Countdown to Financial Fitness: Navigating Cuban Currency

Countdown to Financial Fitness: Navigating Cuban Currency: I returned last week from a cruise to Cuba, and I wish I had done more research on that country's currency system before I left. I ...

Navigating Cuban Currency

I returned last week from a cruise to Cuba, and I wish I had done more research on that country's currency system before I left.

I knew businesses in Cuba don't accept credit cards drawn on U.S. banks. And certainly not American Express. So I was prepared to pay in cash for anything I bought. Because we were visiting the country on a cruise ship, taking excursions organized by the cruise line, I didn't expect to have to buy much. Maybe just a few beverages and a souvenir or two.

And tips. Cubans expect tips for everything. Including using their bathrooms. Once we got on board, the cruise line provided us with a wallet-sized tipping guide.

Friends who had visited Cuba reported that dollars were widely accepted. Yes, at the currency exchange.

Although the cruise line told us we must exchange our money because Cubans are not allowed to accept foreign currency—even for tips—I'm not sure this was entirely accurate. Plenty of cab drivers and vendors approached us and offered their services in exchange for U.S. dollars. But I imagine the cruise line, calling on Cuban ports at the permission of the government, was obligated to communicate official policy.

Cuba has a dual currency system, and neither currency is traded internationally. That means you can't buy Cuban pesos until you arrive in the country, and you can't get rid of them when you get home—or on board the cruise ship. (Technically, you're not even supposed to transport Cuban pesos out of the country.)

The Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), with a 1:1 exchange rate pegged to the U.S. dollar, is the legal tender given to tourists at banks and currency exchange kiosks. A passport is required to exchange money. The CUC is approximately 25 times more valuable than the Cuban Peso (CUP), the currency used by locals at ration stores. Most state shops, especially those catering to tourists, post prices in both currencies.

There is a 3% service charge on foreign currency exchange. Plus, there is a 10% surcharge/penalty on U.S. dollars. So for my $60 cash, I received only 52 CUCs. My husband flies to Europe frequently and always has euros; too bad we didn't know to bring them with us to Cuba, as we could have exchanged those and avoided the 10% penalty.

We were warned about a common tourist scam where a vendor will accept payment in CUCs and then when returning change, will substitute lower-value CUPs for CUCs. An easy way to distinguish between the two currencies is that CUPs have faces of people on the bills, and CUCs have pictures of monuments. Fortunately, no one we talked to had fallen victim to this scam.

The closest we came was when we were heading back to the ship in our last port, having spent our last CUC, and a young man greeted us. "I'm a teacher," he said. "And I'm trying to meet tourists." He asked us our names and where we were from. "I have a gift for you," he said, and presented me with one CUP. "A souvenir from my country." I thanked him and started to walk away. "Wait," he called. "You can give me a CUC for that." When we told him we didn't have any more CUCs, he wanted his "gift" back.

To summarize, here are my suggestions if you plan to visit Cuba:

·        Bring adequate cash, as you won't be able to rely on credit cards or ATMs.

·        If you have euros, Canadian dollars, British pounds, or most any currency besides USD, exchange that instead, in order to avoid the 10% fee.

·        Exchange as you go, and get only as much local currency as you think you'll need. (But plan for gratuities.) Our ship ended up skipping one of our planned ports, and many passengers had to wait in line for hours to exchange their Cuban money back into dollars, paying another 3% service charge.

·        Learn to distinguish between CUCs and CUPs, and watch your change.

What tips do you have about exchanging currency abroad? I'd love to hear your comments.

Sharon Marchisello is the author of Live Cheaply, Be Happy, Grow Wealthy.

Countdown to Financial Fitness: Remembering my Frugal Mother

Countdown to Financial Fitness: Remembering my Frugal Mother: My mother liked to be acknowledged on Mother's Day, but she bristled at the thought of money being spent on her. No gifts, a card was f...

Remembering my Frugal Mother

My mother liked to be acknowledged on Mother's Day, but she bristled at the thought of money being spent on her. No gifts, a card was fine.

Flowers (unless picked from one's garden) were too extravagant. When I got a job and became self-sufficient, I sent her flowers on Mother's Day and her birthday. "They're beautiful, honey, but you shouldn't have." And she meant it. I don't think she was ever able to enjoy them, she was so worried about how much the flowers--and the delivery--had cost me. After a while, I stopped sending her flowers, because they made her so uncomfortable.

My mother died before unlimited domestic calling was a common feature of most cell and landline plans. Back then, long-distance phone calls, with the charges escalating by the minute, made her nervous. As soon as she heard my voice on the line, she'd squeal, "Oh Sharon, how nice to talk to you. Thanks for calling." And sometimes she'd hang up before I had a chance to tell her the reason for my call.

Only the direst of emergencies warranted a long-distance telephone call. When my grandmother died, my mother wrote a letter to give me the news. (To her credit, she splurged on a special-edition, handwritten letter and thus an extra stamp; she didn't save that piece of information for the monthly family newsletter.) Still, I almost missed the funeral. My brother did miss the funeral, because he had a less-flexible work schedule than I and he didn't work for an airline that gave him free flight benefits.

