Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Finance’ Category

Unless you’re planning on putting the cash under the mattress, you’re going to need another bank or building society to put your money in when you take it out of the Northern Rock etc., but which one?

Many people will just look up the best buy tables and find that ICICI bank is right up there and move it right over. Somehow I’m not totally sure that putting your life savings in an Indian bank is such a good move. Next choice would be West Bromwich though that’s a fairly small building society, whether they could cope with the arrival of massive numbers of customers is another matter. Bank of Scotland seems the best bet to me with 6% from £5000 although that limits you to 4 withdrawals per year before the rate drops substantially.

But if you’re looking for absolute security, there’s only one choice: National Savings. 4.1 % from £5000 on their Investment Account, 5.15% from £50,000 on their Easy Access account. Deposits with them are effectively deposits in the Bank of England which can’t go bust. You can open these in the Post Office or online (note: these accounts are not the same as the Post Office savings account).

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.

I’m sure that if we’re honest, many people would say they’d skip on car insurance if it wasn’t compulsory.

However, there are times when it’s a pretty handy thing to have. Consider one of our guests last night….

What happened is that his car caught fire as he was driving along the motorway in France yesterday afternoon. That’s not really something that you expect to happen, is it? Anyway, the towing would have been several hundred euro, the transport to his hotel over EUR 100, the hotel another EUR 80 or so and it looks like the repairs will cost well over EUR 1000. Oh, and then there’s the not so insignificant matter that he’ll probably end up having to fly home and then back to collect the car as this is a holiday week and so it probably won’t be repaired for at least another week.

OK, a none too likely scenario for most of us I’m sure but it shows just how quickly the bills can mount up.

Whilst I haven’t had to sell my home in the UK, the rise in interest rates has landed large numbers of people in the situation where they have loads of equity in their house but not enough money to pay the mortgage on it.

You can end up in that situation extremely quickly so it’s often the case that you find one month you can cope and the next you can’t. If that’s happened, then you need to do something about getting cash quickly.

Likewise, if your house has been sitting on the market for a while and you’re now living somewhere else, you can easily find that you need to get the money fast.

If this has happened there are now a number of outfits that will buy your house in as little as seven days. Yes, just a week!

My parents were asking for a passbook account for their grandchildren as they aren’t keen on card based accounts.

Almost all accounts these days are card or internet based and the initial couple that I came across weren’t great as the building societies concerned didn’t have that many branches. Finally, I settled on the National Savings Investment Account which only requires a £20 deposit to open and also pays interest gross at quite a reasonable rate.

Opening it is a little peculiar as the Post Office branch doesn’t ask for any proof of ID or address and instead National Savings do the whole lot electronically. That worried me a little as I wasn’t sure that we’d turn up on their records but the books have arrived so we must do. Even stranger though is that they didn’t ask for any proof of ID from the children (normally you’re asked for a birth certificate) and one of ours was born in France so I can’t seem him appearing on any UK records.

Anyway, my parents are happy that they’ve a book for the grandchildren.