Exchange Your Money for Cheaper Travel
By James Samans

Travel costs money. There's just no way around it: if you want to go from one place to another, it's going to cost you something to get there. Once you arrive, it will cost you money to stay there. And when you're ready to come home, that will cost you money, too.

When you travel outside of your home country, though--since I'm American, this article will focus on Americans traveling outside of the United States, but it applies to people of any nationality--there's another cost that most new travelers don't consider. That's the cost of money itself.

There's nothing magical about money. It's an arbitrary construct made by governments and enforced by law as a means of exchanging value. (One of the three formal defining characteristics of money, in fact, is that it must be a "store of value.") And while some countries choose for a number of reasons to use the currency of other countries to operate their economies, most nations exercise their sovereign right to create and print their own unique form of money.

What makes all of this a little tricky is that the value of one form of money versus another fluctuates, literally on a constant basis every second the day on a 24-hour clock. The exchange rate between two currencies is the quantity of one needed to buy a preset amount of the other. For instance, at the specific moment that this article is being written, it costs just over $1.95 in U.S. dollars (USD) to purchase one British Pound Sterling (GBP).

Why currency fluctuates is a function of the international monetary system that is difficult to explain even in complex macroeconomic terms. You might think of it, though, as based on the relative strengths of two economies as defined by their collective wealth, money in circulation, debt, and optimism for future growth, compared to what they were previously. (The last point is critical; many Americans are surprised or even outraged to learn that the U.S. dollar is not the strongest currency, given that the United States has the world's largest economy. Exchange rates deal with the size of the money supply, not just the size of the economy.)

The reason that exchange rates have such an impact on travelers is because prices in a given locale don't change based on exchange rates. A double cheeseburger on the McDonald's Dollar Menu, for instance, costs $1.00 USD, regardless of whether $1.00 USD is equal to 0.65 GBP or 0.50 GBP. If a British woman visits the United States and goes to McDonald's for lunch, she's spending dollars, but they're dollars that she converted from pounds, which is how she measures her personal wealth back home. If the dollar is "weak" to the point--if she can get more dollars for a pound than is usually the case--then she's buying that double cheeseburger for fewer pounds, which means less money even though the dollars spent are the same.

If that was a little confusing, it's understandable. Americans don't travel as much as say, Europeans, because our country is so big. Anywhere that we travel within our borders, which include U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, we use dollars. It's only when we venture out that we encounter exchange rates. The effect, though, is enormously significant.

When the U.S. dollar is weak versus a foreign currency, it costs Americans a lot more to live in countries that use that currency. As of January 2007, for example, the British pound and the European Union's euro are both strong against the dollar. That makes the cost of visiting Europe high on a daily basis even if you get a cheap airfare. The longer that you stay, the more impact the high exchange rate will have on your budget.

On the other hand, if you travel to a country where the U.S. dollar is strong, you'll spend less American money to get the same amount of local currency and thus have a lower cost of living while you're there. The Argentine peso, for instance, is presently weak to the dollar; take a trip to Buenos Aires, and you can enoy steaks that might usually cost you $35 for around $12 (even though the price hasn't changed in terms of pesos).

Here are some tips for keeping your spending under control when you travel abroad:

1. Do your homework. It's easy to look up prevailing exchange rates at http://www.forex.com. It's a little harder to know what the exchange rate usually is, which is what you need to know to decide whether a currency is strong or weak--for instance, the measure of U.S. strength vs. the Japanese yen is based on blocks of 100 yen, not 1 yen. Web searches can help.
2. Take trips to places with weak currency. At any given time, some currencies are strong to the dollar and others are weak. If you want to see the world for less money, focus on traveling to places where your money will go farther. The rates change constantly, so you'll eventually get to everywhere on your list.
3. Use cash while you're there. It's hard enough to decide whether 5 euros is expensive for a sandwich if you know that the 5 euros cost you $8.00 at the time you made the exchange. With a credit card, the trade is made using the exchange rate at the instant of the sale--which you don't know.

