I once paid almost £150 for a manicure. Stupid, I know. It happened in Tokyo —although that wasn’t the stupid part. I’m sure not everyone goes to Tokyo and pays an exorbitant sum for a shape and polish. It was stupid because I thought I was paying something closer to £40.

My defence is that the yen/sterling exchange rate had been extremely volatile, and at Christmas last year, when I made my trip, it was about 130 yen to the pound. Not a particularly easy sum to divide in your head.

I also had to take the lift up 36 floors to the spa at the Mandarin Oriental, so perhaps the altitude got me — and the view.

Anyway, the point is, foreign currency is tricky. It is easy to spend over the odds just walking out of the front door of your hotel — and that’s before you consider all the sneaky fees and charges the banks and foreign-exchange providers love to levy on holidaymakers.

So, I have a plan. On my next holiday (two weeks in Germany later this month), I am going to make back the £100 or so I overspent on my nails by beating all those fees and charges. Here’s how.

BEFORE LEAVING

£37 to be saved

Straightaway I’m saving by not purchasing my travel cash at the airport, where Travelex is currently charging a princely £472.96 for €500. If I went into a Thomas Cook agency, I’d pay a not-much-better £468.67; and my bank, HSBC, would charge £459.70 if I pre-ordered. Instead, I’ll get a better deal online. I can pay £435.73 by pre-ordering from Best Exchange (bestexchange.co.uk), although I have to pick up the cash from a branch in London’s West End. If that’s not ideal, ICE (iceplc.com) has about 30 branches at UK airports and stations. It charges £441.50.

A word of caution: bureaux de change advertising “commission free” cash are no guarantee of a good deal. All this means is that there is no one-off charge for exchanging your money — but if the rate is poor, you won’t get a good deal. Change money with Amex on the high street and, although it’s “commission free”, the exchange rate is ­almost 6% worse than at “commission free” Travelex.

AT THE CASH MACHINE

£11 to be saved

I’m also likely to get some cash from an ATM in Germany. Using my Natwest debit card, it would cost me £183.60 to withdraw €200. If I had Nationwide’s traveller-friendly Flex­Account debit card, I would pay nothing, but I don’t — and, rather than apply for a new one, I’m tempted to choose from the increasingly fashionable prepaid card range. Caxton FX, for example, recently abandoned charging ATM fees, so with­drawing €200 at the ATM would cost £172.41.

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