datamile

We've got an abbey e-saver account linked to our main abbey account.

£200,000 plus 5.80%
£100,000 plus 5.70%
£50,000 plus 5.50%
£1 plus 5.40%

They are paying another 0.5% for the first 12 months, so its 6.3

No limits on transfers, and all done online. Just start the bacs transfers ( 4 days ) to ozforex etc, whenever you make the deal.

phillip&sharon

If you phone them they will let you now all about it, its a forward rate or a stop rate you tell them what rate you would like, when it hits it they will let you now, you do the deal then you have i think 3 days to get the 5% deposit over to them and you agree a time when you will pay the balance.

The interbank rate is at 2.5333 so you should get around the 2.52, our market has not opened yet so it could go up some more today.


Phillip

renth

You should buy a racehorse, that way you get the prizemoney when it wins and you can bet on it. Kerching!

Alternatively you can give it to me and I'll look after it for you till you get here.

daunted

I THINK i get the hang of it - i am printing it all off and gonna get my eldest to ge through it with me -he got all the family brains Ill let you know how we get on

JoolsB

I'm in same situation as you-we complete next week and not going til Jan 08. I am setting up an Ozforex account & call me overly cautious but I dont really like the idea of them holding all my life's money in limbo & would rather have an Aussie bank they can transfer it to straight away.

I rang Westpac bank at 7 this morning and set up a joint current account and savings account (5.25% interest) for myself & OH-took about 10 mins. Paperwork will be here in 7-10 days and I aready have my sort codes (or BSB's as they are called) and account numbers. This means when our sale completes and the dosh enters my UK account I can do a 1 day CHAPS transfer to Ozforex who will send it on to my new Aus savings account within a couple of days apparently. For me it feels much safer this way...

Nu-Shooz

We did exactly the same as this. Put your money in high interest rate acc. Transfer when needed to your OZ acc through Ozforex...simple and excellent.

Property Wealth

Hi

Along with the general advice and Joolsb idea of using a Top 4 Australian bank and the savings account you could also consider an off-shore account (much greater privacy and control) with Jersey, Guernsey etc and using the likes of http://www.currencyuk.co.uk/?1354 who have some of the best rates internationally.

Nic938

Hi everyone

I think slowly but surely I am getting the hang of it. To open the ozforex account do I do this online or by phone? How long does this take to set up?

Nic

Sorry, meant to say thank you to everyone who had replied.

Last question - what is a reasonable rate, good rate and excellent rate so I know when the time comes?

Nu-Shooz

I rang them up, set up my account whilst on the phone to them. They went through how to use their website whilst i was on the phone too.
Straight forward really. When we arrived in OZ we rang them to arrange transfers, or booked transfers while the rates were good.

GinaUK

As others have said on other threads: the exchange rate doesn't go to 2.5 very often .... To us it therefore seemed a good idea to get locked in at that rate.

We set up an account with HiFX (www.hifx.co.uk). There are an exchange broker like Ozforex, but I prefer HiFX for large amounts because they keep client money in a seperate client account.

We don't yet have a completion date on our house sale, but the house is on the market and the sale will complete at some point. Today I have set up a contract with HiFX for £xxxx. I have to pay HiFX 10% of this amount now. The contract is set for 16 October. On that date the full amount will be exchanged for 2.5. If by that date our house sale hasn't completed and we don't have the money, we can roll forward the contract to another date at no extra cost - and we will still get the 2.5 exchange rate.

In your case, you could set the contract for Jan 08 when you move to Oz, pay the 10% deposit and put the rest into a high interest account until Jan 08 when you have to pay it over to HiFX.

If you look at the exchange rate for the last 10 years, it rarely goes above 2.5. So, it may go higher - in which case we'll lose out. But I am happy to have got 2.5.

Gina

Nic938

Hi

Just like to thank everyone for replying and I think I am a bit clearer

Thanks again

Nic

ekiec

I have to agree completely with you Gina. You will save more money on the exchange than on interest. We missed the last 2.50 in last february because we were watching taking money as and when. We ended up only getting 2.43 .Still not bad .Forward booking is the clever choice, being able to move if the sale gets put back. E,

jojosan

If you look at the Ozforex chart tools, the rate was well above 2.5 from late 2000 to late 2002. I agree though that the long term average is around the 2.5 mark. I've averaged 2.49+ for the several transfers I've done over the last week, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Going off-line now - off on an all day farewell piss up!