|
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.
 |