My $730 that I transferred over to the travel money card hit the bank today so I converted the money to GBP. The $730 AUD converted at a rate of 0.4827 GBP, and I received 351.41 GBP after conversion fees (1% of the transaction). Looking around at other currency converter sites it seems pretty standard, so that's good.
Tonight I got around to buying travel insurance, paid $139 for a policy with CoverMore. I shopped around for cheaper travel insurance policies but upon reading the bad reviews decided to stick with CoverMore, they have better reviews. I did increase the excess to $250 to reduce the price of the policy though.
After that I bought a pair of compression socks for flying from OurDeal for $19, have heard good things about them.
Finally I logged into the EF and transferred the $49 over to our savings account - soon will need to exchange $180 for GBP cash (want to have a bit available for small purchases).
I have now updated the sidebar to show the EF breakdown. I don't mind borrowing a little bit from the EF and repaying that amount when I return home.
Looking at the EF, in a month or two will buy some more QBE shares - want to have 300 at least by the time the next dividend is to be paid. Or might wait until about August.
The other thing I want to do with it is move the cash portion to a higher interest account, but will look at doing that after coming back. (Along with refinancing B's car - going to be busy, I think!).
In the account (aka Mini EF) I want to have a minimum balance of $2500 and will probably increase that by $500 annually. The rest of the EF savings will be investments in the Maxi EF.
Holiday Financial Transactions, EF Thoughts
May 9th, 2016 at 11:04 am
May 9th, 2016 at 11:41 am 1462794065
May 9th, 2016 at 01:41 pm 1462801306
May 10th, 2016 at 11:02 am 1462878171
CB I've never used them but I've never been on a flight as long as this, they are supposed to help your circulation, to avoid deep vein thrombosis.