Ask Brian: Spending money?

Bob from Long Beach Island writes to ask what I'm doing for money while I'm here.

We get a set amount of money for all of our personal expenses like food, laundry, souvenirs, etc. It is calculated in dollars, then we're given a Visa ("The official card of the Olympics") debit card with the money loaded on it. Because Visa has a tie-in with the Olympics, there are cash machines at the Main Press Center, housing and venues.

The machines dispense RMB (the currency here, sometimes called yuan) just like cash machines work at home. The exchange rate is 7 RMB to the dollar.

To give you an idea of costs, a chicken sandwich at McDonald's in the MPC costs 11 RMB (not quite two dollars). A double-cheeseburger meal (sandwich, fries and a soda) costs 30 RMB (or a little over four bucks). The other night, I had noodles with shrimp in the food court at the MPC and it cost 20 RMB with a soda.

In the vending machines, a bottle of Coke Zero is 5 RMB and bottled water (needed here because of the fear of the tap water) is 3.

Whatever is left over at the end of the assignment is ours to keep so it is worth looking around for bargains (breakfast is free with your housing so I load up there and have a light lunch). You can bring the debit cards home with you and get dollars at any Visa cash machine in the US. That saves you conversion fees and carrying around large sums of cash.

That's it. Pretty simple and so much better than the days when we used to get the whole per diem in cash, in the local currency, in an envelope the first day!

Got a question? E-mail me at bhorton@ap.org and we'll answer it on the blog.

brian