LeafPeeper

Hi,

My wife (usa) and I (uk) are planning to move to New Hampshire in the coming year. We will most likely have around £150,000 to transfer. I would like to ask for advice on the best way to transfer it that incurs the least cost in fees and that would yield an exchange rate which is as close to the official published one, ie 1.65 dollars to the pound at present.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thank You.

Pulaski

Look for other threads, but the usual recommendations are xe.com, xoom.com, worldfirst.com, and one or two others. If you search for BE threads containing xe.com you should see the other recommendations. Another very recent thread mentioned that, for some reason, someone was having difficulty sending more than $25,000/day, so that might impact you too. I have used xe.com a number of times myself, including transferring the net proceeds of my house sale, so I consider them entirely trustworthy. FWIW, xe.com now belongs to Western Union, so a known, reliable, name.

Tip: when you make your transfer instruction, request "credit by direct transfer" or "ACH" (I don't recall which xe.com says), but in any case do NOT request "credit by wire", or your bank in the US is likely to stick you with a wire fee.

LeafPeeper

Thank You for your response Polaski,I will check out the sites you mention.

LeafPeeper

Sorry Pulaski!

Pulaski

Np, you're welcome.

Britsimon

FYI i have set up an account with Moneycorp. The exchange rate today is around 1.655 - but you can never get that full rate. The trick is to lose as little as possible!

I got an online quote (available up to £30k) and that came out at a rate of 1.615 - pretty bad. Then I spoke to one of their brokers and he is quoting almost 1.65 - plus the amount is unlimited. So - the online service is convenient but to get the best rates you need to get the personal service.

Lanyu

Not sure who you bank with in the UK but if you are with Nationwide it might be worth contacting them and asking about a Swift transfer when I use to work for them they use to offer very competitive rates being a building society and not a bank. They can also tell you the rate for the day and its valid until a certain time every day I think its either 1 or 3 as the rates constantly change. this is going to be my first port of call when I come to do mine

Britsimon

Yeah I checked with my bank (Santander) Basically, any high street bank or building society is not going to be able to give as good a deal as a Forex specialist.

For instance, I called today and got the outgoing and incomeing rates from Santander. To receive money into my UK account they would set the rate today at 1.7076 (current exchange rate is 1.66). To send money to the USA (on a large sum) they were offering 1.6413. A smaller amount would get a lower rate. So the spread is at least 3 or 4 percent. They also charge £25 for each transfer out and a £10 for a cheque (check) coming in. So - that isn't so bad if you are doing small transfers but if you have a lot to send this can mean thousands or tens of thousands of money lost on the currency conversion.

januarymix

Yes when I worked in the States, I always used Forex houses as many of the high street banks just never seemed to be able to compete (didn't look at Nationwide)

Pulaski

The banks are able to compete, they just choose not to, like the traditional phone companies continue to milk their remaining customers with international calling rates ten times the rates offered by Vonage and the discount international phone companies. Both banks and phone companies are taking advantage of customer inertia, to charge high fees.

Lanyu

Nationwide charge £25 on any amount I only intend of doing one transfer a big lump sum I will check those sites mentioned at the time to ensure I get the best rate. How do you go about moving the cash to these places for them to do the transfer I know Nationwide restrict the amount on BACS payments?

Stoutbanana

I have sold my house in the UK and the money will be in my solicitors account at the end of the week on completion and I was looking at how to move quite a large amount from his account o our account in CA.

Pulaski

Check with each one (web site) they do transfers all day, every day. At least some you can send a wire to, and given that Nationwide is primarily in the house financing business, they must have some way to move larger amounts, .... or is it an account prohibition?

LeafPeeper

Thanks Britsimon, interesting that the online quote was for a limited amount and much worse exchange rate. Was there any flat rate fee attachtheed to the 1.65 you were quoted?
In your second post, making you pay 1.70 per pound is very high but 1.64 seems quite good and the fixed costs look small.

Thanks Lanyu, I bank with Barclays, I haven’t contacted them yet, I have my banking and mortgage (Woolwich) with them. I might be naïve but I’m always hesitant about giving the heads up about my plans to interested financial parties until it is definitely going ahead, just in case, not paranoid, well, maybe a little!

Good points floatsy and Pulaski, looks like forex will usually be the way to go.

Are there any tax implications to transferring a large sum (£150,000) to the states? Would hate to have a chunk taken from us.

Pulaski

No.

This topic has been covered many times, and there is no tax consequence of transferring your own money between the UK and US. It came up in another thread, in the past few days, that there is a potential tax consequence for leaving non-US currency in an account if the exchange rate moves in your favour, so to avoid potential complications in your tax return you should consider moving the money to the US the later of either when you receive the money, or when you become US resident for tax purposes.

If you hold your GBP because you want to speculate that the GBP will rise against the USD, be prepared to share your gain with Uncle Sam.