foxall22

Hi all,

We are 1 week away from leaving, and have set up an account with ozforex, and changed our current account to nationwide.

How do we know which is better? To withdraw money for free abroad, or to exchange with the latter? Is the a way to find nationwide's rate on a given day?

Prob a dumb question but am not so hot with the money side of things.

Cheers,

Gemma

Country Boy

My personal opinion. If peeps are visiting Oz on a reccie, then use Nationwide. If emigrating and needing to transfer a large amount of money, use one of the currency specialists (Hifx, OxForex... etc)

I recently transferred money using Nationwide. There's no way of knowing the exact rate they give you, only a ball park figure. For the money I was exchanging (£1500), the exchange rate I got at the time (via bank statement) was very comparable with the currency spcialists.

CB

sg1964

I have used Nationwide for all my payments, including large cash withdrawals for car purchases and even down to topping up my oz pay-as-you-go mobile. It takes a couple of days to appear on your statement, the only thing is the exchange rate has varied from 2.41 to 2.52, but saying that I will move another big chunk into an oz high interest account this week.

Simon

noonard

I opened a Nationwide account just as a way to transfer money to Australia without paying commission. They must love me, money goes it from another UK account, get taken out of Oz cash machines bit by bit and thrown into my Australian account.

It woks great for me, no hassles at all, always get the day's mid rate with no charges, and if you keep an eye on the exchange rate and do most of the withdrawls when the rate is high it's obviously better.

The only down side is that you obviously have a daily limit on cash withdrawls (I think about $750 ish) so you have to do it again and again to shift a lot of cash.

sg1964

hi, but if you go into your Australian bank where your account is you can do a cash transfer from the nationwide to the oz account, no restrictions, no charges, only limit is what you have as available funds. I have just come back from my bank after moving A$25k, done in less than 10 minutes, no fuss and instant.

Simon

noonard

For FREE? But Australian banks charge you just to walk through the door!?

sg1964

yep FREE.....

have standard charges on my account (who doesn't in oz?) have opened an internet account linked to the current account and am going to get 5.75% interest without penalty if I withdraw...

Simon