tsveti

Hello everyone,

I am moving to Germany soon, and was wondering wether anyone would be able to give me an advice about bank accounts
I would like to keep my accounts in the UK cos in Germany as far as i understood you pay more than 40% of all interest you get + the interest rates are quite low /smth like 2 - 2.5%/.
I was thinking about turning my savings account into an euros' one and keep it this way in the UK, so i would get higher interest rate and will hopefully avoid paying taxes on any interest i get on it.
I am, unfortunately, not that familiar with these financial issues, especially abroad, so any advice would be therefore highly appreciated

Mitzyboy

Well I had that grand idea also, and opened a Euro account with HSBC .... however it became apparant that they charged a fortune to make a transfer anywhere - sending money to Spain was costing £25 a time.
In effect it was cheaper to keep a UK £ account, open a euro bank account in Spain, and use one of the online commercial money changers to move money when I wanted it. A few days ago I got 1.249, whereas a friend just arrived here and said he got 1.1 something at Thomas Cook!

tsveti

well, u didnt have to do it this way
i am gonna keep a bak account with Nationwide, which guarantees me free of charge cash withdrawals abroad + when i need more money - will just transfer online from the savings one.
so there is no charge for transfers between uk banks.
keeping the money in euros i would have thought is a good idea cos the pound is going cheaper and cheaper and the euro is quite stable as a currency...

where did u get 1.24 as an exchange rate euro/pound?

Katamoungdapidgeons

Royal Bank of Scotland have a Euro account without charges/conditions. But you may have to have been a customer with them first. We have the account & its been fine but it took a while to set up as our local branch staff didn't know much about it. Lots of Euro accounts have charges & you need to put a lot of money through them each month & are more for business than personal banking & so research carefully & read the small print to see which one is for you.

jdr

Come on guys, banks never do anything for no reward, especially money moving.
Why do you think the UK is hanging onto the Pound. ;-))

Mitzyboy

Ahh the Nationwide ..... yes of course my daughter does the same. But I would have thought transferring a lot of money into Euros would not be a good idea presently. It was 1.38 and going up when we first moved to Spain. I'm an optomist and expect it to recover eventually at which point I will transfer more

I got the r/ex from www.sun-pay.com, thw whole transaction online

tsveti

well, i checked the exchange rates euro/pound at the BBC website, but the trend seems to be - the pound's getting cheaper
its easier to make it chaper and almost 1pound = 1euro instead of changing the currency of the UK into euro i guess

am still investigating about the accounts in euro, any advice would be highly appreciated

tsveti

i could not open the link, mate

wow, its about 1,27 at the moment, u can see what the trend is like for the last 120 days
http://www.x-rates.com/d/EUR/GBP/graph120.html

looks like the pound is slowly going down

its probably easier if they make the pound/euro exchange rate 1:1 instead of changing the national currency of the UK