stardust

Hallo everyone
Just wanted some advice on what to do with money when we emigrate.
Just seen someone from HSBC but got a feeling they only promote their own products!
We have about 60,000 pounds in the bank at moment and want to transfer about 20,000 into OZ dollars to spend straight away
The remaining amount we wanted to put in a high interest saver and then use it after a year to put down on a deposit on a house in Australia
Would we better getting an ISA over here (in England) and then transferring the amount after a year. If we do that how do we transfer our cash from another country? Or are we better exchanging it all to dollars and then finding a savings account in OZ.
Any help would be greatly appreciated never had to deal with savings before! Am more used to dealing with an overdraft!

Max&Ozzy

Hi,

You should learn about the tax issue of transfering funds at a later date, once you are an Aus resident.

I'd suggest getting it all over with you and make the most of the Aus higher rates of interest. Your money will earn more over there than it will in the UK banks.

Graham

Wol

The ISA thing you'll have to decide yourself: you might end up losing money if you pay setup charges and bale out after a year or so.

Many of us find the HSBC Online Savings a/c in Oz just right: they pay a reasonable interest and you have a chequebook, unlimited BPays, 5 free cheques a month and you can take out cash at any post office and most supermarkets. Many of the Oz banks actually still charge fees!

And, again, many of us have ING Internet account which pay a little more and are "linked" to another account. Ie., you can only take money out when it goes into say the HSBC account: good security really.

There are many currency transfer agencies: tranzfers.com.au is my choice.

suzimc

I honestly think your best bet would be to invest in a bit of time with an independant financial adviser, as I'm sure that even with the best intentions HSBC advisors knowledge base will lie primarily in the region of their own products. As Max&Ozzy metioned you will need to look into the tax implications of transfering at a later date, this is complicated ground and you will find differing opinions on it, so I really would advise getting professional advice.

stardust

Thanks for the advice - I can see this will need a lot of mulling over to see what is the best option. Interesting that Oz has better rates for savers

steve`o

we are with the commonwealth bank
we have used them 4 times now to transfer money
dead easy and efficient
they set up an account in london and one in aus
( last time i looked and the interest rate has gone up since! we were getting 5.5% on our aus account you carnt get anywhere near that in the uk at the moment )

only my opinion

regards steve

http://www.migrantbanking.co.uk/

sme

Did you use to transfer the proceeds of a house sale as the advice appears to be something like hfx (or whatever its called ) ?
Gillian

steve`o

yep got the same rate as the osforex customer rates

see
http://www.ozforex.com.au/cgi-bin/sellQuotes.asp

Ozzidoc

Check the ISA rules - you need to be "resident" as defined for tax purposes (this is a different definition to immigration/citizenship).

There was a thread on here a month or so ago which explained very well the (new-ish) tax implications on transferring cash into Oz more than 6 months after becoming physically resident in Oz.


Here 'tis... http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...t=tax+transfer

cyclemark

But isn't 40,000gbp way over the maximum limit allowed for investing in an ISA?

Grayling

You will also be liable for Australian tax on the growth in any investments left in the UK.

The ATO are very keen on taxing overseas investments.

G

Swerv-o

Yes, you will have to pay tax on the interest that you make in your ISA. Just because it's tax free in the UK doesn't mean that it's tax free by Aus standards.

As for higher interest rates here, that's absolutely right. I have an HSBC Serious Saver account, which is currently offering 6.20% p/a gross, though I think I'm going to move over to the Bankwest Telesaver account which is offering 6.60% pa gross. And another rate rise appears to be looming on the horizon, so it may well be that these rates will increase further.

With rates like that, you can still very well outperform the housing market, certainly in east coast Aus, not so sure about the UK, but maybe maintain parity with it.

S

flip

Hi

We tried to continue our direct debits for our ISA but was told we were no longer eligible as we were not resident. I believe interest rates are higher over here so you may be as well transferring the lot over now.

We have 2 related accounts with the ANZ, one has our ready money and one has our house money (which gets a higher rate), we transfer cash over electronically or at the branch when we need it.

With all the problems we had with communicating with UK banks, I'd seriously think about bringing it over to a high interest account over here.

232Bar

Steve - we used the criminwealth originally until we got here and realised about their fees. I think they even charge you $5 just to walk past the bank

We went to HSBC with a couple of weeks of getting here - much less hassle, much less fees and we could, if we'd known, have brought all our money into HSBC in GBP and had it sitting here waiting for an exchange rate we liked rather than have it in UK waiting for the rate. Interest on TermDeposit accounts is pretty good with HSBC if you've got all your house proceeds to deposit. HSBC doesn't have all teh branches some others have, but good internet banking and you can use the post office for deposits

CazBeckham

Hi

That rate in the Serious Saver HSBC - is it limited to a certain amount you can have in an account like that as in UK some high interest accounts limit you to the amount you can have in there, so if you had say over £100,000 you couldnt get that high rate of interest.


Caz