Buying Euros.

Unless your employer is willing to pay you in euro, I don't see how you could open a foreign account without at least one exchange.

If anyone knows what the exchange rate will be on any given day, please let us all know! Really, it is not possible and currency fluctuations are generally in pennies or less, barring a catastrophe. For convenience we buy about 100-200 euro before leaving from our bank and swallow the bad exchange rate. I don't like finding an airport ATM on arrival when jet lagged and burdened with luggage, but that's me, many do. Then, when settled, I hit a bank ATM, draw my max, and try to pay as much as possible (aside from hotels and splurge meals) in cash.

Ask your bank but you probably won't have any luck. I recently received a check in euros from EasyJet related to reimbursable travel expenses written on Bank of America. BoA wouldn't cash it and give me euros (what I wanted) but instead made me open an account - then they ran the check through the international exchange (for a $40 fee) before finally depositing the dollars in my account (took about 4 weeks). The best way to get euros is to pull from a bank ATM once you're at your destination. I wouldn't worry too much about the exchange rate either way - it is what it is.

Just curious the OP says "Euro to dollar exchange rate currently favors the dollar"
What is the current exchange rate 1USD=how many Euros?

It's 1.062!!! I remember when it was 1.60. Of course it came out at 85-cents.

You could ask friends who are going over to withdraw cash to bring back for you. Then hold on to it. But the euro could be down by the time you go over.

Start with the idea that "buying" a euro will cost you at least a 5% mark-up to the seller. There is no mark-up when you withdraw them from your own bank account at an ATM.
What you propose is making a bet on the value of the currency. Do you otherwise gamble? Do you play the stock market, hedge funds and the currency markets?

If you are talking about an enormous amount of money - more than 100,000 EU or so - you can open an account with foreign exchange markets, like this one:
www.dailyfx.com/forex-rates

Beware that these can be as much of a gamble as not, given the state of the world's financial markets.

If you are only talking about a few thousand EU, it would not be worth your while to do so, and you should make arrangements with your bank at home to increase your daily withdrawal limit, if you think it's insufficient.

Forget it!! It is called currency speculation. And people far smarter than you or I on this subject have lost billions. If you want to cover yourself a bit, take the money and put it in a dividend stock paying 6 to 8% and enjoy your profit.

It can be thought of as currency speculation in which case I agree, not to smart. Or it can be thought of as locking in the cost of the trip; in which case it can make sense if you are on a tight budget. We took a trip some years ago when things were much tighter for us and between paying the deposits/buying tickets and the actual date the exchange rate changed by nearly 15% and it impacted the trip quite a bit. Still wouldn't do it, but its no ridiculous to consider.

Start with the idea that "buying" a euro will cost you at least a 5%
mark-up to the seller.

Agreed. The best place I've found in the US for buying euro is a Wells Fargo, which charges an average of 5% over the Interbank rate. They set the price once a day, in the morning, but the Interbank rate varies all day long, so it can be more or less than 5% during the day, but on average, it seems to be 5%.

Someone once mentioned an exchange in Vancouver that had a better rate, but they used Canadian dollars as the base, so, unless you had a lot of Canadian $ lying around, you'd have to pay two exchange rates, $US to $CA, than $CA to euro.

So, basically, the euro would have to increase vs the $ by 5% before you would break even.

There is no mark-up when you withdraw them from your own bank account
at an ATM.

There are only a few debit cards that have no exchange rate discount (mark-up) for use at an ATM in Europe. My credit union charges 1%, a local bank in Colorado charges 2%, most major banks like Wells, US, Chase, etc get 3%.

Thanks for your input. As I suspected, I'm probably better off just waiting for the actual trip, and as one reply noted regarding the exchange rate; "it is what it is".

Also one note to add in reply to one of the posters. Whenever I return from Europe I always assume I will be returning there before "too long". I make sure I get on the plane with a few Euros left in my pocket (or money belt). That way when I arrive for the next trip I have enough to see me through the first day or so and time to be relaxed about locating an ATM.

