Linda27

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12 hours ago, Kpnuts said:

I set up an account with Currency Fair. I opened an account with ANZ who are their preferred bank which saves charges. Even though I was in the UK I still managed to open two accounts the only restriction was that you could only ‘deposit’ until you were in Australia and could do ID checks.

I simply send an amount of money into Currency Fair and either change the currency at the going rate or place the funds at a higher rate in anticipation. Once the exchange has taken place you then simply pay it into your ANZ account. Normally the exchange rate is 1 cent below the bank rate and they charge AU$4 for the transfer - so a good deal and very cheap.

I was fortunate a couple of years ago to transfer all of the money I would require for AOS and 2nd VAC. I opened a NAB account and was getting 2.5% interest which was a great deal more than the UK. Of course this all depends on what exchange rate you got at the time. On average most of my funds were transferred at about 1.9 to the £ so all in all a little better than today.

However, I am now in the process of looking for a house. Not sure whether to buy or rent. At the current rate I could loose well over AU$100,000 just in exchange - ouch!

Oh double ouch!! Thanks for all the info

Thanks all. Lots to investigate!