U.S. dollar - saving vs. exchanging for Euros

I guess this is not a good time to exchange USD into Euro. Which bank is good to save a amount of USD in terms of cost and interest?

thanks

Advertisement: WorldFirst Ltd. and Foreign Currency Direct

What you should do and the type of investment you should make is entirely dependent upon how much money you are talking about.

I still keep a Bank of America checking account, because its free, and I can use ATMs almost anywhere.

However, I keep all my USD in an ING online account (4.5%). PM me if you are interested, because if I refer you, we both get some money

Or, another idea is to invest in the stock market, use an index fund with a DRIP and just let the money sit.

Edit: I agree with wahoo thought... there is no 'best'. it depends on how much money, and what time frame you are looking to keep it there.

Currency trading, per say, is a tricky business. The only way to really make money out of it is if you are trading very large sums of money...hence big banks are the principal investors.

I could use a recommendation if anyone can help me out here. I still haven't found an easy and low-cost way to get money into my account in Germany.

it seems difficult/inconvenient/somewhat pricey to get money from the us directly into my bank account here. nobody in the us who i've been dealing with seems to have heard of international banking. and i don't want to ask anyone to do something they aren't comfortable with or that would take too much of their time.

I have an account in the us where people send checks to, or make direct deposits into. so what i've been doing is just hitting the atm, but there's a limit to how much i can take out in a day. and it feels like a hack.

so what's the best way to give people in the us a way to pay me directly into my german account without any friction, hassle, and with minimum/zero fees?

just wondering if anyone has a working method that i haven't thought of?

I don't think it's possible to avoid fees on any transfer. I called my US bank back home and asked them to raise my ATM limit to account for the euro/dollar exchange rate. They did it without any questions asked. It was a credit union though, not BofA.

My bank won't do that period! I am switching banks when I am home though.

I have heard good things about having a Bank of America and Deutsche Bank combo. You can withdraw from the BofA banks in the US with your DB card without fees, presumbaly it works the other way around. I don't know about the fees involved for wire transfers though.

bern may be able to provide more insight there.

thanks. actually I only have 5k USD cash.
don't see any need of it in near future and don't won't to let them home to get rotted.

what should I do with the money?

Why would it rot? (Unless you intend to leave it in a damp cellar or something.)

Argh!!!

Archaic US banking !

transfer it to a CD? there are plenty of options.

I've said it before and i'll say it again. For those of you wishing to do international transfers, use XEtrade. Seriously, the rates are good and there are no fees. I have been using it and it works a charm.

You could opt for a CD. Shop around, see if there are still any good deals going on...that way you can still get the interest. It is by far the easiest and most stable option.

You could also go to your bank and talk to them about money market accounts.

US Treasury Bonds are also a very safe investment. I would only do this if you have no need for the money anytime soon. This tends to be a good investment for the longer term.

If you really want to start saving and investing, go talk to someone at Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley. I don't know if there is a min to open an account, but they will completely diversify the $5K you have and you won'thave to deal with it,

Note: I am not a financial advisor or banker!!

I use American Express Financial and they've been good so far. They took care of my 401k transfer and opened some Roth accounts too. All my accounts (in total) avg about 12% interest annually.

Are ICICI still doing their high interest account?...

thanks for the advices. what is CD by the way ;-)

read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificates_of_deposit

Actually, the rates aren't really that good. When I transferred a load of money from the UK to here, I went to all the effort to sign up, faxing forms here and there, and the eventually could log in only to find that their rates were disappointing. I ended up using a broker (Johnny English recommended him, and can probably give you his name if needed), and they gave me 1.49 to the pound when XETrade were only giving me 1.475. With a large sum of money, this makes a huge difference. I just called this guy up, had to sign an agreement (same as you have to do with XETrade) proving who you are. Then when you're happy with the rate he gives you, you send the money to them and they send the money to you in the right currency.

I guess, then, that I was only comparing to banks and high street brokers XE certainly beats them. Never went down the route of other brokers.

XETrade is definitely better than the banks, who really rip you off..

Don't exchange your money at the current rate. That would be foolish.

RB

Ummm... because you know which way things will go in the future?