When I moved to Los Angeles from Houston and drove with a friend across the desert in my semi-reliable 1976 Subaru, my parents wanted reassurance that I had arrived safely. "But don't waste money on a long-distance call," Mom instructed. "Tell the operator you want to make a person-to-person collect call to Sharon. When I answer and the operator asks for Sharon, I'll tell her Sharon isn't here. That will be our code. We'll know you arrived safely, and you won't have to pay for a long-distance call."

I inherited frugality from my mother, but I hope mine is less extreme.

My mother's attitude about long-distance calls changed a little when my brother got a job at Bell Labs. One of his employment perks was reduced-rate long-distance service; I think the company gave him an allotment of free minutes. Gradually, he convinced our mother that it wasn't breaking the bank for him to have a relaxed long-distance phone conversation with her.

I often wonder what my mother would do now that most cell phone plans offer unlimited domestic calling. Would she ever get used to it? Unfortunately, I'll never get to find out.

What endearing quirks does/did your mother have to save money? I'd love to hear your comments.

Sharon Marchisello is the author of Live Cheaply, Be Happy, Grow Wealthy.

Countdown to Financial Fitness: Earth Day Thoughts for Lawn and Garden Savings

Countdown to Financial Fitness: Earth Day Thoughts for Lawn and Garden Savings: One lesson I learned from earning a Master Gardener certification is that many people waste money on lawn and garden care. By working with ...

Earth Day Thoughts for Lawn and Garden Savings

One lesson I learned from earning a Master Gardener certification is that many people waste money on lawn and garden care. By working with the environment instead of against it, homeowners could spare themselves endless frustration—not to mention saving cash.

Put the right plant in the right place. Don't fight nature. Plan!

I used to buy impatiens every spring to fill the clay pots on my patio with color. One year, the very next day after I'd planted my new purchases, the deer ate them all. I awoke the next morning to chewed-down stems. Now I grow onions and oregano in those pots. The deer don't seem to bother them... yet.

Many homeowners have a love affair with turf grass. A lush, green carpet. It looks so easy. But grass has to be fertilized so it will grow. If it doesn't rain enough, it has to be watered. Don't get it too wet, though, or it's susceptible to disease. When it grows too tall, it has to be mowed. All that work takes time, costs money.

You apply pre-emergent in the spring and fall to keep the weeds from taking over. Left unattended, your lawn will revert to its natural state: a meadow of weeds. And what is a weed? It's a plant in the wrong place. For some reason, we want grass covering the lawn, not the plants that thrive there naturally, like dandelions, clover, and henbit.

The type of grass you can grow will be dictated by where you live. When we moved to Georgia, we were appalled that our Bermuda grass went dormant and turned a sickly yellowish-brown in the winter, unlike the verdant fescue we enjoyed in Seattle. But Bermuda is the only grass suited for Atlanta's hot summer weather. So Bermuda it is.

And grass doesn't grow in the shade. We have an area on the side of our house shaded all day by a large cherry tree and three river birches. Every year the trees grew taller and the lawn grew thinner. No amount of water, fertilizer, overseeding, and re-sodding with shade-tolerant cultivars could bring it back. Bermuda needs sun; even the "shade-tolerant" varieties need at least four hours a day.

The area is currently covered with mulch. I'm trying to talk my husband into laying a stone path and planting a shade-loving ground cover around it. Giving up on the lawn idea. Beats feeding the turf grass money pit.

Many homeowners follow an annual ritual of automatically adding lime and 10-10-10 fertilizer to their lawns, spending money without knowing whether these additives are actually needed. We did it, too, when we first moved in, because that's what everyone told us to do.

Then we found out about soil tests. For a nominal fee, our county extension office could analyze our soil and tell us what nutrients were missing, what was the PH factor, and what needed to change for the type of plant we wanted to grow in the space. Turns out we didn't need lime for our lawn. A total waste of money. And extra work to go buy the stuff, schlep it home, and put it down.

Even better if you get a soil test before you start planting...

Having a beautiful yard doesn't have to be as hard as we make it. The more you can incorporate native species, the less maintenance required. Native plants don't require as much water as imports because they're already adapted to the climate. They attract pollinators, which help them propagate. They thrive in the type of soil we have, so they need fewer amendments and less fertilizer. They're not as susceptible to pests and disease—all things that cost money to fix.

This Earth Day, be kind to the environment—and, inadvertently, you may be kind to your pocketbook as well.

What tips do you have for saving money in the garden? I'd love to hear your comments.

Sharon Marchisello is the author of Live Cheaply, Be Happy, Grow Wealthy.

Countdown to Financial Fitness: Almost Taken

Countdown to Financial Fitness: Almost Taken: The "docents" saw me coming. I'd stopped to read a sign about ground transportation and got temporarily separated from my hus...