

Depending on where you're traveling to, you'll run into these situations, especially for taxis and smaller local stores/restaurants. So we always make sure we have cheap access to local currency as soon as we land at the airport, just to be safe. I thought I'd share some of our best practices in case it helps others.

1. Use an ATM 
Well first and foremost, we always use an ATM from a respectable bank (or as close to one as we can find).

In our particular case, we landed in Hong Kong Airport around 10PM local time and found an ATM from HSBC (HongKong Singapore Banking Corporation) which is pretty well known in the US, well NYC anyway. The first one we saw as we cleared Hong Kong customs had a pretty long line, so we opted to exit to the public waiting area where there were more options and fewer people waiting in line.

Some people will prefer to use Travelex or some other Currency Exchange place. We NEVER use these places because the FX rates they use are usually so off "market" that we end up losing out. The few exceptions are however (a) Argentina where the Blue Dollar FX rate is significantly better for US dollar holders than the official FX rate and (b) when you still have some local currency leftover at the end of your trip. Trust me, no store in America will take a Brazilian Real or a Korean Won.

But aside from those special situations, using an ATM is most likely your best bet. The FX rates that banks offer you will closely approximate the official exchange rate. Plus the ATM fees can be avoided if you use an ATM that is part of your bank at home, or if you have a Charles Schwab checking account which will waive any ATM fees charged to your account.

Before we had a Schwab account, we'd always try to have 1 large ATM withdrawal for each trip to minimize the per transaction ATM fees (both from the local ATM machine as well as our bank for using a foreign non-bank ATM, which could total up to $7 USD per transaction).

While this strategy worked sometimes, we often ended up having to take out a large amount of foreign currency, which usually meant we'd have a lot leftover at the end of our trip. So we'd be forced to pay a hefty Travelex fee at the end anyway to convert the rest back to US dollars. Now with Schwab's ATM fee reimbursement, I can pull out $20-200 at a time and not worry about getting a $5 ATM fee charged each time.

2. Withdraw Odd Amounts
If your parents have ever let you use a domestic ATM before, you'll realize that they almost always spit out $20 bills. After all, $20 is an easy denomination to count and use at merchants in America. However at International ATM machines, they oftentimes give you much larger denominations to be efficient with space inside the actual machine.

Why is this a problem? Well, just imagine if your Chase ATM spit out $100 bills instead of $20. Try taking a $8.50 cab ride cross town and giving him a Benjamin Franklin. Good luck with that.

The exact same thing happens all over the world. One time back in 2008, my father was in Peru and had nothing but 100 Peruvian soles bills and literally couldn't find a way back to his hostel from the bars, because literally no one took credit cards or would break a 100 soles bill - which was actually only $35 USD.

So what do you do when confronted with an ATM that wants to give you high denomination currency? Pick a random number. Instead of pushing the preset button for HK$1000 (which is about $128 USD), my father entered in his own amount of HK$900. That way, instead of getting two HK$500 bills, he would get one HK$500 and four HK$100 bills.

In an ideal world, he would have picked HK$999 so he'd also get a HK$50 bill, a few coins for HK$10, HK$2 and HK$1, but those weren't options from the HSBC ATM.

3. Break Your Large Bills ASAP
Similar to the tip above, you don't really want any large bills. So as soon as you find somewhere that will take the HK$500 bill, use it. In our case, we found a 7-11 that took it for our purchase of a small juice and snack (HK$10). The cashier didn't even flinch and just ran the HK$500 bill under a UV light to check it was legitimate and gave us HK$490 back in change. But trust me, it usually won't be that easy all the time, especially when we're in less developed countries than Hong Kong.

4. When Using Plastic, Use a No FX Fee Card
So for the situations where you can keep your cash in your pocket, you should make sure you're using credit cards that do not charge any foreign transaction fees. For example, if you used your Starwood Amex card in Canada, you'd get charged an additional 2.7% as a FX fee by Amex. Clearly, the value of your SPG points earned from that transaction would be completely negated by the additional 2.7% fee.

