Mr Good Provider. Grunt.

[reddragdiva]

Finally convinced redcountess that thrashing herself to exhaustion working thirty hours a week at T*l*t*ch is actually a BAD idea with all the shit she has to get organised, and that her enormous Australian wage is actually about 2p. (Well, £450 a month after tax. That is, a quarter of my wage after tax.)

So, I'm yet again after good ways to get money to Australia that aren't MoneyGrams. Specifics if possible - things you've actually done, what it cost and whether the exchange rate was ruinous.

Update: Yeah, banks, including mine, apparently do just the thing I need. Will enquire forthwith.

Comments

[naughtypixie.livejournal.com]

Most banks will do the money transfer thing at the actual exchange rate (rather than the inflated ones the post office use) for a fee that seems to range between 10-25 pounds. I do it often to j's american accounts through HSBC and i've sent money that way to Aus before too. you just need to ask them for an internation money transfer, they'll need the all the usual account details of the australian bank plus the address of the bank.

The transfer is directly into the account and for 25 pounds it's there in 2 days, for something like 10 pounds it takes 4 days.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

The last few times I've sent money to Canada through the bank, the fees ended up being £20 +.

Paypal's probably a really bad idea? I was going to look into that in the autumn, but my brother found a way to live without me sending him money, so I never got round to it.

[juliann.livejournal.com]

Except that my US bank *also* charges me to receive a wire transfer...

[juliann.livejournal.com]

See if her bank will accept foreign cheques. That's the cheapest way for my rents to send money to me now...If the check is under £50 I don't pay any fees, if it's over then I pay £9, flat rate. Plus I get the bank exchange rate.

But in reality however you do it it's cheaper to send lump sums of lots of money rather than a little regularly.

The Absolute cheapest way would have been to give her an atm card on your account and just let her draw it out, depending on how much your bank charges for international withdrawls. But that's how my friends in the US deal with their money being in UK banks...

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Despite the fact that I have such a card for my parents' account (which I've never used), I hadn't thought of that. If I have to start paying my brother's grocery bill, that's a possibility. Except that I quite possibly don't trust him and it's a hell of a long and expensive flight to kick his ass if he over-spends.

[dcarson.livejournal.com]

Australian banks will accept foreign cheques, and the fee isn't very much when you think of it in pounds. :-) But it's soooo daaamn slooooow... I got a cheque in pounds from the IR after leaving the UK.. it took about six weeks to be cleared and into my bank account.

When I was in the UK and wanted to smuggle money back to Australia I just went to the bank and got them to draw a cheque in $A.. I can't remember what it cost, though, and once you've done that, and posted it, and had it cleared into the Australian bank, well over a week has gone by..

Maybe you could each set up a Paypal account and move money through that? ("No! Paypal sucks (http://www.paypalsucks.com/)", screams the chorus)