May 26th, 2026
By Margaret Allen
PRESENTED BY Crowne Point Tax & Wealth Counsel
THIS WEEK
The Summer Travel Fee Most People Miss
With Memorial Day weekend behind us, summer travel spending is officially underway. Flights, hotels, restaurants, airport runs, overseas shopping, and last-minute upgrades are about to start hitting statements fast.
That makes this the right week to check the card you plan to use before the trip begins.
The quiet cost is still the foreign transaction fee. It is usually around 3%, which does not sound dramatic until it follows you across every hotel bill, dinner, train ticket, and souvenir purchase abroad. On $1,500 of international spending, that is roughly $45 gone before rewards even have a chance to matter.
That is the summer travel version of a bad tax: easy to overlook, avoidable with planning, and frustrating once you realize you paid it for no reason.
Recent travel card rankings from NerdWallet, Bankrate, and Kiplinger all point to the same shift: no-foreign-transaction-fee cards are no longer a luxury feature. They are becoming the baseline. Capital One and Discover now waive foreign transaction fees across every card in their lineup, which makes the old 3% fee harder to justify.
Before summer travel begins, check three things:
Does the card charge foreign transaction fees? If yes, you may be giving away money on every overseas purchase.
Will you actually use the card’s travel credits? Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, lounge access, baggage credits, and travel statement credits only offset the annual fee if they match your real plans.
Can the card keep travel spending organized? Clean statements matter if part of the trip involves work, reimbursement, business development, or expenses you need to review later.
The right travel card is not just about points. It is about avoiding small charges that quietly pile up before you ever unpack.
ALSO THIS WEEK
Your Savings Account May Already Be Slipping
If your savings account APY looks lower than it did in April, you are not imagining it. NerdWallet’s latest rate sweep found that 11 high-yield savings accounts adjusted rates since early April, and 10 of them lowered APYs.
The national savings average drifted from 0.39% to 0.38%, while top accounts are still paying meaningfully more. Vio Bank was around 4.03% APY as of mid-May, and Bankrate’s top one-year CD was around 4.10%.
That matters during travel season because cash needs tend to rise. Deposits, final payments, family trips, and summer expenses can pull money out of savings quickly. If that cash is sitting in a low-yield account, the cost is quiet but real.
Yes, savings interest is taxable. But earning less interest is not a strategy. The better move is to earn the best reasonable yield, keep the records clean, and plan for the tax impact later.
The move this week is simple: check your current APY, compare it against top high-yield savings accounts, and decide whether convenience is still worth the lost interest.
QUICK HIT
The Travel Receipts Worth Keeping
Summer trips create more paper trails than most people realize. Some expenses are purely personal, but others may need to be saved for reimbursement, business records, warranty claims, travel insurance, or year-end review.
That includes hotel folios, airfare receipts, rental car bills, conference-related expenses, client meals, baggage fees, and large purchases made abroad. Even if something does not become deductible, having the receipt can make the difference between a clean record and a messy guess later.
The key is not to turn every trip into a tax project. It is to keep the records that may matter before they disappear into email, apps, and faded paper.
The simple move: create one folder for summer travel receipts now, then sort later.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Three Summer Money Checks Before You Travel
A good summer money plan does not need to be complicated. It just needs to catch the small costs before they become part of the trip.
First, check the card you plan to use abroad. If it charges a foreign transaction fee, replace it before the spending starts. A 3% fee is not a travel expense. It is a planning miss.
Second, check where your cash is sitting. Banks are already trimming APYs, and summer is not the time to leave idle cash earning far below market if you need it for upcoming expenses.
Third, keep receipts for anything that may matter later. That includes reimbursable travel expenses, business-related spending, major purchases, travel insurance claims, and anything you may need to review when tax season comes around.
The theme is not “turn your vacation into a tax project.” The theme is simpler: travel is more expensive when you do not plan the money side first.
A better card, a better savings rate, and better records will not change where you go this summer. But they can change how much of your money comes home with you.
That’s the week. See you next issue.
Margaret Allen
Editor-in-Chief
Smrtt Money
P.S. Tax season doesn't wait — and neither do the rules. The sooner you have a strategy in place, the more you keep. Book your free 30-minute session here.