Yesterday I blathered on, or as the Admiral prefers to put it, pontificated about finances without offering any solutions, so today I will describe two that we have come up with. They are hardly our idea but they are definitely worth passing on to anyone planning a cruise into the US.

First, there are several Canadian banks with a presence in the US. Ours, RBC, is one of them. You can get them to open a US funds bank account and to get you a US debit card with a VISA number on it. This will suffice to give you a US address for the second recommendation that we will make and it will allow you to move monies around without the bank's computers converting currencies from Canadian to US $$ and back again and charging you a fee for doing it. With us it is one lump transfer a month while we are in the US from our Canadian account where I get our various incomes deposited. I suppose that we could have the deposits made directly to the US account but then when we return home in 6-8 months we would have to get it shifted back and that is too much of a pain to contemplate. You can even transfer the reward points that you get on the US card to the one that you have for Canada.

The second thing that you do as soon as you cross the boarder is go into one of the cell phone stores and get a US cell phone. They have a lot more competition south of the border and the rates are way, way, way more beneficial for little old us, the consumer. Most of them have anywhere in North American rates that are quite reasonable and certainly a lot more reasonable than the roaming charges that the Canadian carriers will want to charge you. Make sure that you turn off your Canadian cell phones; don't try to call forward your Canadian numbers to your American one or you'll defeat the purpose of getting it. Both those steps will do a lot for your cash flow and stop you bleeding money for the benefit of the financial institutions and the telephone companies. If this seem so obvious that it is insulting to even mention it, pardon us but it took two cruises to sink home with us and we definitely feel that they are points well worth passing on.