Last week was a bit of a down week for me. Continually thinking about the trip, all the different things we have to do, all the money that is going to be spent, all of it is really draining. Most of us worry about money someway or another. Paying rent or mortgage takes a chunk of our pay cheques. Groceries are not getting any cheaper. Transportation costs don’t ever seem to go down. Let’s not even venture thinking about kids activities and schooling! So decided to be a little proactive this week and plan on how we are going to save a bit of money.


Plan A – Win the lottery. Yup, like many of you I invested in the lotto max this week. Imagine having no worries about paying for this trip! No worrying about costs of where we’d stay, or how we are going to travel! So I checked my ticket this morning! For a few seconds things looked promising. Let me tell you, there is nothing more disheartening than getting a four number match on the max millions and being a number off the last three numbers. Back to reality. At least my consecutive winless streak is intact. Time for plan B!
Plan B – Start making some good decisions about how we spend our money. I’d like to say this is a topic about reducing what we are buying… I’d really like to say that. No, instead it’s all about strategy. We are in the process of switching banks and Scotiabank seems to have a few things we are looking.

  1. Location, Location, Location – Scotiabank has a large presence in Central and South America. We’re going to be spending at least 5 months in this part of the world. Imagine saving a few dollars on every atm transaction. If we save $5 per transaction, at one transaction a week, we would be saving at least $120.

  2. What about the rest of the world? Scotia bank is part of something call the Global ATM Alliance. What does this mean? There are partner banks around the world that you can use the ATMs free of charge. I’m hoping these banks have convenient locations. This will be something I’ll post and update everyone on as we get to different countries. These are the banks Scotia partners with :https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/personal/ways-to-bank/manage-accounts/global-atm-alliance.html

  3. How about Credit Cards? We are going to be using the Passport Infinite Visa card. I know, I know, the first thought is to rack up some points before so we can hopefully get our flights covered. We are looking to purchase our tickets by the end of this year so that doesn’t give us much time to rack up points. I haven’t looked into it to much but I think I can use the points on more than just flights departing from Canada. I’m not 100% sure of this and once again, I’ll update you as find out and try to book a flight using points. However, this is not why we are getting this card. We will be saving the ForEx charge, as this is waved on all purchases outside of Canada. This little fee is about 2.5% of every purchase. I don’t even want to do the math on that one because every single dollar we spend will have to be changed. We won’t see how this affects us on the trip, but it’ll be really interesting to see how much we actually saved after the trip.

Do any other banks offer this? From what I can tell, of the major Canadian banks this would be the only one that has any services like this. The only exception that I have seen is HSBC. They’re located all over the world. Truth be told I did not research them like I should have. I’ll make sure to keep an eye open for them as we travel as well.

I’m hoping this decision helps the family pay for this trip and keep me a little less stress about this trip. Until then, I’m going to keep on with plan A!

Thanks for Reading and Happy adventuring!