drcallycat

Hi there - we're planning on being in Auckland in November this year. We are hopefully selling our UK house and renting in NZ. We set up a couple of ISAa when we first began thinking about coming out there, and obviously are a bit annoyed given that our interest rates are now sooo low. Would anyone advise us to try and set up an account in NZ now and transfer some of our ISA cash over to benefit from a better interest rate?

Cheers,

Clare

nero

Once you leave the UK you will not be able to continue to add to your ISA as you are supposed to be a tax payer to benefit from a UK ISA! We had to place ours on hold.
The benefit of keeping money in the UK is that you do not have to declare to NZ any interest you earn for the first 4-5 years. As for whether it is better to have money in NZ you will have to do the calculations and see if you can get a really good conversion rate. Currently the NZ$ is @2.54 a month or two ago it was @2.86 which makes a big difference.
I am no financial expert and you will have to weigh up the pros and cons of putting all your money in UK or NZ or having a mixed economy.

julesnye

I'd hold fire and wait for the exchange rate to go up again.
You have plenty of time, before you get here so dont rush, as you could lose quite a bit in the exchange.

hosebergine

we transferred enough to set us up in NZ, buy a car, cope with no income for up to 6 months whilst job hunting etc into an NZ account to grab a better interest rate. But we did transfer some at 2.7 and some at 2.8 so we did quite well on the exchange rate. For what it is worth, I'd probably hang on for a decent exchange rate and double check your NZ account to make sure you can get a good interest rate and you won't need to pay any fees. We transferred to our savings account rather than our current account. Good luck

Raquel

I'm having the same problem.I worked in the UK for 5 yars and have som savings that are giving me NO INTEREST...

I have ben thinking about the best way to change my money.Have you heard from "Money Corp"? Would anybody recomend it?You can fix th exchange rate...I guess it works lik a mortgage...Any advice?

harrogate girl

Hi when we moved back in 2003 we got 2.7 but left half back in the uk then arranged final transfer later but by this time it went down and lost quite a lot.
transferred pensions, with Sterling pensions very good no up front cost and if he believes its not worth to bring it over he will advise! you! also you are able to tap into this to use some to off set on a mortgage at a later date.(yes you can do this in NZ!! it goes down as part Trust on the mortgage)

As for a better interest rate in NZ we used UDC( sub of ANZ Bank) good rates and you can transfer money over night on what is called an on call account and quite stable is the company not like some of them that have folded.
Lin
Lin