Katypop- Where do you work to get it that cheap! Bank, Tomas Cook Office, Exchange office, US government office???!!!????
cndncruiz- Money for your trip- You can charge anything you like down in the U.S to any of your Cdn. Credit cards, (hotel, foods, gifts etc.) when you receive your statement you CC company uses the exchange rate the day of the charge + 2-3 points Fee. for example: $100. U.S (gift), the rate for that day (in the news) is $1.35, CC will charge you 1.37- 1.38 on your conversion and the Cdn amount is what you will be billed. $138.00CDN
The easiest thing to deal with in DL is by using U.S money! I don't think Americans think there is any other currency in the world
At your bank, you can buy U.S cash or U.S. travelers cheques, generally the rate you get from you bank for travellers checks with be lower than taking it in cash, just ask them for the rates for both. TCs are definitely safer than carrying large amounts of cash, and you'll have NO PROBLEM cashing them in DL. When you buy them at your bank they'll just withdrawal the money from your account.
US account- no, it doesn't grow before your eyes
, most of us here make many trips to the U.S. a year. So instead of going through the exchange rate bouncing all over the place, and exchanging U.S money BACK to Cdn if you some left over (LOL) we just put it into a U.S account. This is an account at your bank, thats a " savings account" but its only in U.S. dollars, you put US in, and you withdrawal straight U.S. out. When we talk about it "growing, we mean that we exchanged money from our CDN accounts and deposited it to our U.S one. Then theres no panicking before our trips that the rate are back up to 1.62cdn ( like last year) when we know we bought it at $1.38
Sorry if this was too "basic" in my explanation, I wasn't trying to be insulting, I just wasn't sure how much you already knew so I explained EVERYTHING (that's the teacher in me). Hope this helps, any more questions..... feel free to ask away.