| Currency Exchange - High Service Charges - US/CAN Transfer |
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KevinE
First Time Poster
Cash: $ 0.25
Posts: 1
Joined: 26 May 2012
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| Currency Exchange - High Service Charges - US/CAN Transfer |
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Ok, first post here. Multisided issues here so a bit of background. 2.5 years ago we sold everything we own (house cars possesions etc) back in Canada and bought a catamaran which we have since then sailed down the east coast of the US all the way down through the Caribbean and back. We bought the boat in the US so had to do a currency exchange to buy it. We paid $275k for the boat back in 2009 when the Canadian dollar was somewhere around $0.94 US (ie. $1US bought $0.92CAN). We have our boat up for sale and will be returning back to Canada as soon as she is sold. So here are the issues I have:
1. What is the cheapest way to convert US $ to CAN? We just bought a new car that cost $42k US and after currency conversion our Canadian cost was $43.5k - the CAN dollar was at $1.02 so the service charges are SIGNIFICANT ($42K should have cost us about $41.2k CAN so service charges amounted to just over $2300!!). We bank with HSBC and this was done with a normal wire transfer.
We can sell our boat for roughly what we paid for it but with the strengthening of the canadian dollar we stand to lose almost $25k just on conversion let alone service charges. So is there a cheaper way to do the conversion?
2. We need to buy a house when we return and really need the funds from the boat purchase as a down payment. We can't decide whether to convert the money now or leave it in a US$ account and wait and see if the US dollar strengthens. We can purchase a cheaper house and convert the cash later but who knows how long that could take plus we want to find a home that we will stay in long term (we don't want to move again in a couple of years). So we are looking for some creative strategies to mitigate our losses here.
Thanks in advance.
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Sat May 26, 2012 1:55 pm |
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eastmn
Senior Member
Cash: $ 85.80
Posts: 414
Joined: 04 Apr 2010
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I've never tried it, and so I have no idea, but here's a Canadian currency transfer company which allows you to ask for low bid, allows you to bargain to make sure that you got the best deal possible: http://www.xe.com/fx/
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Last edited by eastmn on Sun May 27, 2012 11:21 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Sat May 26, 2012 6:35 pm |
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