[caaron]

I know there will be a lot of different answers to this but...
Did you find you used more cash or credit cards while in country? If you used cash, would you mind PM'ing me or post if comfortable with approximate amount. I think I may have underestimated and now I'm nervous.
Thank you all so much for your help!

[Katie63011]

Definitely used way more cash than credit cards.

The only thing that we used credit for was some of our hotel expense.

All meals, inter country plane tickets, grocery store runs etc were in cash.

I think we used around $4000 in cash for trip #2. That was all hotels except for Moscow and food and incidentals and included money we tipped which was another $500. It also included our drivers in Moscow which was pretty price at $100 a pop each time we went to/from an airport or to the embassy.

[his,mine&ours]

Souvenirs - all cash, probably 750 or so?
Meals - credit in Moscow, 50+ per meal. cash(rubles) in region.
Rubles/cash for entry fees to Kremlin etc, cabs, tour guides
We took 4K cash and put another 500. on credit. I know that we came back with cash, but not sure how much! That didn't include hotel or airfare.

We spent pretty freely so I'm sure a lot of people could get by with less!

[MissDaisyofTexas]

For Trip #1, we used about $1000. And that was for souvenirs and a few meals. We were able to use a credit card for our hotel and all of our meals inside the hotel (which was most of our meals). We were in Vladivostok.

[lakimnafite]

I think we spent about $2000 on trip 1 (which included the in country plane tickeets). Trip 2 we took about the same, but needed more. However, we used our credit card for hotels and used ATMs to get rubles as needed.

[k8c]

I live in St. P.

You can use your ATM card to get money here for when you need cash (souveniers, small shops). For your hotel, larger shops & restraunts you'll be fine with a credit card.

Use ATM's that are attached to a bank if possible. (I try to stick to Citibank and Baltisky Bank when possible.) We frequently hear about ATM scams here.

Don't worry and enjoy your trip!

[MamaChinch]

We took $3500 on trip 1 and $4000 cash on trip two and spent fairly freely in Moscow and in region. That cash also covered in-coutry flight, and hotel in region, but I used my credit card only for the hotel in Moscow. I had plenty of cash left over on both trips ($500-1000). I made sure to change most of my money in Moscow before going the region.

[Waiting4Skip]

Definetely cash more than CC, however, there were plenty of ATM's where I could get cash advances off my Debit Card.

Judy

[crispex]

My wife went on trip 1 solo and only brought about $1k in cash and came back with about $500. Most of the cash used was for hotel (2 nights in Nahodka hotel did not take CC) and other in-country expenses.

On trip 2, we brought $2500 in cash (some bills weren't acceptable). We still came back with about $400-$500, but we bought very few souvineers and didn't travel a lot (most of our time was spent with our new daughter). Our hotel in Vladivostok took CC so meals and hotel stay were all covered.

If your hotel doesn't accept CC, expect to bring well over $5,000 in cash to cover hotel and restaurant costs as well as other money to "play" with.