Five Tips for Sending Money Overseas When You Emigrate
You’ve been saving up for a long time; months, years, decades, perhaps even your whole adult life – all in preparation for the big leap abroad. While you’ll be leaving lots behind you when you emigrate, you will definitely want to take your financial assets on a journey with you to your new life.
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as taking your savings out, stuffing it in a suitcase and jetting off into the sunset! The standard way to send money overseas when you emigrate is to book a worldwide bank to bank transfer. Worldwide transfers are tied to the fluctuating currency markets, so when sending money overseas you can stand to gain or lose a lot of money when it is converted; in some cases this can be tens of thousands of pounds. The currency markets can be confusing, but to help you make the most from sending money abroad here are five tips:
Record the exchange rates every day
Over the course of time you can see trends develop. Whether they are positive or negative for the currency, this information can help you make the decision of when to convert your assets and savings. If you don’t want to collate this information yourself there are plenty websites that will do this for you and will provide visual interpretations of the data.
Keep an eye on the business pages
Business news can give you hints about currencies’ behaviours and fluctuations. For example, interest rate increases or decreases, unemployment figures and economic forecasts all dictate to the currency markets and they can be volatile as a result. It’s amazing how much you can learn about currency if you pay attention to what’s happening around the world. There’s no need to become an armchair analyst, but keeping your ear to the ground can help give you a good basic understanding of currency and that knowledge will help you with transferring your assets abroad.
Shop Around
There’s a popular misconception that banks and building societies provide excellent currency exchange rates. This is not the case – they have high margins and this means a poorer deal for you. Specialist currency exchange companies operate on much leaner margins. With large sums of money this can translate to hundreds or thousands of pounds difference so it’s worth doing your homework and looking for companies with the most competitive rates and fees.
If you have a question, ask the experts!
Once you’ve settled on the company that will transfer your money overseas you should be assigned a currency specialist. They have vast experience of the markets and can answer queries you have regarding your exchange. This is especially important as the money markets can be a confusing topic; even the lingo is bewildering for the uninitiated so it’s important to ask about anything and everything you’re not sure about.
Hedge your bets and don’t gamble
When you’re transferring a large sum of money overseas it’s important that you feel comfortable doing it! You can protect against currency fluctuations by locking in a rate for your exchange. This is called hedging. Although locking in your exchange rate means that you can’t take advantage of positive trends, the currency markets fluctuate every single second so equally you will be protected against any negative impacts.
This post is from Claire Connachan who works for No1 Currency, a UK foreign currency specialist offering tailor-made worldwide transfers and expert exchange advice
