Everyone is going to echo the same thought. Withdraw from ATM in the EU or Switzerland; because you pay an on the spot exchange rate with no mark-up.

For you to buy euro's at any place - there will be a markup. Unless your bank is that cool to you.

With the euro at 1.04 tho, it does get us all anxious :)

To each his own. I just get annoyed when people claim that it's virtually impossible to buy euros in the U.S. without paying a huge markup. Five percent isn't a lot, and in fact comes out the same as many people pay with their standard ATM card.

I do plan to take an ATM card on my next trip to Europe, but I will still arrive with 500 to 1,000 euros pre-exchanged. I like having the cash, and don't want to worry about searching for an ATM or having my card eaten while I have zero money in my pocket.

Agreed. Peace, Brother/Sister.

This is how the board should work. Everyone calmly states their position and the advice seekers get to decide which advice they find fits them better.

Thanks.

I have a pretty decent checking account, and by that I mean - no fees on virtually everything. I have not tested out exchanging USD to EUR, but I do know that I can go to Europe and withdraw X euro and just pay the on the spot exchange rate, and have my ATM fee refunded. So there is no markup for me (I believe) if I go to an ATM.

Do you have any suggestions on how to avoid paying a decent mark-up? I am sure there are better financial services companies here to work with..

You can do better by buying euros in Europe instead of the US, but running an fx operation entails fixed costs that get passed on to customers, so it's almost never possible to get within 50 basis points of spot unless you are doing very large transactions. Countries where there is high demand for USD (think controlled and/or volatile currencies) are an exception to this rule.

Moondog, I had a terrible time trying to exchange U.S. currency for euros last summer. In fact, after a couple of days of trying in Colmar and Strasbourg I had to pay my hotel bill us USD, which they accepted as a courtesy.

For future trips I still plan to have a good bit of euros when I arrive, but I certainly won't both with carrying any American currency, as I have in the past. So I'm going to use an ATM card, but I still play to arrive with enough euros to get me started.