Traveler's Checks

Same deal in France. TCs are dinosaurs:

No travelers checks!! ATMs and credit cards (for larger purchases) are the way to go anymore.

Don't use travelers checks at all. Use your ATM or Debit or Check Card. Cheaper, safer and ATMs are everwhere.

No one wants travelers checks anymore. Even banks, which must be visited during open hours, are hesitant to cash them.

Bring your debit card and get cash directly from an ATM.

For bigger purchases, use your credit card.

My mom always brings traveler's checks. She offers to buy lunch and then whips out her TC's. When the restaurant invariably says they don't take TC's, she asks, "Do you take Diner's Club?" Most don't so I'm left paying.

If pressed, she'll pull out US currency and ask if they take that. We've been doing this routine for years with the same result.

We laugh about it a lot as her ploy to keep from paying but she swears she isn't doing that at all (it just works out that way).

Don't wast your time getting them. The only place that uses them would be Switzerland, as most small shops there only take cash or cheques (including Traveler's cheques). Most everywhere else excepts credit/debit cards (even small shops in Poland). In this day and age it is easier to go to the ATM and withdraw money as needed (beware of your own's bank's fees on top of the ATM fee; I found it was cheaper to withdraw cash of my credit card).

Chris, but you must have a most unusual credit card if it gives you cheap money. It is generally considered a very bad idea to obtain cash via credit card. Generally the same normal currency conversion fees apply but the cash from a credit card is a loan with high interest rates that begin the moment you withdraw the cash coupled with a cash advance fee. That should be an extreme emergency usage when your two debit cards have failed.