Fortunately, there are several credit cards that do offer to waive FX fees, including the Platinum American Express, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Chase Hyatt Visa, the Chase British Airways Visa, the Citi Hilton Reserve just to name a few. So whenever we travel abroad, we keep the other cards at home, even if it means losing out on a category bonus (like 2x on dining or 5x on groceries).

5. Get Charged in Local Currency
There's a feature in many foreign countries that will "help" international travelers know what they're spending. It's called Dynamic Currency Conversion. Here's how it works:

Say you go buy some contact lens solution at a local pharmacy in Kowloon. The official price would be HK$41.40. After using our no FX fee Chase credit card, we were given the option of being charged either HK$41.40 or $5.57 USD by the merchant. While you may think that these two options are equivalent, don't be fooled. They're likely giving you an unfavorable FX rate.

Chase (and any other bank) will automatically convert a foreign charge into USD using their FX rate. Almost every single time I've ever made a foreign purchase, the rate that my credit card bank uses is significantly better than the FX rate used by the foreign merchant who is incentivized to use an FX rate that's more favorable to them (ie, more USD) so they end up with more when their bank converts back into their local currency.

While this particular pharmacy example didn't seem like it was a big deal, when you think about how much you might spend on a dinner or even a hotel, the small % differences really add up to a lot of $.

6. Use Leftover Foreign Currency to Paydown Your Hotel Bill

My nerd father likes to play this mental game with himself by trying to get to 0 local currency at the end of every international trip. Now, this doesn't mean that he goes to the airport gift store to buy a bunch of useless junk to "get rid of his foreign currency." You should know by now, he's way too frugal to waste money. Instead, he tries to strategize his ATM withdrawal amount and spending patterns to hit the elusive Zero.

He does this in two primary ways. Chances are that the last two payments people will make on an international trip will be (a) paying their final hotel bill when they check out and (b) paying for transportation to the airport.

When my family is in a situation where they took out too much foreign currency and have leftovers, they figure out what transportation back to the airport will cost and how they'll pay for it. If they can purchase a train/bus ticket using a credit card, then great. But sometimes, the only reasonable way to get to the airport is to take a taxi, which often only accepts cash. So at the beginning of the trip, my father will put aside that amount as "Taxi money" and keep it unused during the trip.

If he still have leftover foreign currency even after accounting for the return trip, then he'll just give the hotel all his excess local cash and it will pay down the hotel bill. Then whatever remaining balance can easily be put on his credit card of choice.

So perhaps you already knew some of these tips, but perhaps you learned something new that you can use. Travel well!

Now if only I could figure out this Hong Kong metro map.

Checking Plugs

If you do any international traveling, you realize that things are different outside the United States. One difference is how they plug into the electrical outlets.

I've been studying this for the past week since my Asian father was giving me quizzes and memory tests about various international plugs. I told him that there were dozens of websites online (such as The Global Electric Directory) that could easily just tell us the answer, so I didn't need to memorize it. But Tiger Dad wouldn't hear of it.

Type I Adapter

So for our trip to Hong Kong, you might have thought that we needed a China/Australia adapter (Type I, as seen here). Well, you'd be wrong.

Type G Adapter

Apparently, as my father taught me, Hong Kong was a longtime territory of Great Britain. That's why they speak English and have so many white people everywhere. As far as electrical plugs go, they also use the Great Britain plug (Type G) which looks like this. So luckily, I checked online here to confirm the Hong Kong adapter type so that we packed appropriately.

But with all the electronic gadgets people travel with these days (cell phones, tablets, readers, etc), we realized that having so many adapters didn't make sense. Instead we purchased a Monster Power Outlet To Go for just $10 on Amazon.

With the Monster Power Outlet, we can charge 3 devices at the same time, as well as a fourth if it has a USB connector. So now we only need 1 adapter to connect into the wall in Hong Kong.

