How do you transfer your cash? (from UK to NZ)

[dawn]

I was wondering if anyone uses an agent or if they just use their banks?

My bank wouldn't let me set up a standing order to my NZ bank account, well, not without charging me £25 for each transaction!!!

Is there an easier way to get my money into my NZ account?

TIA

Dawn

[Cardy]

Hello Dawn
we opened our accounts in Nz by electronic transfer it cost about 15 english pounds. We have kept our uk accounts open to pay bills and things till the house sells and just do them on the phone banking or the internet so we dont even need to speak to the bank. When our uk house sells we have already had the paperwork authorised by our banks in england so they can send the dosh in one go and then we will close them. We had to take our pasprts and some id in to the uk bank and have it all sanctioned but it didnt cost anything.I am working in NZ now so were just living on my wages here and not touching the english money. Also because the house in uk is empty i dont pay any water rates at all and dont have to pay any house rates for 6 months thats saving a bit on the running costs. Hope his helps .Cardy

[dawn]

It does help thanks, I was wondering more about getting the money to our NZ account from our UK account. We're keeping our UK accounts open for a while too and we have internet banking, so that'll be easy to keep using.

What I really want to do is set up a standing order to transfer a weekly amount out of the UK account into the NZ account. According to my bank, it's not just a straightforward standing order setup. So what other options are available to me?

Say I wanted to transfer £500 each week from my UK account to my NZ account. Should I build it up in my UK account and do it all in one go?

[jubjub]

You can use specialists such as HIFX, or xe.com

You could open an ASB account, they open a UK and a NZ based one you transfer into the UK one and the rest is done by ASB, easy peasy, HOWEVER ASB charge you £15 for each transfer under (i think) £30,000. So you would be better doing one big move and the rate is generally 0.02 under the bank exchange rate. but from what I understand they shut UK one after two years.

Other method is open a Nationwide Flexaccount and use your cashpoint card over here, its free and you get the bank exchange rate on that day.

[dawn]

£30k?? lol, I wish

I think I might check out HIFX, see if they can do it, otherwise, I'm just gonna keep spending! I need to get the money out of the country and away from my spendaholic hands!

Love the idea of Nationwide, will contact them - thanks!

[Hannah]

We used ASB and I would recommend this as a pain free easy way to transfer money. If you keep your original account open in UK you can always write a personal cheque to pay money into the ASB London account (thus avoiding electronic transfer charges from your original bank) whenever you need money sent across. Yes, there is a 15 pound charge but then all banks will try and charge something for sending money.

The forms we filled in to open the account were simple. We just posted them through and within a few days we had a letter from ASB confirming details of our London and NZ account. Simple.

ASB will also hold money for you, only transferring it when you request (e.g. because the exchange rate has improved). When we transferred money just before we arrived we were offered and exchange rate of 2.505 where as the post office were offering 2.39 at the time and Nationwide were offering 2.33.
The other benefit with ASB is you just activate your local account in New Zealand by taking in your passports and you get eftpos cards issued there and then. The biggest benefit for us was that you didn't have to have an NZ residential address to open the account (unlike many other banks) so good for people in temporary/holidaymaker accommodation. Your UK address is considered as acceptable for the purposes of opening the ASB account in the first place.

Sorry if this does not help those living in countries other than the UK. If you want to find out if your country has a transfer branch I'd suggest a web search on ASB.

[tee and dee]

Do migrants have to pay NZ Inland Revenue taxes of any kind when bringing in money e.g. from the sale of a house in the U.K. ?
tracey

[Delson]

Hi Dawn

I've got a Nationwide current account and credit card, which I always use when I'm abroad - best rates and no charges. You could open one, then set up a standing order from "your" account into the Nationwide account and withdraw from a cash machine in NZ - no charges and a good exchange rate. My friend works for them and now if you credit £1000.00 per month into it, you get an interest rate of 4.25% which is very good.

Sonia

[dawn]

Thanks for that Sonia, someone else suggested it too, so it must be worth having a look

[katandbob]

Rob used http://www.tranzfers.com/ to send our money for our rental, the rate is live, and the charge was a lot less than the banks £25!
so once the money was in the holding account, Rob sat watching the rate till it was at a good one, and then hit the submit button to get that rate...(I think he enjoyed the buzz of getting a good rate, and 15 seconds later it fell.....poor lads bored to death!)

( for small amounts, check out Western union - we paid the deposit in Feb/march with this $500 NZD which worked out at around £200 at the time and it cost us £7! and the rate wasn't bad either)

Kat...........

Ps thanks Delson, will tell Rob to look into the nationwide account