How to convert coins into paper money or deposit coins into bank account, without your bank in local?
Ask around your area. Some stores will exchange because it saves them having to go to the bank to stock up on change. Some stores have machines that will convert the coins for a small percentage fee.  Some banks may do this exchange for folks who aren't customers, though that's uncommon.  My solution was to open a small account locally specifically as a place to dump my coins into. They'll even run a pile of coins through their counting machine for me, free, so I don't have to make up coin rolls as I did in the past. We have machines in several grocery store chains that will take your coins, sort them, and give you two ways to get your money back: I've seen these many places, but, of course, I cannot say for sure if there are any near you.
Check with your local bank - you're likely to be able to either deposit it to your account or exchange into more useful form of currency. Otherwise, you can also check eBay. I'm not familiar with the Australian law, and it may be illegal to do that, but I know that coins from other countries that went out of circulation become quite popular with collectors and you can sell them for more than their face value (recently I've seen this happening to the Canadian 1 cent coin). "On contrary of what Mike Scott suggested, I think in case of EURO DOOM it's a lot safer if your savings were changed into another currency in advance. Beware that bringing your money into an EURO CORE country (like Finland, Austria, Germany, Nethereland) it's useful if you think those banks are safer, but totally useless to avoid the conversion of your saving from Euro into your national currency. In case of EURO CRASH, only the Central Bank will decide what happens to ALL the Euro deposited wherever, single banks, even if they are Deutsche Bank or BNP or ING, can not decide what to do on their own. ECB (European Central Bank) might decide to convert EURO into local currencies based on the account's owner nationality. Therefor if you are Greek and you moved your saving in a German bank, the ECB might decide that your Euro are converted into New Dracma even if they sit in a German bank account. The funniest thing is that if you ask to a Finland bank: ""In case of Euro crash, would you convert my Euro into New Dracma?"", they sure would answer ""No, we can't!"", which is true, they can not because it's only the ECB (Europe Central Bank) the one that decides how an ordered Euro crash has to be manged, and the ECB might decide as I explained you above. Other Central Banks (Swiss, FED, etc.) would only follow the decisions of the ECB. Moreover in case of EURO DOOM, it's highly probable that the Euro currency looses a tremendous value compared to other currencies, the loss would be huge in case the Euro Crash happens in a disordered way (i.e. a strong country like Germany and their banks decides to get out and they start printing their own money w/o listening to the ECB anymore). So even if your saving are in Euro in Germany they would loose so much value (compared to other currencies) that you will regreat forever not to have converted them into another currency when you had the time to do it. Couple of advises: 1) If you want to change you savings into another currency you don't need to bring them into another bank/country (like US), you could simply buy US Shares/Bonds at your local bank. Shares/Bonds of a US company/US gov will always be worth their value in dollars no matter in what new pathetic currency your account will be converted. 2) But is there a drawback in converting my saving into another currency (i.e. buying dollars in the form of US treasury bonds)? Unfortunately yes, the drawback is that in case this Euro drama comes finally to an happy ending and Germans decide to open their wallets for the nth time to save the currency, the Euro might suddenly increase its value compared to other currencies, therefor if you changed your saving into another currency you might loose money (i.e. US dollars looses value against the Euro)." As NRI/PIO (Non-Resident Indian/Person of Indian Origin), the overseas income and transfers in foreign currency are exempt from Indian income taxes. However, the account in India has to be designated NRE or FCNR. There are three kind of accounts that an NRI can maintain Interest earned in NRE and FCNR accounts is exempt from income taxes. Interest earned in NRO accounts is not exempt from income taxes, in fact banks would withhold about 30% of interest (TDS). The exact tax liability would depend upon income generated in India and TDS could be applied towards that liability when the tax returns are filed. There are other implications also of designating the account as NRE or NRO. NRE accounts can only be funded via inward remittance of permitted foreign currency e.g. deposit USD/GBP. So proceeds like rental income, pension etc. that are generated in INR within India can't be deposited in this account. The money deposited in NRE account can grow tax free and can be converted back in any foreign