Pounds and dollars and sense

     There are a lot of great, cheap places to visit in the world. Alas, the UK is definitely not one of them. Faced with the daunting fact that somehow we decided to go there anyway, we have made some changes that admittedly only incrementally improve matters.

• We got a pin-and-chip credit card, the norm in Europe. Word is, the usual US card works in the UK and Eurp ( except when it doesn't, like in automatic ticket machines) but hey, the new one is very cool. 
• We found a debit card ( from Capital One) that has no annual fee, no ATM fee and most importantly, no foreign transaction fee (for ATM withdrawals in foreign currency.) 
• For years we've had just one kind of credit card but we got a second that we'll carry separately, so that if the first is, uh, lost and has to be cancelled, we'll have another on hand as a fall back. 
• Many people advocate buying a cheap phone abroad with pay-as-you-go minutes when traveling. However, we have iPhones with AT&T and it seems just as economical to enable 30 minutes of calling within the UK on one phone ($30) and 50 texts on both phones ( $10 each) in case we are separated and need to communicate with each other. Both of these quotas could be upped online at any time, if necessary. As for email and internet access, in the past it has worked for us to use the iPhones when wifi is available and otherwise to keep them on airplane mode. 

     You try to find the smartest way to handle these things, but dealing with banks and phone companies, you kind of know you're going to get screwed in the end, eh?