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Getting Back into the Groove

October 3rd, 2006 at 03:44 am

Today was my first day back at work, and it went well. I felt missed, and useful, and that is an awfully nice feeling. I awoke early, due to my time zone zigzagging, and had a good start on the day.

I’m getting back into my frugal groove, packing lunch and not spending; boy oh boy, it sure is funny how often I spent money on vacation. It wasn’t so much the high amounts, just a bus trip there, a cup of coffee, yogurt and fruit at the grocery store, an apartment, another cup of coffee…..at least six “transactions” a day to record. Also, I dealt in 5 currencies (U.S. dollars, Euros, Kunas, Konvertible Marks, and Pounds), and that’s a whole lotta extra number crunching. Thirdly, with four of us there was a lot of back and forth…I owe you Kuna for the apartment, you owe me KMs for the car…..we couldn’t always break our bills, or sometimes we’d be leaving one country so it wouldn’t make sense for one person to withdraw from the ATM while the other person had too much money and faced exchanging at a cost. Those three factors are part of what makes doing my September reconciliation daunting….it may be next weekend before I crunch the numbers.

3 Responses to “Getting Back into the Groove”

  1. sarah Says:
    1159845896

    Did you find using the ATM worth while. I took an ATM card with me to Turkey and found that the fees were very prohibitive . I'd been better off using travelers checks even though they are old fashioned.

  2. lrjohnson Says:
    1159853066

    I paid a maximum of one percent of what I withdrew, in one case half that. In total I paid 10.57 in fees for two weeks, reasonable to me. Not nothing, of course. I'm not sure what fees are for Traveller's cheques. My CU website says 1%; I might be able to get them to waive or find a free source. Not sure if my lower ATM fees have to do with being in a credit union. I've known people to have a hard time finding places to cash traveller's cheques or paying large fees to exchange. I'm pretty comfortable with the ATM method for now.

  3. LdyFaile Says:
    1159896914

    It's getting more and more troublesome to cash traveler's checks. When I go traveling abroad I exchange a little money ahead of time (I can do that for free at my bank but the exchange rate is awful) just so I have pocket money in case I can't change money when I need it. I take as much cash as I want to spend, and am careful about how I carry it (my daily amount goes in my wallet, the rest in a money bag around my waist under my clothes). In Trogir, Croatia there was an exchange booth at the market that had a better rate than at the ATM. But there were other exchange places that had an awful rate too so it's definately hit and miss. I still prefer cash to travelers checks though.

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