Mikamarii
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2018
I thought I would post this as an FYI to all the Canadians who like to spend time south of the border.
We are with RBC and have the VIP signature account and as a result, get a free US dollar account. It met our needs and was easy to exchange Cdn to Us dollars while saving the 2.5% transaction fees. It can be done online which saves a trip to the bank. We also have a USD dollar visa. This helps huge as when using a Cdn dollar Visa in the US they generally use the worst possible rate between authorized and posted transactions so you end up paying more. Having a USD dollar saves that as its in US then we just pay it off from our USD dollar account. The USD card has an annual fee of $65 US and only one card (additional cards are more). Depending on how much we use it the fee could offset any savings but we really enjoy the convenience.
Anyway, today I get an email from RBC with info on a US chequing account and US visa. This one is a little different as our current one is based out of Canada while this new one is an account based out of the US. Having a US chequing account means you get a US debit card. Having a US debit card allows debit transactions and cash withdrawals for free from an US ATM. (I'll throw in a caveat here that we never tried using an ATM with our current RBC chequing account. I've seen terms that said no fees but didn't think it was worth it as there would at least be exchange fees and likely cross border fees. I don't actually know though) For us this is huge as we ARE NOT cash people. I hate using cash. We were also told by the CS rep that there is a $5000 cash advance perk with the chequing account. Meaning if something were to happen (like lose our wallets) we could go to any bank and get a cash advance off our chequing account.
In addition to this US chequing account there is a no annual fee RBC US Visa. You can make these accounts joint which means now my wife can have both a US visa and a US debit card. She's no longer has to carry large amounts of cash when she goes shopping and isn't tied to me to use credit (hmmm maybe I didn't think this through )
The best part is the Visa is free and the chequing account is 40USD a year which was cheaper then we were paying with our previous US visa. Plus it comes with all the usual insurance benefits.
Its definitely not for everyone but works great for us as it greatly reduces the amount of cash we need to carry on hand when travelling. The savings will differ for everyone but I've always been willing to sacrafice a bit of money for convenience so this works great for us.
No I don't work for RBC or any bank for that matter haha.
We are with RBC and have the VIP signature account and as a result, get a free US dollar account. It met our needs and was easy to exchange Cdn to Us dollars while saving the 2.5% transaction fees. It can be done online which saves a trip to the bank. We also have a USD dollar visa. This helps huge as when using a Cdn dollar Visa in the US they generally use the worst possible rate between authorized and posted transactions so you end up paying more. Having a USD dollar saves that as its in US then we just pay it off from our USD dollar account. The USD card has an annual fee of $65 US and only one card (additional cards are more). Depending on how much we use it the fee could offset any savings but we really enjoy the convenience.
Anyway, today I get an email from RBC with info on a US chequing account and US visa. This one is a little different as our current one is based out of Canada while this new one is an account based out of the US. Having a US chequing account means you get a US debit card. Having a US debit card allows debit transactions and cash withdrawals for free from an US ATM. (I'll throw in a caveat here that we never tried using an ATM with our current RBC chequing account. I've seen terms that said no fees but didn't think it was worth it as there would at least be exchange fees and likely cross border fees. I don't actually know though) For us this is huge as we ARE NOT cash people. I hate using cash. We were also told by the CS rep that there is a $5000 cash advance perk with the chequing account. Meaning if something were to happen (like lose our wallets) we could go to any bank and get a cash advance off our chequing account.
In addition to this US chequing account there is a no annual fee RBC US Visa. You can make these accounts joint which means now my wife can have both a US visa and a US debit card. She's no longer has to carry large amounts of cash when she goes shopping and isn't tied to me to use credit (hmmm maybe I didn't think this through )
The best part is the Visa is free and the chequing account is 40USD a year which was cheaper then we were paying with our previous US visa. Plus it comes with all the usual insurance benefits.
Its definitely not for everyone but works great for us as it greatly reduces the amount of cash we need to carry on hand when travelling. The savings will differ for everyone but I've always been willing to sacrafice a bit of money for convenience so this works great for us.
No I don't work for RBC or any bank for that matter haha.