All this may be a moot point, however, since many international hotels know that foreign travelers are in need of adapters, so they have them readily available at the front desk.

Autoslash for Car Rental

A few weeks ago, we mentioned how you can use Citi Thank You points to get a free car rental. I also referenced a website called Autoslash.com, but didn't go into too much detail. I thought that we would revisit Autoslash this week after the website saved my father about $75 in about 3 hours.

As I mentioned, we added a Free One Way flight to Phoenix for one last family vacation before I no longer qualify for free lap child status. Unlike Manhattan, the Phoenix metro area isn't as public transportation friendly, so you'll probably really need a rental car.

Unfortunately, rental car rates were running $333-500+ for the 5 day period we were looking at. While that comes out to $65-100/day (not incredibly horrible), we were hoping for something lower.

But unlike booking flights, you can make a rental car reservation without any cancellation penalties. That's super important because we're using Autoslash.com to find us better rates.

Step 1 - The Dummy Booking
First, you have to make a rental car booking. Counter-intuitive, but you should NOT use Autoslash for this part. The rental car agencies that allow primary bookings through Autoslash are very limited (I think just 2-3, and not the ones you'd want). The other major agencies do allow secondary bookings, however, but not primary.

Instead, I recommend searching and comparing rates using aggregators (Expedia or Travelocity), but don't book with them either.

When you find a rate you like, head to the actual rental car website (Hertz, Avis, Dollar, National, Budget, etc) and book directly with them. That way, you don't have to deal with the middleman to cancel and rebook.

Note:  While you have no intent to actually keep this reservation, you should still pick the lowest rate at an agency you're comfortable with (in the off chance that you end up using it). You'll notice that Advantage, Fox and Payless will often have the lowest prices, but we NEVER book with them. Too many horror stories of not honoring reservations, not having car availability or having painfully long lines. We generally prefer the high levels of customer service and newer cars at Hertz and Avis, but often prioritize cost and go with Budget, Thrifty or Dollar which are usually good enough.

In our case, we booked with National for $333.47 (including all taxes and fees) for 5 nights (October 25-30) at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport location.

After you complete your booking, you will get a confirmation / reservation #. Keep this handy.

Step 2 - Autoslash
Next you will head over to Autoslash.com and then input your information into the TRACK A RENTAL section of the page (and not the Search section).

You will notice the section where you need to input your confirmation number. This will allow them to monitor your reservation and continually identify opportunities to lower your rate using a variety of discounts, coupons and special promotions that you probably would never even know about.

The best part is, you're done at this point. Everything is 100% automated (either that or they have massive rooms filled with Southeast Asian children searching every possible combination and permutation of discount codes). Either way, you can just sit back and wait.

Step 3 - Check Your Emails
While not 100% guaranteed, we've used Autoslash about 5-6 times and we've been able to find lower rates every time except once. Anywhere between a few hours or days/weeks later, you may get one of two different emails:

The Rebook Now Email

About 90 minutes after inputting the information into Track A Rental, we received a "Great News" email from Autoslash.

Hi Baby Songer, 

Thanks for tracking your upcoming car rental with AutoSlash. We review each reservation daily to see if we can find additional savings for our customers. We found a better rate on your upcoming rental in Phoenix on 10/25/2013. 

You are currently booked at the rate of $333.47 with National. AutoSlash is able to offer you a lower rate of $272.34 with National for the same vehicle, a savings of $61.13. 

If you'd like to take advantage of this lower rate and lock in the savings, just click here to book through AutoSlash. Better act fast though, as rates can change quickly. We'll even check your rate each day, and if we find a price drop, we'll re-book you automatically to lock in the savings!  

If you decide to take advantage of this lower rate, please remember to cancel your old reservation by clicking here. 

Weren’t able to find the lower price we quoted above? Rental car companies change prices constantly. While this provides an opportunity for you to score a lower rate, it also means you have to act quickly when rates drop.

