Cheapest way to wire or withdraw money from US account while living in Europe
I'm currently living overseas in Europe. I work as a consultant for a US based company which pays me US dollars deposited to my US bank account. It's getting to be pretty expensive when I withdraw money from the ATM (around USD), or if I wire money from the US bank (Bank of America) to my account here ( USD).
Anyone have any suggestions on how to transfer money from my US account by paying less fees? Any bank that has better deals, any services I can use, like online services?
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I prefer to use a Foreign Exchange transfer service. You will get a good exchange rate (better than from Paypal or from your bank) and it is possible to set it up with no transfer fees on both ends. You can use an ACH transfer from your US bank account to the FX's bank account and then a SEPA transfer in Europe to get the funds into your bank account. Transfers can also go in the opposite direction (Europe to USA).
I've used XE's service (www.xe.com) and US Forex's service (www.usforex.com). Transferwise (www.transferwise.com) is another popular service.
US Forex's service calls you to confirm each transfer. They also charge a fee on transfers under 00.
XE's service is more convenient: they do not charge fees for small transfers and do not call you to confirm the tramsfer. However, they will not let you set up a free ACH transfer from US bank accounts if you set up your XE account outside the US.
In both cases, the transfer takes a few business days to complete.
EDIT: In my recent (Summer 2015) experience, US Forex has offered slightly better rates than XE. I've also checked out Transferwise, and for transfers from the US it seems to be a bit of a gimmick with a fee added late in the process. For reference, I just got quotes from the three sites for converting 5000 USD to EUR:
usforex.com: 5,000.00 USD = 4,498.00 EUR
Effective rate: 0.8996 EUR / USD
xe.com: 5,000.00 USD = 4,487.93 EUR
Effective rate: 0.897586 EUR / USD
transferwise.com: 5,000.00 USD + 47.50 USD fee = 4,518.66 EUR
Effective rate: 0.8952 EUR / USD
Atm machine and my Credit Union account. Low fees (often zero, if the machine is on any of the same networks) and decent exchange rate, and no need to carry cash or traveler's checks to be exchanged.
Alternatively, pay by credit card, though there is a foreign transaction fee on that.
There is a number of cheaper online options that you could use. TranferWise was already mentioned here. Other options i know are Paysera or TransferGo. They state that international transfers are processed on the next day and they are substantially cheaper than those of banks. Currency exchange rate is usually not bad.
I use xoom.com to transfer money to India. I've been using them for over 2 years now, they are the fastest and the cheapest for me (the funds are usually available the same day). They seem to have added a lot of European countries to their list.
Definitely worth a shot.
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