Moving money overseas

[dutchgirl678]

We are about a week away from relocating overseas. So far I have been unsuccessful to set up a bank account over there from here, so that is the first thing I need to do over there. I have citizenship there so it shouldn't be a problem. If you relocated, how did you move your money from your American account to your overseas account? Do you have some useful expat websites that helped you answer these types of questions? 

[dutchgirl678]

That is what I'm thinking though. But since I don't have an account yet I wonder if you can wire money by talking to your bank over the phone. I've only ever done it in person. I also wonder about an address change here to the IL's address since we want to keep the account open. I guess I'll just call our bank to find out more.

[dutchgirl678]

That is good to know, thanks!

[orriskitten]

Ask your bank. Different banks have different policies and different rules on transfers, both domestic and international.

My bank needed us to be there to make a transfer internationally, but we had an account in Iceland so that wasn't an issue. I know some other people who have moved did not have to be there though. Your bank would be most knowledgeable.

[rupertpenny]

We didn't have a bank set up until after we moved, and even them it took forever for it to be fully functional because we had to get our government ID cards and establish an address before they would give us a debit/ATM card.

In the meantime we just left our money in our US account. We used credit cards with no international transaction fees and got money from the ATM for about $3 a transaction. We had to do this for about a month.

Now we wire money between accounts as needed (usually sending money to the US to pay our student loans). The Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar so we don't have to worry too much about changing exchange rates.

[origami]

We kept our US bank account and added my mom to the account. With my bank the first wire transfer has to be done in person. We had never done one so she will have to do it. DH's employer (US company) pays us in dollars and transfers a portion of his pay to our overseas account monthly. We just need wire transfers for out of the ordinary purchases like my car.

ETA: we also brought a few thousand in cash on the plane.

[MauMau]

I believe many have used xe.com around here. I personally haven't. mrsukyankee I believe has but I know she is on vacation and probably isn't around right now.

[potatopie]

Only problem with XE is that it only works with certain countries of residency.

[pittpurple]

Just so you know citizenship wasn't the problem for us in the uk, we just couldn't set up a bank account without an address. Do you have an address you can use? You usually need proof of address, like a letter from the letting agency or an electricity bill or something and that's where we ran into the problem.

We brought a couple thousand in travellers cheques (we didn't trust ourselves with cash) and just left the rest in the states and slowly depleted it each time we visited, we didn't have a huge amount of savings or anything though so that was just easier rather than lose money on fees. When we needed to move money back (we were paying down my school loan), we used paypal but I don't recommend it as the fees are really high.

[GilliC]

First move we depended heavily on out US banks and bought as much as possible via no-transaction-fee credit card. And ATM withdrawals. We also brought a good chunk in traveler's checks just in case, but that was 9 years ago.

Second move, we brought a few thousand dollars in $100 bills and were able to deposit it into the new account in Norway. (My parents bought traveler's checks when they came to visit two years ago, and none of the banks would cash them! They had to go downtown to the Western Union!)

[dutchgirl678]

Thanks guys! We are moving in with my parents for a little bit and in the Netherlands you have to go to city hall to register at that address so I assume we will get a receipt of that that will serve as a proof of address.

[dutchgirl678]

Just an update for everybody. We went to the bank (a local credit union) and changed our address to that overseas and our mailing address to MIL's address. We also added her to the account so she can cash checks for us or request a wire transfer for us once we have our account over there set up.

[Deleted]

Aug 12, 2014 14:48:14 GMT -5 neeps said:

I've used xe.com for close to 10 years now. It's by far the cheapest way to transfer money. If you transfer money via ETF or draft there are no fees. It takes some work to get it set up and they ask for a lot of information, but still the best way I've found for transfers.

We do similar. We use OANDA to transfer.

We also bank with HSBC in the UK and you can set up an account in your home country and transfer easily between them. It was a nice option but we transfer above £5000 at a time and it is cheaper to use OANDA. If we were doing frequent smaller transactions we would have opened an HSBC account in our home country.

[kaz2009]

I don't usually post here usually... But anyway, we are expats in the US, and were in Canada. Setting up bank accounts in not your own country and getting credit cards can be a real headache as we found out when we moved to Canada. So we have now is an HSBC premier account in Canada, the US and and UK and can transfer the money between all 3 with no problems. We were also able to get credit cards a bit easier through them, and probably could have got mortgages too. You do need to have a certain amount of money to be eligible for the premier accounts (different depending on the countries) but we put retirement savings in there and that was enough. Definitely worth looking into it made our life a lot easier moving here good luck with your move