Postbank (Germany) - transferring money to the US - what are the best options?
For those who are interested, I am answering my own question: We used Postbank and transferred 6000 Euro, we chose to Transfer in US$, and selected Shared Fees. There were three fees in total: All in all, I paid ~37$; this is about half of what I expected; and I got a perfect exchange rate. Postbank might have its downsides, but it seems they are still a good deal. After doing this many times, my preferred method is: The reason being that the US banks will use every chance possible to take your money in fees. Usually the German bank website will tell you what the current exchange rate. You were correct in selecting Transfer in $ and got the exchange rate. In my experience if you transfer in Euros, the US bank at the other end, will take about 3-5%, because they can. Selecting OUR means that you only have the fee taken out by the Source bank. By doing shared, it looks like both banks took their full fee. If you chose OUR, I'm fairly certain you just would have paid the 1.50 and the 20. Chase would not have taken the 15.
Wire transfers are the best method.  Costs can vary from $10 to $100 or more, depending on the banks and countries involved.  There's rarely any saving using the same bank, although HSBC may have reduced charges if you have Premier accounts in both countries (for a one-off transaction, it may not be worth the effort to open an account). However, that cost is insignificant compared to your possible losses on the currency exchange.  Assuming your money is currently in Hong Kong Dollars (HKD), it will need to be converted to US Dollars (USD). One place where it could be converted is at your Hong Kong bank.  You'll get their retail rate. Make sure you are aware of the rate they will use, and any fees, in advance.  Expect to pay around 2-3% from the mid-market rate (the rate you see quoted online, which doesn't fluctuate much for HKD-USD as the currencies are linked). Another place where the currency could be converted is at your US bank.  You really don't get any control over that if it arrives as HKD and is then automatically converted into your USD.  The rate and fees could be quite poor, especially if it is a minor US bank that has to deal with anther bank for foreign currency. For amounts of this size, it's worthwhile using a specialist currency conversion company instead.  Currency Fair in Ireland is one.  It's a peer-to-peer exchange that is generally the best deal (at least for the currency pairs I use).  You wire the money to them, do the exchange on their site at a rate that is much closer to 0.5% from the midrate, then the money is transferred out by wire for a few dollars.  Adds a few days to the process, but will possibly save you close to US$1000.  Another established option is Currency Online in New Zealand. There are probably also specialist currency exchange companies in Hong Kong. The basic rule is, don't let the banks exchange currencies at rates that suit them, use a third party that offers a better rate and lower fees. "No, I do not.  The advice is to take advice :-) but it is not required.  Several ""low cost"" SIPPs allow an ""Execution Only"" transfer from some pensions (generally not occupational or defined benefits schemes [where transfers are generally a bad idea anyway] but FAVCs such as mine are ok). Best Invest is one such, and the fees are indeed relatively low. As far as anyone knows, the government's plans for changes to rules on using pension funds would still apply even once I've transferred my pension pot and begun to withdraw funds (provided I don't commit myself to an annuity or other irrevocable investment). I am not a financial adviser, nor employed or otherwise connected with Best Invest, and I'm not endorsing their SIPP schemes, just giving them as an example of what can be done. [Added after I carried out my plan] I found the process very straightforward; I needed to apply for a pension fund with my new provider and fill in a transfer form, which set up the scheme and transferred the funds with no expense required.  Once the money arrived in my pension account I filled in another form to take the lump sum and set up regular withdrawals from the fund. I had my lump sum within a couple of months of initiating the transfer.  I'm very happy I did not take independent advice because it would have been very poor value for money.  During my researches I was approached eagerly by one firm promising to get me my money quick and claiming to be an independent financial advisor.  Luckily I mistrusted the service they offered." tl;dr: Be patient, money is probably sitting somewhere, and it will eventually be credited back to your account. I had a similar problem about 10 years ago.  I sent an international wire transfer, from my own bank account in Germany to my bank account in Central America. I had done this before, and there had been no issues, but in this case, even though all the information was correct, the bank rejected the wire because it was above $10K, and in that case, the bank needs written proof from the owner of the receiving account (me) , and so didn't know where the funds were coming from. I had to call the local Sparkasse bank in Germany, as well as an intermediary bank in London to sort it all out, and in total, had to wait about 3-4 weeks to get the money back in my Sparkasse bank account.  At one point I thought I may never see that money back, especially since there was an intermediary bank to deal with, but it all worked out in the end. As far as I can tell, the direct deposit option would require you to have a US bank account, which you don't have. So wire transfer is your only option unless you can ask them to try something else, like one of the cheaper money transfer services around. The charges for wire transfers tend to be fairly significant (typically low tens of USD). Depending on your relationship with the payer and the nature of the payment, try to get them to send it with all charges paid so you actually receive the amount you are owed and they cover the charges. I use xoom.com to transfer money to India. I've been using them for over 2 years now, they are the fastest and the cheapest for me (the funds are usually available the same day). They seem to have added a lot of European countries to their list. Definitely worth a shot. If you’re concerned about transferring  USD, I can’t really help you there. But if you’re looking to transfer wealth, I believe that’s where something like Bitcoin could help you. In fact a small or nonexistent processing fee is one of Bitcoin’s biggest strengths as a currency. Off the top of my head, I believe BitPay has services that would suit your needs. And if you’re worried about the volatility of Bitcoin, you can always convert it straight to USD just so you can avoid service fees! The simple answer is to not close your American bank accounts - or if you have already done so, open one. Make sure it allows for internet banking, and use it to pay all your bills. Periodically move some money from your Canadian account to your US account to cover the bills. I have done this between Canada and the UK for fifteen years now. An alternative is to set up a USD account at your Canadian bank.  Most organizations will happily mail your bills abroad, unless the bills are actually associated with an address, like a utility - in which case you should get the person living there to take care of them. Much better is to use electronic billing for everything. There is a service TransferWise through which you can send money from UK banks to EUR bank accounts in the EU for a 1 GBP fee (much cheaper then about 25 GBP for a SWIFT transfer). You send them a UK national GBP transfer to their UK HSBC account, and they send the equivalent amount in EUR from their Irish EUR bank account to your EUR account - for example in Germany. What is best, is that they use bare mid-market ForEx exchange rates, without any markup on the GBP to EUR exchange rate, which is usually in the range of 2% to 5% in banks, so you don't lose anything on the exchange rate.