I'm sure we all have this issue. We change money to go overseas. Then we spend and by the end of the trip, we have a little of the currency left, or maybe even a lot left. I usually manage to bring it down to under S$100 worth.
Then I come home and keep it in an envelope and I think to myself, "I'll use it again the next time I go." Sounds familiar? I usually don't change the excess back to Singapore dollars.
So I have a drawer with many different currencies. A bit of Thai baht, some Pounds, some Euros, a bunch of Indonesian rupiah, HK dollars, Taiwan dollars, Chinese yuan... Etc.
Ok I go to Taiwan often so it's valid that I keep TWD for my next trip. However, I doubt I will go back to the UK anytime soon, or HK or Indonesia or Thailand, etc. these countries I might go sometime in future but it may be 2-5 years later. They aren't on the usual "go to" list.
This time on my trip to Malaysia, I thought of something. I decided to bring all the loose currency around the region to change to ringgit. So I brought my bahts, rupiahs and some pounds.
(FYI, UK £10 notes are likely going to be decommissioned early next year. You may want to change them if you're holding on to any.) This is the reason why I brought my pounds to change.
Anyway, the idea is pretty simple. If I change my baht to SGD, then change SGD to ringgit, I will incur 2x the commissions. So I thought, hey... How about I just change the baht directly to ringgit, when I get to Malaysia!
I got a pretty fair rate over here for all the currencies and I'm quite pleased with this idea. Cos it helps me use up my loose foreign currencies.
I'm thinking if the rates are generally better around the region. Just thinking out loud. Like the ASEAN region might be more willing to accept the currencies around the region at better rates.
And the pounds, USD or EUR would have better exchange rates in western regions and maybe JPY, KRW, HKD, TWD, CNY would get better rates around north Asia region.
I'm not too sure of this theory. Anyone with experience with this?
But anyway, I brought enough baht and rupiah to change into ringgit to last my few days here. So I didn't need to use any of my Singapore dollars to exchange for ringgit this round.
Not sure if any of you already do this, but I'm thinking it's quite a useful tip after my this trip. I'll likely slowly use up my other currencies in this manner as I travel around. I'll likely change some SGD to the target currency before I go, then when I reach, I'll use some other excess foreign currency to change a bit more. Essentially, bringing some money from the last trip to the current trip, and it keep rolling to the next trip and so forth.
Do you think this is a good idea? Or do you all have some other way to use up your excess foreign currencies?
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