How We Use Every Last Penny of Foreign Currency

I can’t count the times I left a country with odd coins and paper bills I was never able to use.  Over the years, the amount of foreign currency I had left over began to add up.  Usually I found I had three options for my left over currency:  1.  I could convert it to U.S. dollars at the airport and lose out due to an unfavorable exchange rate.  2.  I could donate it in the containers in world airports designed to relieve travelers of their left over currency.  3.  I could designate it a souvenir.  No matter how I sliced it, I found that I always came up short and was losing some of my hard-earned cash.

I finally figured out the solution.  In most countries cab drivers are very eager to line up a gig to take you back to the airport.  Once you find a trusted cabbie arrange your ride back to the airport and ask him then and there what taxi fare to the airport will be.  For example, on my last trip leaving Trinidad, my driver told me that he would charge me $30 U.S. to go to the airport.  I gathered up all our remaining TT dollars; we had 89$ TT.  I used my currency converter app and converted $30 U.S. to Trinidad dollars (TT) which was 192$TT.  From the $192 TT, I subtracted the  89 $ TT that we had in cash which resulted in us owing 103.77 $ TT.  The next step was to convert the 103.77 $ TT back to U.S.  That equalled $16 U.S.

We put together $16 US cash, and voilà taxi fare was ready in mixed currency using up all our remaining money in the country leaving nothing wasted.

One of my favorite travel tips that I cannot stress enough is to ALWAYS travel with a lot of one dollar bills.  They come in handy in instances like this.  (Perhaps I should write a post on why one needs to travel with a lot of singles).

The conversion app I like to use is GlobeConvert which converts everything: temperature, distance, length, etc.  Freddy prefers to use xe Currency.

~Bella