julesnye

when we eventually sell our house we will have a fair amount of GBP, so was wondering where best to keep it until we're ready to buy a house

Any tips would be great

lardyl

You'll get a better rate of interest down under, just look at one of the banks, eg:
www.kiwibank.co.nz
Term deposits seem to be good, just avoid some of the risky investment companies at the moment as a few are due to follow Bridgecorp:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/s...ectid=10455057

Scottish Family

I was just wondering,
although you'd get a better rate of interest down under, would that make up for transferring GBP into NZ$ at the present low rate of around $2.60 to the GBP?

Is it worth keeping the money in a 6% -ish savings account here until the rate of exchange changes in favour of the transfer from GBP to NZ$???

Shirley

julesnye

Sorry Shirley, I didn't make it clear.
The reason I asked about this as I also, was because we're going to keep it in Sterling until the rates get better.

garryhg

hi jacky g here
we've just kept in british bank account open,its easy to transfer money over when exchange rate gets better.
transferred a few thousand over just now,enough to buy cars and essentials till oh starts geting his wages.

SarahB

We did leave some money over in our UK bank accounts, but just recently moved it over into a Westpac Foreign Currency Account as we get more interest on it.

lardyl

indeed, though it looks that the NZ$ may not be on the rise forever and cant see interest rates coming down to UK levels too soon. So probably best to have everything ready to switch at short notice -

Ash1

Hi,


I have a foreign currency account here but definately get a better interest rate in the UK. It is handy to have a FC acc here to put £`s into as you will probably get a better exchange rate from the banks here. I have found I get a better rate than even the likes of HIFX can offer even on smaller amounts.
ASH

lardyl

yes, we found the same although the banking fees for exchange were higher than they would have been with HiFix, etc for our small(ish) sum (again for car and other essentials). Good luck

cypherpunk

If you want to stay in Sterling for a while have a look on www.moneysupermarket.com under Savings and select offshore accounts. There are some excellent term and instant access offers at the moment, especially Alliance and Leicester offshore instant access at 6.4%.

Also before you leave it's a good idea to open a UK savings account that promises to track the base rate, as it could still go higher. I made the mistake of picking an account with a good headline rate that then wasn't increased for ages.

julesnye

Thanks for all the useful replies.
I'll keep my ear close to the ground and make the decision closer to the date.