[Marsh]

Just wondering if any of you send money regularly to the UK and if so have you fixed the exchange rate. We are in a position that we will need to do this for a while and were just curious if anyone else is in the same boat? The £ getting stronger than the $ is annoying when you are sending money back. Anyway just asking. Thank you.:nice1

[Avalon]

I have sent money back to the UK, but I do it in lump sums.

This is because if you set up monthly payments back to the UK - the exchange rate you get is a LOT worse than doing it in one go.

I only ever use HiFX, who I find to be the best and cheapest for currency exchange:

www.hifx.co.nz or www.hifx.co.uk

The best thing to do is to talk to them (or whoever else you choose) and ask for both rates at the same time. Then you can work out the difference in how much mony you end up with at the other end, and make a decision about whether the loss of £ is worth the convenience of monthly payments.

HiFX will allow you to set a monthly transfer for between 6 and 18 months. The exchange rate for the whole of that is set on the day you make the decision to go ahead and for a contract with them. There is a minimum transfer of $1000 a month, but other than that, remember there are no extra fees.

If you have $10,000 available in NZ - thats the minimum that HiFX will transfer in a normal trade - and you will get a LOT better rate for that.

Does that help?

[marcia]

Would be easier to leave it in an account (if you can afford to!0 in the uk that you can deal online with - we did this but also left my dad with a cheque book and got him as an authorised signatory. I can do oline tranfers to peoles accounts for birthdays etc, and people pay into it for the kids for birthdays and xmas and i just convert it to dollars for them here and buy them stuff to that value or give them the money.

Just another idea to consider rather than keep swapping it back and forwards!

[jubjub]

We started off with what Marcia said, then had to use out Uk fund to get us out of a hole here... presents are now either flowers or chocs, or other things organised online and paid for by NZ credit card. Cash presents for us from UK get paid into the UK accounts.

recently we booked flights and had to use our old UK credit card, and ahve had to transfer funds to pay it off. We did this via ASB online banking system, it costs $20 this end, and when it hits your UK account they make a charge too, Nationwide 10 pounds, Royal Bank was 7 pounds when it hit the account. You see straight away how much you will get. and its pretty fast too. think it was in our UK account within 2 days!

[Marsh]

Wow thanks for all the information. We have a lot to consider and will certainly be doing so now. Thank you again.

[Carey]

Would be easier to leave it in an account (if you can afford to!0 in the uk that you can deal online with - we did this but also left my dad with a cheque book and got him as an authorised signatory. I can do oline tranfers to peoles accounts for birthdays etc, and people pay into it for the kids for birthdays and xmas and i just convert it to dollars for them here and buy them stuff to that value or give them the money.

Just another idea to consider rather than keep swapping it back and forwards!

Do you mind saying which bank you do this with? We're having trouble finding a definitive answer when we ask to keep an account open but with a NZ address.

[marcia]

Our Uk account is with Lloyds TSB - but we have kept the address at my dads as we put him on as a signatory - (he also had power of attorney and completed our house sale for us - still can't thank him enough!) The money from our house sale went into that account and dad then did a chaps payemnt for the bulk of it to our ASB london account, and we dealt with them by phone to arrange the transfer to our NZ account.

Lloyds are aware that we moved to NZ but are quite happy for dad to run the account - well i guess they are because its still going! One of the main reasons for us keeping it is our life insurance policy is paid by direct debit from it - we have looked into trying to get a comparable policy here but it would cost a lot more for not as good cover so sticking with the one we have!

Do you have a trustworthy family member who you could add as a signatory, leaving a cheque book with, but still be able to access the account yourself online?

HTH

[Rabbit]

Just wanted to say, I have found Hifx easy to use and very relliable with funds being back in the UK within 24 hours.

Moving large sums can be daunting and it all went ok with Hifx, regular payments I have little experience of.

Rabbit.

[mgbridges]

We bank with First Direct in the UK and they have never had a problem with us keeping the account open but living overseas. We just ring up and change the address as and when we need to.

They will do transfers for us but we used HiFx to transfer the funds from our house sale as it was such a large amount.

HTH
Anneliese

[DB]

We still have a UK based credit card (long story), and thus have to send money semi-regularly to the UK, and usually fairly small amounts, like less than £100, and often much less.

To do the transfers I use XeTrade, paying by electronic transfer in NZ and them sending a draft (bank cheque) in the UK. This way there are zero processing fees.

Ok, so I might not get quite the best rate, but savings on wire fees at both ends dwarfs any minor niggles in exchange rates on small transfers.