Currency

I have never bought too much cash for a one week visit. We are spending 16 days in Nov/Dec. I’m wondering from your experience what is the largest denomination of US dollars that are generally accepted at small shops and beach bars.

We always take more than we figure we'd need. Better to have it than not. We take a mix of 100's 50's 20's 10's 5's and 1's. Never had a problem with any denomination. One time this last trip I was refused using an older 100 but he next place took it.

We also bring a mix of denominations. Keep in mind, a small shop or business early in the day is less apt to be able to break a large denomination so we really load up our cash with tens and twenties as well as fives for tips.
That said, we charge as we go to our no-conversion credit cards and pay it off once home. We save the hundreds for dinners and shopping. And don’t forget, if you start to run low on smaller denominations, the casinos will generally break the larger bills for you. 🙂🙂

When you say 'small shops', I wouldn't try to crack a $100 bill when I was going to buy something for $10. My personal rule of thumb is that I wouldn't use a $100 bill at a smaller place unless I was spending at least $50, but that is more out of respect for a merchant. It's very hard for a small merchant to make change if his cash register is full with $100 bills. We usually break our $100 bills at a grocery store or when buying a meal.

"we charge as we go to our no-conversion credit cards and pay it off once home"
Same here. Love them miles.

We usually charge most things at the beginning of the trip, until we see how our cash is going, then usually pay more cash at the end.

as the saying goes, “CREDIT card IS KING”

What’s a no-conversion credit card?

We use no conversion fee credit cards whenever possible and take some cash with us...adding more if needed from a bank ATM (also reimbursded fee). I don't like a lot of cash on me at anytime...

A no conversion fee cc is one that allows you to charge in whatever the local currency is and does NOT add a fee to convert it into US dollars, allowiing you to get the best rate with no add-ons.

Thanks Pat. I’ll check my cards.

Bumping this thread.
Do most of you carry cash in USD, or in Euros? I tend to charge as much as I can on no-fee cards, but will bring either USD or Euros for smaller transactions.
What tends to work out best as far as conversion rates go?
(I'll most likely spend the majority of my time on the French side, but not exclusively, of course).

I don't know about anyone else, but we never get Euros, only take dollars.

We also only bring US dollars. We charge whatever we can on our Capital One Venture Card, which gives us 2% cash back, and doesn't charge either a foreign transaction fee or a currency conversion fee. On the French side, we always ask that the charge be put through in Euros, so that we get the current conversion rate. Many establishments have their own conversion rate, which may be better or worse than the actual current rate. While we use the credit card whenever we can, we also make sure to have the amount of cash with us that we expect to spend that day, as you never know when the internet might be down and the credit card can't be run.

Never gotten Euros in all our trips and all our years. Did run across a few errant Francs from another lifetime ago.
Changing currency just isn’t an issue. If you are on that side of the island US Dollars are readily accepted at most places or charge in Euros on a cc with no conversion fees. At least, that’s what we do……..

unless you already have euros, you don't need to buy any in the US to bring down to SXM...if you decide you want/need euros, and have an ATM card that doesn't charge any fees and even reimburses local ATM fees (Schwab, Fidelity, etc.), your best exchange rate should be from an ATM on the french side of the island

Never have used euro on SXM. USD or CC for everything. Plus when the conversion rate is low (like now) there are a lot of places that have 1:1 USD: euro which add a discount for using USD (like Cadisco gas)

I have used a French side ATM to get euro for an upcoming trips to France but that's my only use