Cheapest way to wire or withdraw money from US account while living in Europe
I prefer to use a Foreign Exchange transfer service.  You will get a good exchange rate (better than from Paypal or from your bank) and it is possible to set it up with no transfer fees on both ends.  You can use an ACH transfer from your US bank account to the FX's bank account and then a SEPA transfer in Europe to get the funds into your bank account.  Transfers can also go in the opposite direction (Europe to USA). I've used XE's service (www.xe.com) and US Forex's service (www.usforex.com).  Transferwise (www.transferwise.com) is another popular service. US Forex's service calls you to confirm each transfer.  They also charge a $5 fee on transfers under $1000. XE's service is more convenient: they do not charge fees for small transfers and do not call you to confirm the tramsfer.  However, they will not let you set up a free ACH transfer from US bank accounts if you set up your XE account outside the US. In both cases, the transfer takes a few business days to complete. EDIT: In my recent (Summer 2015) experience, US Forex has offered slightly better rates than XE.  I've also checked out Transferwise, and for transfers from the US it seems to be a bit of a gimmick with a fee added late in the process.  For reference, I just got quotes from the three sites for converting 5000 USD to EUR: 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. There is a number of cheaper online options that you could use. TranferWise was already mentioned here. Other options i know are Paysera or TransferGo. They state that international transfers are processed on the next day and they are substantially cheaper than those of banks. Currency exchange rate is usually not bad. Atm machine and my Credit Union account. Low fees (often zero, if the machine is on any of the same networks) and decent exchange rate, and no need to carry cash or traveler's checks to be exchanged. Alternatively, pay by credit card, though there is a foreign transaction fee on that.
"Pay off the credit cards.  From now on, pay off the credit cards monthly.  Under no circumstances should you borrow money.  You have net worth but no external income.  Borrowing is useless to you.   $200,000 in two bank accounts, because if one bank collapses, you want to have a spare while you wait for the government to pay off the guarantee.  Keep $50,000 in checking and another $50k in savings.  The remainder put into CDs.  Don't expect interest income beyond inflation.  Real interest rates (after inflation) are often slightly negative.   People ask why you might keep money in the bank rather than stocks/bonds.  The problem is that stocks/bonds don't always maintain their value, much less go up.  The bank money won't gain, but it won't suddenly lose half its value either.  It can easily take five years after a stock market crash for the market to recover.  You don't want to be withdrawing from losses.   Some people have suggested more bonds and fewer stocks.  But putting some of the money in the bank is better than bonds.  Bonds sometimes lose money, like stocks.  Instead, park some of the money in the bank and pick a more aggressive stock/bond mixture.  That way you're never desperate for money, and you can survive market dips.  And the stock/bond part of the investment will return more at 70/30 than 60/40.   $700,000 in stock mutual funds.  $300,000 in bond mutual funds.  Look for broad indexes rather than high returns.  You need this to grow by the inflation rate just to keep even.  That's $20,000 to $30,000 a year.  Keep the balance between 70/30 and 75/25.  You can move half the excess beyond inflation to your bank accounts.  That's the money you have to spend each year.  Don't withdraw money if you aren't keeping up with inflation.   Don't try to time the market.  Much better informed people with better resources will be trying to do that and failing.  Play the odds instead.  Keep to a consistent strategy and let the market come back to you.  If you chase it, you are likely to lose money.   If you don't spend money this year, you can save it for next year.  Anything beyond $200,000 in the bank accounts is available for spending.  In an emergency you may have to draw down the $200,000.  Be careful.  It's not as big a cushion as it seems, because you don't have an external income to replace it.   I live in southern California but would like to move overseas after establishing stable investments.   I am not the type of person that would invest in McDonald's, but would consider other less evil franchises (maybe?).   These are contradictory goals, as stated.  A franchise (meaning a local business of a national brand) is not a ""stable investment"".  A franchise is something that you actively manage.  At minimum, you have to hire someone to run the franchise.  And as a general rule, they aren't as turnkey as they promise.   How do you pick a good manager?  How will you tell if they know how the business works?  Particularly if you don't know.  How will you tell that they are honest and won't just embezzle your money?  Or more honestly, give you too much of the business revenues such that the business is not sustainable?  Or spend so much on the business that you can't recover it as revenue?   Some have suggested that you meant brand or stock rather than franchise.  If so, you can ignore the last few paragraphs.  I would be careful about making moral judgments about companies.  McDonald's pays its workers too little.  Google invades privacy.  Exxon is bad for the environment.  Chase collects fees from people desperate for money.  Tesla relies on government subsidies.  Every successful company has some way in which it can be considered ""evil"".  And unsuccessful companies are evil in that they go out of business, leaving workers, customers, and investors (i.e. you!) in the lurch.   Regardless, you should invest in broad index funds rather than individual stocks.  If college is out of the question, then so should be stock investing.  It's at least as much work and needs to be maintained.   In terms of living overseas, dip your toe in first.  Rent a small place for a few months.  Find out how much it costs to live there.  Remember to leave money for bigger expenses.  