Moving to NZ from the UK (Mainly money queries!!)

[V1kk1]

Hi Guys,

Firstly, apologies if these are questions that arise often on the forum but I wonder if someone could give me some advise please?

Myself & my boyfriend are moving out to New Zealand Jan next year and I have two questions...

1) We will be taking over around £5000 - £6000, What is the best way for transferring our cash? We will be opening a NZ bank when we get there but is it best to take travellers cheques, cash (Which would be a bit silly if we got mugged/lost our bags etc!!) Paypal, Or just keeping it in my UK Santander account and making a bank transfer when we have opening our account in NZ?

2) I pay my mum just short of £100 a month over here to cover a credit card I used a while back and I will want to continue this when I move - I've seen a few discussions on the forum about different companies charging ridiculous amounts to make monthly payments to the UK... But as the payment is going straight to my Mum I just wondered if anyone uses paypal to make their payments and if this is a good/cheap option? I understand this would not be good if I was paying a company etc but I'd just be transferring it to my mums Paypal account for her to pay over to her bank account?

Any help is much appreciated!! And sorry if all of the above is a bit garbled!!

Thanks, Vicky

[Karen Phillips]

Hi
There are several different ways of doing this. We have used www.ozforex.com.au (there's an NZ version, but I am fairly sure it's the same company). You register online from UK or wherever you are at the time. Once you have proved your current address etc, you have an account. It's free. You then watch the exchange rate. When you see a good rate you just book it online. The deal will tell you exactly how much you will get. Then you follow their instructions to pay the money into an Ozforex account and tell them where you want it to go. Once you have done this the money appears by magic within a couple of days in the other country and currency. If you transfer more than a minimum amount (I think it's currently $10,000 AU - that's about £6800) there is no charge. We were really nervous the first time, but we have used it many times now and never had a problem. Hope this helps! Karen

[Mamee & Co]

Open an NZ bank account from the UK and transfer the funds before coming. On arrival take your passport into the bank, pick up your card and you are good to go!
For small amounts you will find it quite costly on the transfers as it is often a unit charge rate. I think it will be a case of shopping around alternatives until you find the cheapest.

[V1kk1]

Thank you both.

I have had a quick check again and can see that HSBC have banks in New Zealand too and it says they don't charge a fee for transfers from one HSBC account to another. I might open one here and one in NZ and just transfer between the two (I haven't read the small print yet though so there may be a clause or two!)

I didn't realise you could open a NZ account whilst still in the UK so thanks for that too - that's really helpful!!

[JandM]

Be very careful to check about HSBC, because they aren't actually as closely connected in the two countries as you might think, and there aren't many branches in NZ, so one won't necessarily be convenient for where you will be living.

[Sun777]

2) I pay my mum just short of £100 a month over here to cover a credit card I used a while back and I will want to continue this when I move - I've seen a few discussions on the forum about different companies charging ridiculous amounts to make monthly payments to the UK... But as the payment is going straight to my Mum I just wondered if anyone uses paypal to make their payments and if this is a good/cheap option? I understand this would not be good if I was paying a company etc but I'd just be transferring it to my mums Paypal account for her to pay over to her bank account?

It didn't turn out to be good idea for us to transfer payments to UK on monthly basis with the transfer fees, timing involved, ridiculous exchange rate etc, so I took a small loan here and settled with UK finances one and for all.

Paypal is good but it will still involve some timing delay and exchange rate might still be slightly different from what you can get from local currency exchange.

Just to add what JandM said above, I had to settle above load with HSBC UK and when I contacted their NZ branch they mentioned that their systems were not interlinked and the process would be same as any local bank ANZ, Westpac, BNZ etc.