Does anyone just take cash?

[Sandra & co]

I am thinking for our holiday in August of just taking cash, it will be about £2,000 plus £400 spends for the kids and my older ds will have a few hundred as well. Me and dh will keep half each and some will go in the Villa safe, am I being stupid? Should I get pre paid cards, if yes which ones? We had Thomas Cook ones last time but it was hard to check our balance, what do others advise? Having cash would be easier to keep a eye on what we have spent but I would like others opinions first!

[skalexander]

We take cash and a credit card. I would never take just cash, we if we needed medical treatment or needed to pay for new flights for whatever reason, and had to pay up front and then claim back from the insurance, we would be absolutely stuffed.

However, we don't bother with travellers' cheques or pre-paid cards - we don't feel they are necessary. We take a modest amount of cash, and put everything else on the credit card to pay off upon our return. Our credit card has no fees for foreign transactions and generally offers a better rate than cash/travellers' cheques/pre-paid cards. We use this for holidays only.

We also take a spare credit card, namely the one we use at home, in case we have a problem with our other one.

[Guest]

Never take just cash.
1) Large amounts per person may not be covered by your travel insurance should it be stolen or lost.
2) Take a variety of funds, cash, credit/debit cards, Travellers Cheques, pre paid cards to cover any eventuality or emergency.

[BevS97]

Lots of people do, but bear in mind if its lost or stolen its gone. All other ways of spending have some security in that you can get replacement travellers cheques. Money cards /creditcards can be replaced but lost cash is irreplaceable and only a small amount covered by your insurance.

Obviously you don't expect to lose it, but things do happen.

Not a risk of be happy with.

[Guest]

We are due to fly home today we took all cash this holiday with cerdit card for back ip(never used it though) we used safe in reception of hotel we have been fine

[Barney Bear]

Well just have all cash and cc for backup as others have said. We did the same last time around and it worked fine for us, though I do understand the issues of it being lost or stolen.. 🤗

[Sandra & co]

We always have credit cards for emergencies, I suppose we could spend on the bank card or are we charged or the credit card and pay if off at the end of the month. Its just the charges, what is the best prepaid card are there any where you can check your balance at the atm?

[Yorkie Girl]

We've always just taken cash (and a credit card each, but enough cash not to use them). We have been lucky and have never had any issues, but this year we are going to take half on a pre-paid card (probably FairFX) for meals and then use the cash for drinks etc. instead.

[Guest]

weve only ever taken cash, found it works well for us.
Obviously we have our usual debit cards as back up but with cash its easier to keep track of what we're spending.
We usually judge the amount we take well. Apart from one trip, where we got free dining and although I told husband to cut it down we came back with loads. It just meant we had to go back to spend it.

[Short legs]

We have always taken cash for the parks/food/drinks etc but used our credit card for shopping. This year however we will also take some traveller's cheque's as the resort we are staying on will cash them for us. I like taking cash/TC's as we like to split the money into envelopes and whatever is in the envelope is our daily budget! We often have money left over though and then we go shopping to spend it