You don't know which way the dollar will go (and that cuts both ways) but any decision to exchange dollars for euros should be made based upon what you are going to use the cash for. If you are going to live permanently in Germany, you would need euros and that need would play some role in your decision. If you intend to invest it, you can certainly do that in dollars. If you don't absolutely need to exchange the dollars for another currency, you might want to hold off. A person who exchanged all of their dollars for yen or deutsche marks in the spring of 1995 or all of their deutsche marks for dollars in the fall of 2000 probably regretted it afterwards.

Many people feel the dollar is currently undervalued against the euro and pound, but there are a wide range of opinions on this. I would strongly discourage anyone from being a currency speculator, regardless of the currencies involved.

That's all interesting... but i'm just trying to find a smooth way to get not-so-large amounts of american dollars into my german bank account on a regular basis. or even better to give my clients an easy way to get money directly to me.

i don't mind keeping some dollars in a bank in the us, but i need euros to live on. also I think that when I'm due for renewing my freelance visa in a couple of years it will look better for me to have plenty of euros steadily coming into my account, rather than a bank statement from america which they probably cannot verify.

plus although i'm no expert it's augenscheinlich that the dollar is steadily declining so I would rather not lose any more if i can help it. pisses me off that nobody in the us seems to know about international transfers. I can't ask my clients to do something so inconvenient as that...

it sucks as it is now; my atm allows me to take up to 300 or so euros a day out, and that's a real pain to have to do every day just to get some money. if someone pays me 3k then i have to go to the bank 10 times just to get it all.

what about paypal, i suppose i could connect a paypal account to my account here, yeah? is the fee (about 2% if I remember correctly) comparable to what I'd pay for something like XEtrade?

XETrade is one of a few services
Paypal is not a good option, IMHO, for long-term, non-tiny amounts of money. They give a lousy exchange rate plus tack on fees on top of it. You mention one solution to your problem...XETrade/Custom House. There are a couple of other brokers. If you do a search on this forum you should see some past discussion.


Depending on the fees charged by your US bank, the ATM method can be a good way to exchange money. It's cheap (unless your US bank is dinging you a fee--% or flat) and it's quick. Also, you can usually get your bank to adjust your daily withdrawal limit upwards, on either a permanent or temporary basis (i.e., 'Mr. Banker, i want to withdraw $3,000 today. Can you increase my ATM withdrawal limit for today?').

good idear, I'll try that.. just call the bank and tell them to up the amount. the fee is pretty small, just a few bucks.

The fee may be small but which exchange rate are you getting? I'll bet dollars to Krapfen it ain't the interbank rate but rather interbank + 2.5-5%.

Conquistador: Excellenrt post, pretty much what I would've written, though if I'd written it there'd have been a lot more colourful words used.

woof.

Yes...you should definitely check. And I wouldn't take the bank's word for it.
Use something like XE's credit card charges calculator to determine the approximate charge.
Anything more than 1%, I'd look for another bank (or credit union).
http://www.xe.com/ccc/

Hi- sorry to address this issue again. But could anyone advise on a good US bank with lower fees (didn´t get too far with the XE tip). Expecting to be in Europe for a while, and fearing the dollar will get even worse, I think I need to get a good chunk of $$ over here now. Bank of America had a $45 fee for a one time transfer, but then charges a rate of 1.54 on a day last week when the real rate was actually 1.46. My German bank claimed this could not be true- that they would just cap a fee but not charge such a rate, as with larger sums this comes out to quite a bit.

Does anyone know of a US bank that has rates somewhat better than the kind above? Thank you for any advice!

How much money are you talking about?

My university's credit union is pretty gentle, just charging me 1% (and I think that's more Visa than them). However, this is for ATM withdrawals, where Sparkasse is doing the actual conversion (at as kind a rate as possible right now). My normal ATM daily limit is $500, but they'll bump it up to $3500 with a phone call and a credit union VP's signature (and one's always on-hand during business hours). This is how I handle getting ahold of the largest sums I've needed over here so far (apartment deposit, impressive car repair bills...) I keep a two-month cushion of EUR, but otherwise, convert as needed.

My long-term strategy: take regular ATM daily limit, convert at midmarket+1.5% (for safety - don't want a failed transaction fee!), plug cash into deposit machine using Sparkasse card. One of my coworkers was a pretty reliable predictor of peaks in the USD/EUR rate - if she made a big transfer that day, you could guarantee that the cost of the EUR was heading down quickly!

Why America's Currency Is the World's Problem