currency freely. On the other hand NRO accounts can be funded through both inward remittance of permitted foreign currency or local income e.g. rental, pension etc. All the amount in this account is treated as Indian originated INR (even if remitted in foreign currency) and thus is taxed as any other bank account. The amount in this account is subject to the annual cap of convertibility of USD 1 million. Both NRE and NRO accounts are maintained in INR and can be Saving and Term Deposit. Any remittance made to these accounts in any foreign currency is converted to INR at the time of deposit and is maintained in INR. FCNR account are held in foreign currency and can only be Term Deposit. Official definitions: Accounts for Non Resident Indians (NRIs) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) "does it mean uncontrolled severe deflation/inflation is more likely to   occur compared to ""normal"" currencies such as USD, EUR etc? Look at the chart referenced in the link in your question.  It took approximately 50 years for annual production of gold to double from 500 tons to 1000 tons.  It took approximately 40 years for annual production to double from 1000 tons to 2000 tons. Compare that to the production of US dollars by the Federal Reserve (see chart below obtained from here).  US dollar production doubled in DAYS.  Which one do you think will lead to uncontrolled inflation/deflation? Update: Why did I include a chart of the FED's balance sheet?  Because this is the way newly printed money is introduced - the FED will purchase something from banks (mortgage-backed securities, US treasuries, etc.) with newly printed money.  The banks can then loan this money to people who then deposit the money into other banks who loan those deposits to other people and so on.  This is how the fractional reserve process expands the money supply.  This is why I did not include a chart of the money supply since that is counting the same money multiple times.  If I deposited 100 newly minted coins into a bank and that bank proceeded to loan out 80 of my coins where 80 are deposited into another bank who then proceeds to loan out 60 of the coins, and so on....the production of coins only changed by the initial 100 that I minted - not by the fractional reserve multiple. There are historical examples of inflation with gold and silver as duff has pointed out.  None of them come close in magnitude to the inflation experienced with government fiat money." "An accounting general ledger is based on tracking your actual assets, liabilities, expenses, and income, and Gnucash is first and foremost a general ledger program. While it has some simple ""budgeting"" capabilities, they're primarily based around reporting how close your actual expenses were to a planned budget, not around forecasting eventual cash flow or ""saving"" a portion of assets for particular purposes. I think the closest concept to what you're trying to do is that you want to take your ""real"" Checking account, and segment it into portions. You could use something like this as an Account Hierarchy: The total in the ""Checking Account"" parent represents your actual amount of money that you might reconcile with your bank, but you have it allocated in your accounting in various ways. You may have deposits usually go into the ""Available funds"" subaccount, but when you want to save some money you transfer from that into a Savings subaccount. You could include that transfer as an additional split when you buy something, such as transferring $50 from Assets:Checking Account:Available Funds sending $45 to Expenses:Groceries and $5 to Assets:Checking Account:Long-term Savings. This can make it a little more annoying to reconcile your accounts (you need to use the ""Include Subaccounts"" checkbox), and I'm not sure how well it'd work if you ever imported transaction files from your bank. Another option may be to track your budgeting (which answers ""How much am I allowed to spend on X right now?"") separately from your accounting (which only answers ""How much have I spent on X in the past?"" and ""How much do I own right now?""), using a different application or spreadsheet. Using Gnucash to track ""budget envelopes"" is kind of twisting it in a way it's not really designed for, though it may work well enough for what you're looking for." You can open an account at Scotiabank and use a Bank of America atm (and vice versa). No ATM or bank imposed foreign transaction fee (outside the 1% network imposed fee) You could buy some bitcoins with your credit card and then convert them back to physical money. In addition to above points : Interest earned on NRE accounts are tax free. But you can deposit any foreign currency except INR. Nothing is taxable. While the NRO account gives you a flexibility to deposit INR too, the interest will be taxable and tax will be deducted at source at the rate of 30.9%. It is necessary to convert the existing Indian local accounts to NRO as per the Reserve Bank of India circular: RBI/2007-2008/242 Master Circular No. 03 /2007- 08 . So basically you need: