Need money exchanging advice
 

Hi,

I work in France right now and I get paid in Euros. I have a checking account with Credit Lyonnais, a pretty good sized bank here.

Here is my problem. I want to transfer money from my French account to my account in America but the French bank will not give me the spot rate on the transfer.

For example: The spot rate today was $1.34/Euro. But instead of transfering $1.34 for every euro, the bank will only send $1.24/Euro and keep the remainder as profit.

I'm talking about transfering thousands of Euros here, so it's a big deal for me. I'll lose hundreds of dollars on the deal if I can't figure out a better way to get my euros back to America in dollar form.

So does anyone have any ideas on how I can do this? Are there any banks in America where I can open a savings account and deposit Euros at the spot rate? I would basically wait until after my contract here is up, completely withdraw my savings, and physically bring it back to America where I would deposit it.

Help me please! I'm pissed about this crap right now.

Citibank?
I know that with them you can actually have different currencies in your account at any time.

Thank you, this is exactly the type of thing I must look into. I will be calling Citibank ASAP.

Do you know if citibank has a physical branches that I can actually walk into? I don't think I've ever seen one near Atlanta.

Sorry, I don't know about stateside, but they are prominent in London for all the US traders that are here.

Need a post code to find a branch.
http://www.citibank.com/us/index.htm
They have Georgia listed under the states so I assume they'll have one.

http://www.citi.com/uk/productsservices/ciwm/index.jsp

Will your bank allow you to open a USD account?

If so, you could transfer the funds between the two accounts (possibly using the spot rate), and then wire the USD directly from your USD account.

It's normally possible to open an account denominated in a foreign currency - alternately, find a nice offshore account where you can send your money, and do the wires/exchanges etc from there - they may give you a better rate, and you get the option of building up a nice tax free nest-egg too.

I had not thought of trying to open up a 'Eurodollar' account here. I'll look into it but I would be surprised if they have it, thanks for the idea though.

Transfering my euros out of this account into another euro denominated account is also a nice idea that I'll look into. Thanks again.

I wish I could just find a bank in America, like Citibank, that would allow me to deposit my Euros in person at the spot rate but I'm not sure whether that's possible.

I'm pretty confident that, given enough time, we can figure something out here. Thanks for the help.

I usually find that if I have money to change (as long as we're talking under the legal limit to bring in to the US here...) I get a better exchange rate in the country I'm going to.
You're not paying the penalty of taking money out of the country.

There are Citibank branches in the US. Just look up their locations online.

If you get desparate, just withdraw the funds and convert them when you get back. (unless you're over the limit)

Or maybe you can get your employer to either give you the US equivalent or maybe pay you in US dollars.

Good Luck.