Quote:
Originally Posted by Anders
I'm getting so pumped for the move! What do you guys think is the best way to handle currency conversions? I have a lot of bills that I'll still be paying in USD as well as the new CDN$ bills to pay, and I have blind optimism that there's a cool way to make everything work out, but I'm not sure what it is. I will probably be playing in USD games, and get my cashouts through an ewallet and then to a Canadian bank. Will I have to have a USD account at RBC or will things autoconvert at some point along the way? Then I'd have to convert back to USD to pay my USD bills? aaaa
Unfortunately, as a guy with Canadian bills, US bills, and Korean bills, I can let you know there's no great way to handle this. Contact the people you owe money to. Some will allow payments from a non-US bank if there are US branches, some require the money to be in an actual US bank account.
The most I can say is: Try to limit the number of times the money changes hands. If you have a small US bank or a small CAD bank, it's super common to transfer the funds through an intermediary bank. Same for e-wallets to small banks AFAIK. Every time that money changes hands, someone takes a cut. (For instance, to get money from Korea to Canada in my wifes account, the transfer fees for a simple bank transfer exceed $150, for my US account it's about $40, and if I had a large bank back home, it'd be around $18.)
It really adds up. Here's my plan:
Get a Canadian bank account with US branches. Pay as many bills as I can through that, and have the poker money put into that account through bank transfer or wire transfer, depending on the size of transaction.
Send money to the US account from there to pay my "stubborn" bills that won't take anything other than a US bank account, preferably in large enough chunks that it will cover several months worth of bills with one transfer.
As far as I know, that's the best way to reduce the damage.