James C. Samans is the author of Spontaneous Tourism: The Busy Person's Guide to Travel. He travels more than 200,000 miles each year by air, rail, road, and sea and holds elite status with United, Continental, and Amtrak.
Visit his web site at http://www.spontaneoustourism.com or email him at author@spontaneoustourism.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Samans
http://EzineArticles.com/?Exchange-Your-Money-for-Cheaper-Travel&id=435423

It is not everybody’s dream to be rich and famous as a film star, many people just want happiness and to afford to get by without debt and stress, in fact that is the majority of people. You see it must be the minority of the population who are extravert enough to stand up in front of huge audiences, absorb adulation from the crowds of cheering fans and to expose their private lives to the media with all its pitfalls. And all for wealth and fame. There is however another side to this notion of fame, lots of hard working actors are doing it to entertain people and the applause at the end of their performance is a great acknowledgement to the effort and skill they put into it. Now I must class myself in this one-sided debate, actually two sided debate as Ray and Henry are two completely different characters, I think! Well Ray wants to succeed in his new career as a hard working Actor and is not over-bothered about wealth as he has reached that pinnacle of ages where he has paid off his debts. He wants to be acknowledged as the best King Henry VIII in the World, not just the most exact look-alike but also the most knowledgeable and act-alike re-enactor. If and When this occurs he will level off in his efforts and develop his new characterisation of King Edward VII, and after that a Comedy act with a drunken Scotsman. So a Movie may help to succeed in Ray’s search.

Now there’s Henry, a complex character from a collection of Historical documents some of which are bizarre in their declarations of ridiculous happenings and from old Oil paintings which only capture the mood and presence as seen by the artist. Then there is his ghost. No I do not mean a spook under a white cloth; I mean the presence he left behind by the things he left for us to see. Hampton Court, Hever Castle, Leeds Castle, etc, etc all these places have left traces of the man as he really was; the Royal accounts have left traces of how he lived and what he bought and ate; Other Tudor houses, where Henry never stepped inside, they have his influence on the lives of people who lived there. Adding all these together and Henry’s ghost emerges. Now he would love to be in a Hollywood movie, must be centre stage, must be strong and scary and must be cleanly written with any hint of love stopping at the bedroom door. He would not be bothered about money, fame and adulation after all he has been trained from birth to expect these three factors, his main reason for being there is to tell the correct story about himself and to correct the past stories blatantly written to increase book sales.

Now there is the American element to this story. A novelist and script writer making her living in the competitive world of American movies has come across Henry’s website. Her friend and partner from Australia, who owns and writes his huge website about European castles and provides vacations to see them, have decided that Henry Tudor is the most accurate in the world and so a movie must be made using him as a “mousetrap”. A Mousetrap is a term for having something nobody else has and which captures a sector of a market. They have now been talking with Henry for one whole year, a movie script has been written, a trailer planned to get more investment. Many bonuses have been seen with this strange partnership, Henry managed to get a real Tudor hall as the trailer setting, and he also staffed the set with actors and actresses by searching local resources. The local press have got wind of the project, not by accident, but by Henry telling them directly and now the project is about to begin. The last three days of January 2007, the production of the trailer will happen in real life. Many people have put their own money and effort into this project and the production will be successful because of their commitment.

What will come out of this project? Three Young Drama Students will get a great portfolio and the experience of real movie making as well as they can add the project to their existing CV. Three people will be acting for the first time; they will get an insight into the world of movies and hopefully get the bug to move on. The Americans will get more publicity for their company; they will move up a notch in the world of movie making and hopefully will be a successful movie making company in Hollywood because of the project. The Photographic people will get dream settings for their portfolios and more movie type work from the publicity that will be generated. The Hall will get great publicity and if successful at raising the capital to make the full movie, they will be the long term set for the film(s) of which 6 are planned. Have I missed anybody out? Oh! Yes, the media will get lots of pages of good storylines about local movie making, local people getting breaks and could sell their stories on a National basis.

So is there a loser if the full movie does not come off? No. This is one of those strange situations where everybody involved wins whatever happens. From a minimum of positive publicity and great portfolio’s to the maximum of world fame and fortune, the project cannot fail to produce a more positive outcome. The whole story as it unfolds will be written as it happens and posted in this column on January 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st so keep watching these spaces. And dear readers, keep your fingers crossed for all the people in this venture and hope they get what they are looking for.

I hope you have enjoyed reading issue 25 and If you have any suggestions or comments about any part of the newsletter then please feel free to contact me.

As always, if you have a story,photos or questions you wish to ask or share with our readers then please email me and I will be happy to include them in our next edition.

All submissions should reach me by no later than the 20th of March