A salary paid in Euros? Getting money back into the UK.

[TUS 373]

Say I was offered a job working in Europe and my salary was based in Euros. I decide to keep my house going on in the UK and carry on with a mortgage.

How do people go about transfering money from € to £ on a regular basis without paying loads of commission? I guess you don't pop down to Thomas Cook Bureau de Change and give them a percentage or get a reduced rate. With the way the pound is at the moment, I would be tempted to try and squirrel as much € as I could afford back into sterling. I am ntio sure that transferring it directly from a European bank account into a UK one would necessarily give the best rate either - but it would have the advantage of being completely electronic and not carrying a load of cash.

Some come on. Own up. There are plenty of PHers here who must have plenty of experience of doing this kind of thing. What's a good method to use please?

[The jiffle king]

I am about to go through this same process, so any light anyone can shed on this topic will be most useful.... Barcelona here we come

[JMGS4]

Start a Euro account at your bank and transfer into that. ALL Euro transfers within Europe are free of costs (EU Law), only if/when you change into the now (relatively worthless) pounds can you be charged exchange costs!

[BOR]

Don't use bank-to-bank.

There are various forex companies who offer a much better rate, and who can provide a one-off transfer or a monthly trade.

I personally use www.currencysolutions.co.uk and am happy with their service so far.

[TUS 373]

But what about those costs? I would have to pay the mortgage in £. So if I had a Euro account but needed to make a mortgage payment, can you still do a standing order and the bank takes care of the exchange? Does it make a difference to the rate you get whether you are transferring £10, £100 or £1000?

[turbobloke]

My experience is from the other direction i.e. transferring money from UK account to EU country account with GBP to EUR. Barclays have a buying abroad/overseas payment service that's free of charges for sums of £1k up going out, quite possibly there's something similar going the other way?

[-crookedtail-]

I do exactly this through the bank transfer route putting money from my Irish account into my UK one , its an easy process and free and if you dont mind waiting up to 5 days for it to go across. I always check roughly how much I will get by checking on xe.com first mind you.

[JCW]

Also a good idea to hedge your currency exchange, particularly with the strength of the Euro, for a couple of years at least and usually any of the Forex traders will only require 10% of the total amount up front although you'll probably have to make allowances for a decrease in the exchange rate once you come off the hedge.

[TUS 373]

JCW said:

Also a good idea to hedge your currency exchange, particularly with the strength of the Euro, for a couple of years at least and usually any of the Forex traders will only require 10% of the total amount up front although you'll probably have to make allowances for a decrease in the exchange rate once you come off the hedge.

What is that in English please? Outside my comfort zone on this now!

[Silver993tt]

JMGS4 said:

Start a Euro account at your bank and transfer into that. ALL Euro transfers within Europe are free of costs (EU Law), only if/when you change into the now (relatively worthless) pounds can you be charged exchange costs!

I make regular transfers from a my Nat West Euro account to a number of European accounts and I always get charged a transfer fee so I don't think you are cirrect on this.

Edited by Silver993tt on Monday 16th March 13:01

[RW-W113]

HSBC Off-shore, you can set up both a Euro and GBP account and transfer between with no fees. You can then set up to pay UK standing orders from your HSBC account as per any normal UK bank.

[FarleyRusk]

I transfer funds to the UK from my Euro account quite regularly and *always* do it by bank transfer using the IBAN number of my destination first direct account. The FX rate applied is pretty much the interbank rate and commissions don't exceed a tenner, which in percentage terms is quite small.

[digger_R]

As mikken said, hifx aren't bad but I prefer www.xe.com - they offer live spot rates and have a fairly flexible bid and a forward mechanism.
They are especially useful as forex is one market that doesn't close so using a broker that only offers service during office hours doesn't make a great deal of sense to me. I've had excellent service from both but I prefer xe.com for the platform they offer.

[phumy]

Ive been paid in $US for the last 7.5 years and pay this into my HSBC dollar account in the UK, transfer what i need acoss into my GBP account each month, no problem. Then i exchange dollars to GBP when it suits me, i.e. ER in my favour, like the last 4 months

[beanbag]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought you can transfer up to €5000 at a time without charge using SWIFT within the EU.

I've been making regular €1000 - €2000 payments to my Barclay's account from Austria for the past few years without commission charges. The exchange rate is quite favourable too.

[JCW]

TUS 373 said:

JCW said:

Also a good idea to hedge your currency exchange, particularly with the strength of the Euro, for a couple of years at least and usually any of the Forex traders will only require 10% of the total amount up front although you'll probably have to make allowances for a decrease in the exchange rate once you come off the hedge.

What is that in English please? Outside my comfort zone on this now!

Essentially, you enter into a contract with a Forex trader such as HiFx or similar who agrees to lock in your exchange rate at a pre-determined price. As the Euro is strong versus Sterling, it would make sense to lock in that strength by purchasing a set amount (for this example we'll say two years) so that you're not exposed to any fluctuations or decrease in the strength of the Euro.

Say you agree to buy £40k worth of €s over a two year period, you'll pay 10% up front (£4k) and agree to pay the balance via direct debit on a monthly basis which means that should the Euro decrease you won't be exposed. I do it the other way to pay mortgages in Euros but my first hedge was a couple of years ago, when I bought at €1.49 to £1.00. Since then its declined to €1.08 but that decrease didn't affect me as I'd hedged at the higher rate.

There's more to it and probably a better explanation but its very common and not difficult to set up.

[dtmpower]

• euroboy this is your thread !