Financial Perspectives

One of the most surprising thing about the Internet is just how much people are prepared to pay for information from one site that is available free on another site.

This is probably best illustrated by the vast number of websites which sell you the information that you need to open an account in America when you don’t live there. I say “America” simply because that’s the most popular but there are many other sites offering to open accounts in Switzerland (the second most popular) and various countries around the world.

Now, I’ll grant you that it’s more difficult to come by the information for Switzerland unless you know where to look but I’d be wanting to do a whole lot of looking before I forked out the typical $250 to $1000 that some websites charge for this information. I’ll be covering this (free!) very shortly on the expat banking section of Whole Earth so, unless you need your Swiss account in the next couple of weeks, it’s probably best to hold on.

What about America though? Would you pay $100 or more for the information? Many people appear to yet it’s freely available on the expat banking section of Whole Earth already although, to be fair, many others seem to have been getting it there for free for quite a while if the site stats are anything to go by.

The thing that gets me is that, in most cases, the information isn’t difficult to find. What’s worse though, particularly for Switzerland, is that a number of the charging websites are providing information that simply won’t work as they typically recommend opening an account with SwissPost which stopped opening accounts for non-residents a few years ago.

I’m quite tempted to start selling the information on ebay myself!

One thing never to neglect when you’re living abroad is the cost of changing money from one currency to another yet virtually nobody considers it.

The costs can be quite substantial too. A friend of mine who was living in Brussels once casually remarked that he just used the Halifax as he did at home, lifting EUR 20 or EUR 30 whenever he needed it. He was more than a little takenaback when I pointed out that by doing that he was paying around 10% of his entire salary in bank charges. Yes, that much.

We’ve had quite a run of Brits living in Spain stopping with us on their way to/from the UK this year and I was very surprised to find that only one of them used the Nationwide credit card. Yet, that’s the only one that offers free exchange from sterling to other currencies (and all of the people concerned were living on a UK based income).

The other alternative for euro-zone countries is the Halifax which operates as Banco Halifax in Spain. They offer free transfers from UK based Halifax (and Bank of Scotland) accounts to Halifax in Spain. Although they don’t currently operate elsewhere in Europe, the Spanish outfit is quite sufficient for those in eurozone countries as you can, of course, use the supplied debit card outside Spain for purchases (it’s a bit expensive for ATM withdrawals outside Spain).

Very handy and the whole thing operates in English.

If you’re used to the wide variation of mortgage offers in the UK, the French marketplace is child’s play: as far as we can tell, all mortgages are either fixed or variable rate and they are all the repayment type.

If you are buying your house “subject to mortgage”, you will need to see the bank before you see the notary as you will need to say “subject to obtaining a mortgage from X bank at Y% over Z years”. If this isn’t added to the “compris” then you will lose your deposit if you can’t get a mortgage.

French investments are incredibly simple too. The only problem with them is that you need to buy them through an advisor which is even more of a pain than trying to do something banking-related through your bank advisor. Due to this and the very limited range available, it’s best to continue to do your investing through the companies that you are already using.