D23 will be studying abroad in England during Spring Semester. She has a credit card with no foreign transaction fees and also has a debit card she can use abroad. Her abroad program gives the student a set amount of money every 2-3 weeks to pay for groceries (students live in apartments and cook for themselves). The choice is to either receive that money in cash or to open an international banking account (like Wise or Revolt) and they deposit the money in there. Just looking for feedback on which seems like a better idea. TIA!
One daughter went abroad for 3 months (actually 88 or 89 days) in high school. She did not open a bank account for this.
Then she went abroad again (different country) for four years of university. She did open a bank account in the local currency.
Then she graduated and returned to the US, and closed the “outside the US” account.
There is some small tax complication that is involved in having an account outside the USA. This relates to US taxes, not so much foreign taxes. For a short trip (one semester) I doubt that it is worth the trouble.
My daughter had her food allowance from her US college applied directly into a Wise account when studying in the UK. She would also transfer in her own spending funds in to this account at times too. She loved it and said it was so easy to manage when travelling too - I guess it converts currency “live” at a good rate and you save “a lot” of foreign transaction fees and can pick how much you want to be on your card for each currency. She compared it to almost Venmo like and it is not a banking app, so no concerns around declaring/taxes. She just made sure to transfer any remaining funds out and the card is now inactive. She said “everyone” used it
When d20 went abroad they had to open a wise account. I am not sure she would have liked having a bunch of cash over a card? I think at the end of the semester she transferred the money out but left it open for future use.
If it’s not possible to deposit the money in her US account, then open an international one. It’s possible to conduct virtually every transaction electronically (my daughter just completed a semester in Amsterdam and used cash only once or twice), so cash seems like an unnecessary risk. I hope your D has a great semester!
My kiddo just returned from a semester abroad in Ireland, and I Venmo’d him money from time to time for food as he also lived in a flat and needed to grocery shop. He paid for things using his American credit card without issue everywhere.
He did not open an account there, but on occasion he needed to go to an ATM to take out cash because his Irish and International friends don’t use Venmo. Same with club fees, he needed to get cash to pay them.
So for any of the casual person to person cash transferring that we do here (and young people tend to do a lot of it!) via PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle—those were just not used over there, and per my kiddo “everyone” uses Revolt.
My son just completed a master’s program in London, so I asked him what he thinks. He suggests keeping about GBP 200 in cash, as some smaller shops and markets don’t take cards. He also had a credit card and a Wise card and says it was good to have both, as sometimes one works and sometimes the other. Also, as mentioned above, Wise makes it really easy to move funds from one currency to another.
