MrMrsChapman

I was paying some bills today and I was wondering how people deal with outstanding debt in the UK after they move to Canada? Do you just carry on paying from Canada, swapping the direct debit over, is it literally as simple as that? (Things like credit cards, tv on finance, catalogue repayments etc).

__TJ__

its what we plan to do. as far as i understand it is perfectly legal to do that, as long as you dont just skip the country and leave the debts behind. thanks when you get into trouble. id suggest writing to your creditors prior to leaving saying you will be moving to XYZ and that your bank details will be XYZ. i cant see any legality in making you pay back the balance before you go.

alernativly just pay it off from CA without telling them anything more than a change of bank details.

JonboyE

Keep your UK bank account and pay the bills from there. It is expensive to make payments to individual recipients in the UK direct from a Canadian bank account.

If you know you have UKP200 of bills to pay each month you should transfer sufficient CAD to cover this every month (or better every three months if cash flow allows it). You then only pay one foreign payment fee.

Rob_999

They won't be able to draw a direct debit from a foreign account - you'll need to leave a bank account open in the UK.

Lord Vader

You are running a bit of exchange rate risk by having your income in one currency and your bills in another. You are certainly cheering for the Canadian dollar to be strong vs the pound. Personally, I would try to have both revenue and expenses in the same currency if possible.

Alan2005

It's only risky if it's a big chunk of any income you do have in which case they should be fixing the rate for the year with a broker. If it's only 5% then it's probably not that big a deal what the rate is.

Lord Vader

Obviously if it is a small amount then it is not as important as carrying something like a mortgage in another currency.

Ozzidoc

Leave behind enough money to pay for at least six months' worth debt repayments etc, and preferably up to two years' worth.

Alan2005

Yes, you can ask the icelanders how they feel about this. Quite a few had euro mortgages before their currency hit the crapper.

Greenhill

Might be worth looking into balance transfers or refinancing so you just have the one debt (perhaps at a better rate of interest than with the finance companies you're currently with).

Transferring that single debt onto a Canadian credit card, at some stage, (then refinancing for a better rate) might also prove beneficial, at least in terms of convenience and may even kick start your credit rating.

Lord Vader

We see it happen in Canada all the time with respect to the USD. A prime example are the Canadian NHL teams. They have their revenue in CAD's and their player salaries in USD's. 8 or 9 years ago when the CAD was worth about 0.62 US, there was talk of how the Canadian teams would be able to stay afloat, now the Canadian teams are amoung the leagues most profitable teams.

With repect to Iceland, Canada should have offered them provincehood and wrote a check to the government of the UK and the Netherlands for the mortgages to square up. Then we invade Greenland and take it fom Denmark (seriously,... Denmark owns Greenland?, wtf is that?), then offer the US some cash for Alaska, then buy Haiti on the cheap and then the Turks and Caicos. The timing is right for a Canadian empire!