According to Linda Sherry, the editorial director for Consumer Action in Washington, “Banks have been making a profit off their customers for a long time, while providing no service.” In Agreement, Ed Perkins, a syndicated travel columnist and author of “Business Travel When It’s Your Money,” says that these fees are “pure gouging that credit card companies know they can get away with”. Foreign transaction fees do not relate to any service that the credit card issuer provides but instead is buried deep in the fine print of the credit card agreement between the issuer and the customer. So in retrospect, while Visa or MasterCard may have done you a favor by converting your foreign-currency purchase into American dollars for a fee of 1%, your bank’s additional charges were driven by pure greed.
So what can you do to avoid these fees? The answer is to do your research. Currently there is no standard rate at which all banks and corporations charge, so you could possibly find a card that does not add on any additional fees for overseas purchases. For example Bank of America, Citibank, MBNA and JP Morgan Chase all charge 2 percent on overseas purchases while Household Credit Services, Providian Financial Corp and Capital One do not.It is important to answer the following questions before you begin to invest any of your money. The answers to these questions will help to guide you to when, what, where, and how much to invest. Do not skip these questions and make sure you write it all down. You will need to look over and re-examine these answers many of times.
Set clear goals and write them down- Develop financial goals for 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, and long term. It is extremely important that all of your short term goals help you to reach your long term goals because that why we are doing all of this. Any good plan must be realistic. In the area of investments the rewards can be great but only when they are done one step at a time. Therefore, once you have more research into the opportunities available to you, go back and fine tune your goals. Once you have done this make sure you write them down and keep them in a place that you can easily refer to them.