{"id":2971,"date":"2013-05-19T17:35:35","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T00:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jett.in\/?p=2971"},"modified":"2013-05-19T17:35:35","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T00:35:35","slug":"my-only-use-for-bluebirds-or-amex-cards-abroad-when-your-bank-fails-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/2013\/05\/my-only-use-for-bluebirds-or-amex-cards-abroad-when-your-bank-fails-you\/","title":{"rendered":"My Only Use For Bluebirds (or, Cash Abroad Via Amex When Your Bank Fails You)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>as i discussed <a title=\"Going Debit Card-less Abroad\" href=\"http:\/\/jett.in\/going-debit-card-less-abroad\/\">in an earlier post<\/a>, i was forced by bank policy to be debit card-less during this past week in Riga, as it&#8217;s one of the countries on their block list.<\/p>\n<p>i managed to survive, though, thanks to discovering that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bluebird.com\">Bluebirds<\/a> work in overseas ATMs as well! i only got a Bluebird in case i wanted to dip my hand in the points game, but it&#8217;s been sitting dormant in my drawer for months now. i&#8217;m glad i had it so i could use it for this, though! (google <em>Bluebird points<\/em> if you&#8217;re not familiar and aren&#8217;t afraid of diving into the deep end of a realm i never thought existed.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2975\" alt=\"Untitled\" src=\"http:\/\/jett.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Untitled1.png\" width=\"677\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/\/sites\/48\/2013\/05\/Untitled1.png 677w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/\/sites\/48\/2013\/05\/Untitled1-300x115.png 300w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/\/sites\/48\/2013\/05\/Untitled1-400x153.png 400w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/\/sites\/48\/2013\/05\/Untitled1-200x76.png 200w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/\/sites\/48\/2013\/05\/Untitled1-150x57.png 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 677px) 100vw, 677px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>there are several points to keep in mind:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 13px\"><strong>loading your Bluebird<\/strong> by transferring money from an existing checking account takes five business days, so you have to plan ahead (which i didn&#8217;t, so i had to move to the next plan of attack). the cheapest (=free) quickest (=funds available immediately) option is to add money at a Walmart Money Center, although at my local Walmart there was a fifteen-minute line when i went. of course, you can go the reload card route, but the fee involved (especially for a cheapskate like me who isn&#8217;t in the points game) makes that a last resort for me.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>make sure you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.findanamexatm.com\"><strong>find ATMs<\/strong> at your destination that work with American Express<\/a>\u00a0since they&#8217;re not as prevalent as your typical MasterCard\/Cirrus and Visa\/PLUS ATMs (though i would imagine all Amex ones support Cirrus and PLUS as well?). i don&#8217;t even think you need to call to alert Bluebird you&#8217;re traveling, although when i did, they told me to use a bank that didn&#8217;t appear on the ATM finder search results page. i ended up using what <em>did<\/em> show up (Citadeles Banka) and it worked great as you can see above. (there&#8217;s a Citadeles ATM in the Riga airport baggage claim.)\n<ul>\n<li>note that the above link supposedly only shows Express Cash (more about this below) ATMs, but those would by definition be American Express ATMs, so it should be reliable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>the $2 <strong>withdrawal fee<\/strong>\u00a0(pretty much the only fee you&#8217;re socked with using Bluebird like this) seems pretty reasonable! i don&#8217;t know what the foreign currency conversion rate hit is, but it seems decent as well.<\/li>\n<li>the only <strong>problem<\/strong> is you have to plan ahead as to how much money you want available, since as mentioned above, adding money to your Bluebird via funds transfer takes a week, so if you&#8217;re somewhere and you&#8217;ve already depleted your Bluebird funds, you&#8217;re kind of SOL. it&#8217;s probably best to over-deposit money since you can always transfer the excess back out to your regular checking account for free. (moral of the story, have a backup plan &#8212; i brought cash in case the Bluebird didn&#8217;t work and also had Express Cash set up.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>so the other option i investigated (and learned about through that ATM finder page) is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanexpress.com\/lacidc\/en\/laccards\/cashaccess.shtml\">Express Cash<\/a>, which lets you pull money out using your Amex card at an ATM (that supports Amex). for my Amex, since it&#8217;s not a credit card but a charge card, it will pull money right out of your checking account. for Amex credit cards, it will let you pull from your cash advance allowance. i called to set up the program with my checking account information, but it took a week or so for the PIN to arrive via snail mail (you cannot set it over the phone like an agent told me), and i was gone by that time, so i didn&#8217;t have a chance to try it out. (well, truth is i did get it emailed to me by my bf who i had open my letter, but didn&#8217;t use it because i knew Bluebird was working by that time.)<\/p>\n<p>note that the withdrawal fee, however, is significantly more than with Bluebird. from the Cardmember Agreement for Express Cash that i&#8217;m looking at: &#8220;The fee for each cash transaction at a Machine using the Card is the greater of $5.00 or 3% of the transaction amount, with no maximum.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>as i discussed in an earlier post, i was forced by bank policy to be debit card-less during this past week in Riga, as it&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"My Only Use For Bluebirds (or, Cash Abroad Via Amex When Your Bank Fails You) http:\/\/wp.me\/p2mZtk-LV #travel #travelblog","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[81,101,124,224],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.13 - 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