So in our case, we received this email about 3 hours after we signed up with Autoslash. We clicked through the first email link and it pulled up the Autoslash search engine which showed several rental car options for the same dates/times as our original reservation.

But instead of just showing the 2 companies we didn't want, it also showed National for $272.34. After a few clicks, we booked a new reservation with National and then cancelled our original reservation.

We quickly saved $61.13 in less than 2 hours. More money to buy me ice cream!

The We've Automatically Rebooked You Email

Just 1 hour later, we received another "Great News" email from Autoslash.

Hi Baby Songer,

Thanks for booking with AutoSlash. We review each reservation daily to see if we can find additional savings for our customers. We found a better rate on your upcoming National rental in Phoenix on 10/25/2013 (AutoSlash Trip ID: #######27).

You were originally booked at $272.34, and the price has now dropped to $257.61. We've automatically re-booked your rental at the lower rate. You've saved $14.73 without even lifting a finger! Please note that your rental confirmation number has changed. Your new National confirmation number is ######909.

Please provide this new number to the agent when picking up your rental to ensure you receive the correct rate.

If you do not have the latest confirmation number with you at the time of the rental, request the agent look up your reservation by your name. If you have not received the updated confirmation, please check your SPAM folder before contacting us, as emails are often mistakenly classified as SPAM.

We'll continue to track your rental rate each day, and if we find additional savings, we'll be in touch. If you need to change or cancel your reservation, just click here.

I think that since we made the second booking using Autoslash, they were able to automatically rebook us without us needing to do anything. So far, we've already saved about $75 and still have another 3 weeks before our trip. Crossing my baby fingers!

Conclusion
Since's its a 100% free service for the consumer, we can't imagine NOT using Autoslash to track all our existing car rental reservations.

Of course, there's a chance we may still be able to find better rates on our own if we checked back manually on Expedia or Travelocity, but I've become a pretty busy toddler these days now that I'm in daycare 3 days a week.

Thank you, Autoslash.

UPDATE [October 7, 2013]

We decided to test Autoslash and see if there were any better rates by manually looking up rental car rates on Expedia a week later. While the regular passenger cars were actually higher now than last week, we did find an SUV from Alamo at about $239 for the same 5 days. It would only be a savings of about $18, but we'd get a nicer car with more space. So we made a new booking, but kept the original just in case it would get even lower. Now we had 2 bookings - one for a regular car (National) and another for an SUV (Alamo).

Next, we used Autoshash to Track Rental for the new Alamo SUV rental. About an hour later, we received another "Great News" email from them.

AutoSlash is able to offer you a lower rate of $217.27 with Budget for the same vehicle, a savings of $38.39.

Wonderful. When we clicked through Autoslash, we saw Budget listed with Sixt and Payless. In addition to Budget's Standard SUV (Ford Edge) for $217, they also listed a cheaper Intermediate SUV (Ford Escape) for $191. So we rebooked yet again with Budget and cancelled our Alamo reservation.

Remember when we started this whole car rental process with rates of $333 for 5 days? Now, we were at $191.

Smarter Way to Book SPG Cash & Points

For our final week in Thailand, we decided to return to our beloved Starwood Hotels and stay at the Sheraton Krabi Beach Resort (after our last fling with Hilton/Conrad the week before).

The hotel was a Category 3, which meant we could either get (A) a free night for 7,000 SPG Points or (B) a night using the Cash & Points ("C&P") option for 2,800 SPG Points + $45 per night.  [UPDATE: the Starwood C&P prices have increased as of March 5, 2013 so it would now be 3,500 SPG points + $55 per night]

With cash pay rates at $223/night, Option A implied you were getting 3.2 cents/pt of redemption value but Option B was 6.3 cents/pt.  Guess which one my "always optimizing" father picked?

