Living in Asia

While you're living there:

Conversions: If you're into saving and sending a whole lot home in one lump sum, then you should keep watch of how the local currency is doing, so you know when the best time is to send it home. See: Exchange Rate.com  XE.com. N.B.: ExchangeRate has graphs that you can look at to see the overall trends of the previous 30 days to 12 months. Don't do what one teacher did, randomly buying travellers cheques regardless of the exchange rate.

Transferring it home: Sending money home is easy. You can use TT (Telegraphic Transfer) which costs about CAN$20 / AUD$20 / USD$15 to do. Or you can spend a dollar or two for a bank cheque, then post it through registered snail-mail. If you’re American, and you’re paying your college loans, then you need to be sure that it is received in time for each payment.

Ironically, sometimes you can make more money buy carrying US dollar travelers-cheques home with you, than getting it directly converted and transferred to your home account (in Canada, Australia, UK, NZ or SA). But most countries have a tax-free threshold on how much you can physically carry into a country with you.

Usually, Koreans, Japanese and Taiwanese banks don't like issuing foreigners credit cards. Apparently we are high risk of flight.