Please help with advice. I'm tired and stressed getting ready for Italy. We leave in 3 days! My bank says my daily limit for ATM card is $300! That's nothing with a family of 5 in Italy. The teller told me to call the 800 number. No help. My ATM card is only a debit card, I don't have the visa check card thing (I never liked those.)

Now what can I do to get euros in Italy? I got some Visa travellers checks because I didn't know what else to do. Maybe I can cash them in banks?

My stubborn husband doesn't believe in ATM cards, so he doesn't have one!

I heard something on-line about a pre-paid card that you can buy and them use in the ATM machine? does anybody know about those, how to get them, if they are a good idea?

thanks for any advice.

That's a $300 a day cash advance.. not spending..
so charge your hotel meals etc..

I can get 500 Euro with mine.. the post office ATm is good for the higher limits and Banca di Toscana in Tuscany

I'm with Diva. Unless you or your husband also have an aversion to credit cards, you should be fine. I'd also recommend calling the bank again, or if it's local, going to a branch and discussing it with someone. Our bank said the same thing but then said that they'd allow $400 per day for a specific period of time.

I had a $300 daily limit on my debit card. I went into the bank and spoke with a person behind a desk and asked to raise my limit to $500, and it was done while I was sitting there. We are at Wells Fargo. By the way, make sure that your card is hooked on to your checking account, not a savings account.Also, make sure you notify your bank and credit card co. that you will be traveling, so that the ATM withdrawals and CC charges in Italy will not be considered "unusual activity"
Have fun, Melissa! I will also be traveling with our family of 5 at the end of June. We're pretty excited, except for the fact that Alitalia will be on strike when my daughter and I are set to return. Oh well. I'm trying to stay calm and enjoy the possibilities of being "stuck" in Rome for a few days longer.

Charge all else to a credit card, and the 300 dollars will be more then enough. Follow the advise above about visiting your bank, talk to a more senior person there. All this is good advise and it works. Also, increase, even on a temporary basis, the limit of your credit card; they will do this for you if they know your account. Don't be afraid of the "terrible" rates of exchange charged on credit cards for expenses in other currencies; it is almost a myth, much like the one that bankers work 9 to 5. Only Dolly did that.

I didn't find bank conversion rates to be such a myth two summers back when that amount came to better than $50, not including the per transaction fees. As a consequence, ATM cards are the primary means for paying while abroad for my husband and myself.
If you do intend to charge and will miss the next billing cycle of your credit card due to your vacation schedule, you might want to estimate how much you will charge and pay out in advance.

It depends to what one compares costs. The interbank rate, the one which is usually published in newspapers, is for interbank transactions which are dealing with amounts in the millions, tens of millions, etc.

Usually, a credit card rate would be about 2% above the interbank rate, and a cash transaction would be 2-4% above the interbank rate.

Add to this the daily fluctuations, the intra-day fluctuations, and fluctuations between foreign exchange markets open at different times of the day in various times zones, and direct comparisons become the domain of guessing.

What I can say is that I paid my hotel by credit card in April, for a total of EUR2,211 and I was charged at the very fair rate of 1.66 Canadian dollars/Euro, i.e 2-2.5% above the interbank rate for the days in which the charges were made to the card.

I would recommend to all our friends to inquire on the Internet on rates of exchange and to never look for the interbank rate, unless they plan to buy high priced property, etc. For our daily travel needs, for amounts in the hundreds or thousands of Euro or USDollars, look up the newspaper and add 2-4 percent to the interbank rate and that would be within a realistic realm.

A site I recommend is:

http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory