gags

We have been speaking to a (real life) Kiwi living here in London at the mo who plans to go home in bout 2012 and his advice is to send over small amounts of cash to nz when the rate is not so bad. Little and often. £50 here at the exchange rate of, say, 2.20 and £50 there at some other not so bad rate.
I think he has a point. If you know you are going to go there to live, send over small amounts, or large depending on situations, over to NZ with their better savings rates. Then when you are there you will have some money to start off with to get set up or more.
Makes sense to me. There doesn't seem like any incentive to keep uk money in uk at the mo if you know you are off.
Discuss?

BEVS

Not a bad idea. A bit like saving.

What do others think?

southerner

It has some merit if sending money offshore helps you have more discipline about saving (because you can't easily 'break the piggy bank open'). Also averages your exchange rate, you won't get a really bad rate on the day affecting you.

On the other hand if you have a bigger amount to transfer your extra buying power can get you a better exchange rate with most of the money brokers. Also some peeps think they can pick a better time to transfer by waiting for the rate to hit a certain trigger point. But a few of them have been waiting for the "inevitable" GBP-NZD corretion for a while now.

Take your pick..

hazeandsteve

If there's a fee to pay, does it help to pay it lots of times?

bga

Set up an account with someone like MoneyCorp - if you do a monthy direct debit for example it costs 4 GBP per transaction (I aint got a pound sign on this keyboard) and the rate is, better than a "normal" bank but if you're transferring small amounts 4GBP could be 10% i suppose, the exchange rate is awful at the moment with no real sign of it changing too much unfortunately, maybe after the UK general election it may go up but I aint holding my breath too much

simonsi

Taking into account any fixed transaction fee that would give a VERY poor overall rate I would think.

Anyone done/doing this to give an actual view???

Soppydot4

We used HiFX and they don't charge any fees and you can do it yourself online. They also get a good rate if you exchange a decent amount. I've used them for both.

whitesand

If you have to send money over at the moment I'd send the absolute minimum. I think you'd be crazy to send any larger amount - you'd be just as well opening the window and throwing it outside! The NZ dollar will get weaker - the problem is when. It's simply a waiting game and when in doubt, do nothing, is good advice, I believe.

AngelaandJim

Hi

I used money corp & got 4p more than HiFX for only transfering £2K