Transfering Finances

Hello Everyone

I have made some great progress in my plans to get to England. I now have my holiday maker visa, flight booked, and a place to stay for the first 2 weeks that I am there. Everything is really starting to come together.

The one area that I have been worrying about is money. I have been working my butt off trying to save up a nice little pile of cash so that when I get to London, I can survive for a little bit and not have to freak out about getting a job right away. But unfortunately, I have not been able to find a good way to get my money to England, so I can start using it. I have heard some people suggest setting up an account through HSBC, but I looked into that and they will only open an international account if you have been with them for more than 6 months. Since I am leaving in June, that doesn't work.

All the other suggestions I have heard sound a little iffy, like get a money order (I would freak out carrying a single slip of paper that represents all my money!) and setup an account in England with it, or leave my money in Canada and just use my canadian debit card to make large withdrawals at ATM machines until my account is empty.

If anyone has any suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Beyond11

You could possibly just keep your Canadian account, and write a cheque from it to deposit to a new account in the UK.

I've been sending cheques to my Canadian account, drawn on my UK account, and that seems to be the cheapest, easiest way of transferring my funds (though it takes a few weeks for the whole thing to clear). I see no reason this wouldn't work the other way as well. Perhaps you could just bring enough money with you to open an account over here to begin with.

Don't deposit Canadian funds in your UK account. First of all, it will take nothing less than a miracle for you to get a bank account set up here immediately. Second, if you somehow managed to do so, they will levy enormous charges on the exchange rate. I can easily deposit cheques in my Canadian account, but not so the other way around.

I've done this, and I live here now. If you want advice getting a bank account, let me know. But it will be cheaper for you to continue using your Canadian card here. Bring a little bit of cash, though, because some ATMs may reject you for the sake of it.

Ya the best way def is to just take out cash from you Canadian card at a bank machine here in the UK . I just would take out large sums so you don't have to pay the $5 CAN service charge per transaction. Also make sure you have a 4 digit pin number. If not chane it before you come over here.

Also I know some of you disagree with me, but the cheapest and quickest way to send money home Paypal. Have an account on both ends. I have researched all the methods and Paypal wins. Yea, I know I can send cheques home but I can't wait 30 days for my money to clear I have a visa to pay off. Plus my bank told me they would charge me $10 for an oversea cheque, plus a crap exchange rate...

Money..money ..money

I also send a cheque to Canada each month that is drawn on my UK account. My bank does not charge me $10 nor do they hold the funds for 30 days. However, this was only after the person who makes my deposit for me complained, as it only takes less than 10 days for the cheque to clear my account here.

Banks are arrogant, that's all it is.

Thanks for the great info. From what I can gather, sending cheques to Canada from the UK is a lot easier than the reverse.
I have heard about the "take large sums out with my debit card" suggestion, but I had heard that the banks would charge me 8 pounds! each time i do it, and I would get a really bad exchange rate. Is that true?
I was also looking into the paypal thing, but i would feel more comfortable using a really wire service, like western union.
Lastly, I have heard some good word of mouth about Nationwide, a credit union in the UK. I have heard that they are really friendly to work with and it is easy to setup an account wiht them. Also, according to their website, they have interent banking, debit cards, and credit cards. Does anyone have any other info about Nationwide? Is there a huge difference between banks and credit unions?

Thanks again for all the great info.

Ben Beyond