As I mentioned last week, it took us a while to get here from Koh Samui.  And while we were excited to check out the Krabi province (and its world famous beaches), we were also looking forward to just enjoying a regular hotel with normal (read: not rich) tourists where a baby could sleep using a diaper as a pillow just be herself and not get dirty looks from people.

During check in, they found my father's 1st reservation (Feb 28-Mar 5) pretty quickly, but he had to remind them that he had another one for March 5-7.  Why does my father make multiple consecutive reservations?  Well, he has a reason for that of course.

Background
As mentioned in another post (and above), Starwood has 2 ways to book a room with SPG points: (A) Free Night Award or (B) Cash & Points.

(A) The Free Night Award is available whenever there is a standard room available.  If the hotel is <95% occupancy, then Starwood pays the hotel something like $20-40 (estimate) as reimbursement for allowing their SPG member to book a room with points.  The hotel takes it because it would have gone empty otherwise, and they might as well get some income for their fixed cost.

However, if the hotel is 95%+ occupancy at the time of points booking, then SPG has to reimburse them at/around the full Average Daily Rate (in this case, around $223).  But the hotel HAS to make every standard room available for the Free Night Award redemption to be a part of the Starwood family. But since they'll get their Average Daily Rate from Starwood, the hotel is somewhat indifferent (though the Points Guest is probably more frugal than a Cash Guest).

(B) The Cash & Points program is different.  The hotel still gets a cash payment (from you this time instead of from Starwood), but not every standard room is available for C&P.

In this case, hotels can voluntarily elect to participate in this program whenever they want to fill vacant rooms, but can also choose to not participate when they feel they'll get strong demand from guests who pay in actual cash. Since they will only get your small cash co-pay, they have no chance of getting close to the Average Daily Rate during high demand times.

So if you want to book with C&P during high season, you're only chance is to book months in advance before the hotel gets too confident about its occupancy rates.

Our Sheraton Krabi Reservation
My father originally booked this reservation (Feb 24-Mar 7 split up in 3 different C&P reservations) back in October as soon as he found out about his job situation. And because the hotel allowed cancellations with 48 hours notice, he felt like he still had all his options open. But again, why the multiple bookings?

• Reservation 1:  Feb 24-Feb 28 (4 nights) for 11,200 SPG points + $180 cash
• Reservation 2:  Feb 28-Mar 5 (5 nights) for 14,000 SPG points + $225 cash
• Reservation 3:  Mar 5-Mar 7 (2 nights) for 5,600 SPG Points + $90 cash

When your hotel bookings are flexible, your plans firm up and you have a better sense of where you'll be, you can adjust your hotel reservation to match. However, with the C&P booking, you can't modify your check-in or check-out dates to shorten your stay.  You can only cancel and then hope to rebook with C&P if they're still available.

In this case, the hotel was now fully booked by late November and no longer offered any more C&P availability. So any small change in the booking would require a cancellation of the complete reservation (i.e., 11 nights from Feb 24 to Mar 7).

But instead of putting all 11 nights in one reservation basket, he broke it up into multiple reservations so that each one could be cancelled without it affecting the rest of the nights.

And this came in very useful, because when he called an audible on our vacation plans to extend our stay at the Conrad Koh Samui (from 2 nights to 6 nights) last week, all he had to do was cancel the 1st of the 3 Sheraton reservations and now he had his desired 7 night stay.

• Reservation 1:  Feb 24-Feb 28 (4 nights) - CANCELLED
• Reservation 2:  Feb 28-Mar 5 (5 nights)
• Reservation 3:  Mar 5-Mar 7 (2 nights)

Had he not split up the Sheraton bookings originally, then to stay at the Conrad for those 6 nights last week, it would have meant he would lost the valuable C&P bookings at Sheraton Krabi for the remaining 7  nights (Feb 28-Mar 7). Then he would have had to rebook at the full Average Daily Rate (paying actual cash) at that time (late February) which would likely have been higher than the $223/night he found back in October.

But all I care about is that I get a real bed to sleep in. I'm tired of this car seat.