[Lori]

Definitely not something I would ever consider but I was on vacation and couldn’t access the money in my local checking account.

I took a cash advance on my CC. It cost me 5% at the time of the advance payment. The interest rates on the CC for cash advances was 29.99 percent!

But, because I had the money in my checking account, I went right over to my phone and paid off the balance of my CC every day for the next few days while the charges were posting. When I got my statement, I was charged $1.00 in minimum interest fee for the use of this cash advance.

All in all, I was pretty excited about the results of this. I might have beat the CC issuer at their own game.

[Poley]

Yea I left my debit card (fidelity, which waives ATM fees) at my hotel when I was in Nairobi. I had to take out a cash advance on my credit card. Luckily my statement cut 3 days later so I was able to pay it off quickly. Luckily just the $10 fee + ~$3 interest.

I can’t complain though $126 USD + the fee/interest for an emergency dental appointment + x-rays and filling.

[Vincent]

Well that limited the potential damage.

[Amy]

Thanks for this interesting tip. So, you only paid $1 because the 29.99% is prorated per day? Since we don’t know how much $ in cash advance you took out, we need to understand what the $1 cost reflects.

[Jasmine]

I had a great credit card I used to use for interest-free cash advances all the time when traveling. The deal was that if the credit card was in credit, the only fee for a foreign cash advance was a 3% foreign exchange fee. Didn’t pay any interest or withdrawal fee on the advance at all.

By “if the credit card was in credit” I mean if the available credit was greater than the credit limit. So, if the card had a $10K limit and zero balance, I could push through, say, $500 or whatever from a checking account so that the available balance was $10.5K ($10K from the card itself plus an extra $500).

I could then cash advance that $500 with no charge other than the 3% foreign exchange (which is a better rate than you’ll get most places for foreign exchange). Worked great and was the cheapest way to get local cash when traveling.

[Author]

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