Thank you for this string as I've already learned a couple of things.
I'm traveling to Germany/Austria/Italy in March 2017. I had planned to exchange 1 or 2k state side for convenience, but (in reading here) this no longer seems to make sense. I have a personal account at Wells Fargo and a business account at US Bank. Does anyone know if these banks have partners in Europe with favorable ATM access and fees? I plan to call the bank(s) but would also like to learn from the experience of others here.
Many Thanks!

Generally, the time spent trying to find partner banks is better spent opening a new bank account that doesn't charge any fees for using ATMs overseas.

I don't know about US Bank, but I bank at Wells Fargo, and I don't know of any partner banks in Europe. Bank of American has several, but I don't think that relieves you of the 3% exchange charge, just the $5 fee for using an out of system bank. Wells Fargo used to give PSA account holders two 0% exchange rate, $0 fee per calendar month, but I don't see that feature advertised on their website anymore. I think that major banks (WF, US, Chase, et al) all charge 3% plus a fee. I dealt with a local Colorado bank that only charged 2% plus $2. My credit union charges 1% and maybe no fee (?). You should be able to find a few "banks" that don't have any charges for foreign withdrawals from an ATM with a debit card. However, make sure they are talking about ATM withdrawals, not credit card usage, because withdrawals at an ATM with a credit card are expensive since they are cash advances.

You can set up a Capital One account and get an ATM/debit card with no fees for using overseas ATMs. Many credit unions also offer such cards.

There are some institutions that even rebate the fee charged by the ATM itself (my credit union does; not sure about Capital One), but I make a point of avoiding ATMs that charge fees, anyway; there may come a time when it's not so easy to do so.

I don't think anyone has mentioned dynamic currency conversion (DCC) in this thread. DCC is a very bad thing for travelers. It's a process by which an ATM (or merchant being paid via credit card) offers to record the amount in dollars rather than the local currency. Do not accept that offer! You want all ATM withdrawals and all credit/debit card purchases to be recorded in the local currency. If you choose dollars, you will find that a very disadvantageous exchange rate has been used.

Hi,

It depends at this moment how much "loose" cash you have. I saw last night the exchange rate dropped below, 1 Euro = $ 1.06, it was $ 1.05. As pointed out, I recall and had to get Euro at $1.25 or $ 1.45 and $ 1.60 or worse. Bank of America offers a no fee for conversion if you exchange $ 1,000 taken from your account. A friend of mine going on a business trip to Portugal did exactly that, gave the bank a thousand dollars (exchange rate officially was then $1.06) to convert to Euro. The bank rate was at $1.11, still not bad. when you're used to $1. 31 , $ 1.41 etc. Of course, she did not use up that amount, saved it for the next trip.

If you have that extra one thousand dollars now, exchange it before the rate returns to $1.10.

We are going to Italy in late September early October 2017 and to Spain in early April to early May 2018. I'm watching the exchange rate with interest. I don't have a crystal ball, but it would be a relief to lock in our travel costs by buying now while the euro is low. Our credit union's exchange fee is less than .5% and their flat fee for any exchange is $15.00. At an atm in Europe we pay them no flat fee and close to zero exchange fee. We have about 100 euros to take with us left from last summer's trip. So we are hemming and hawing about buying in now and whether to buy for just Italy, or Spain too. But we would be locking prices, not attempting to make a killing.

I think the idea of locking in a cost so you can plan your finances is valid.

I'd like to do that, too. The problem is that I am absolutely not going to set out for Europe with thousands of euros in cash. I don't carry that sort of money around here at home, and I'm certainly not going to do it when I'm traveling and constantly running into crowded situations.

$100 or $200, OK. If I lose that (and I have, to a pickpocket in Bulgaria), it won't cast a pall over the rest of my trip.

Well, that's true. I never carry more than $500 total in various currencies.

Between the two of us, we've carried 1500€ to Europe three times now. We each use a under the pants type money belt for 1/4 of the cash plus credit cards and passport; and an old fashioned money belt which holds our pants up for the other 1/4 of our personal share of the cash. We did it because each trip we had a cash only landlord for the first week. It didn't feel unsafe because it was all in deep storage. There's no need to do that either of these upcoming trips, but it would lock in much of our costs.

Obviously people only carry an amount of cash whatever can be afforded to lose or maybe they work for Brinks so they are conditioned fearless.