You should be able to live on $20,000 or $25,000 a year now.  Then you can plan on spending $35,000 a year to do it for real (including odd expenses that don't happen every month).  Make sure that you have health insurance arranged.   Eventually you may buy a place.  If you can find one that you can afford for something like $100,000.  Note that $100,000 would be low in California but sufficient even in many places in the US.  Think rural, like the South or Midwest.  And of course that would be more money in many countries in South America, Africa, or southern Asia.  Even southern and eastern Europe might be possible.  You might even pay a bit more and rent part of the property.  In the US, this would be a duplex or a bed and breakfast.  They may use different terms elsewhere.   Given your health, do you need a maid/cook?  That would lean towards something like a bed and breakfast, where the same person can clean for both you and the guests.  Same with cooking, although that might be a second person (or more).  Hire a bookkeeper/accountant first, as you'll want help evaluating potential purchases.  Keep the business small enough that you can actively monitor it.   Part of the problem here is that a million dollars sounds like a lot of money but isn't.  You aren't rich.  This is about bare minimum for surviving with a middle class lifestyle in the United States and other first world countries.  You can't live like a tourist.   It's true that many places overseas are cheaper.  But many aren't (including much of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.).  And the ones that aren't may surprise you.  And you also may find that some of the things that you personally want or need to buy are expensive elsewhere.  Dabble first and commit slowly; be sure first.  Include rarer things like travel in your expenses.   Long term, there will be currency rate worries overseas.  If you move permanently, you should certainly move your bank accounts there relatively soon (perhaps keep part of one in the US for emergencies that may bring you back).  And move your investments as well.  Your return may actually improve, although some of that is likely to be eaten up by inflation.  A 10% return in a country with 12% inflation is a negative real return.   Try to balance your investments by where your money gets spent.  If you are eating imported food, put some of the investment in the place from which you are importing.  That way, if exchange rates push your food costs up, they will likely increase your investments at the same time.  If you are buying stuff online from US vendors and having it shipped to you, keep some of your investments in the US for the same reason.  Make currency fluctuations work with you rather than against you.   I don't know what your circumstances are in terms of health.  If you can work, you probably should.  Given twenty years, your million could grow to enough to live off securely.  As is, you would be in trouble with another stock market crash.  You'd have to live off the bank account money while you waited for your stocks and bonds to recover." Looks like it is a 20% penalty on the withdrawal (along with income tax).  Funds can be withdrawn for any reason, but withdrawals that are not for documented qualified medical expenses are subject to income taxes and a 20% penalty. The 20% tax penalty is waived for persons who have reached the age of 65 or have become disabled at the time of the withdrawal. Then, only income tax is paid on the withdrawal  Wikipedia HSA article Even though you are leaving the country, you still earned and contributed to the plan while you were working/living, so it is still subject to the taxes/laws in place. On a somewhat related note, check out this question here, as it may help you out a bit (similar but not really duplicate) - How do I withdraw all money from my HSA account as a non-resident? "You can wire the money to the university. If your friend is a registered student, then they will have an account at the school. Contact the school directly and ask for the ""bursar's office"" (assuming it is an English speaking school). The bursar will tell you how to wire the money so that it reaches the proper account. Normally, you will wire to a general university account at a bank and the memo on the wire will include the student's account number. Your friend can wire money to your account at your bank. Go to your bank and ask them for the procedure. By the way, there is a 90% chance your ""friend"" will not pay you back." "i would add only -- and you alluded in this direction, but to clarify -- that barter economies rarely ever exist. if you ask an economist about the origin of money, they usually offer thus barter-to-credit story because Adam Smith hypothesized this line of development. it subsequently became ""true"", even though there was no evidence for it.   anthropology has come a long way since Smith lived, and we now know that early societies were communal, as in from each according to their means, etc. the term of art is ""gift economy"", where there are no tallies or accountings of who owes exactly what but rather a general sense of mutual obligation.  accounting, credit and debt as we think of them were a result of dealing with people you did not trust. money, being a debt, arose from this mistrust and was typically only used to settle the most serious matters -- stolen wives, murder, etc. -- in a way that could prevent deadly conflict by protecting the honor of the aggrieved. money was intended to ""replace"" the lost person.   money, debt and the rest have come in and out of fashion over the ages -- the efficiency argument is really null, if you consider a gift economy, and there have been prolonged periods since the first use of metallic money in which money has gone away. for most of the middle ages, for example, europe reverted to credit and gift economies. anthropologists believe in fact that the use of money comes to typically prevail in societies that are rife with mistrust and ""lost persons"" -- that is, societies plagued by war and slavery (slaves being historically one of the primary products of war). the rise of money usually brings the rise of a creditor class, a debtor class who approximate slaves even though not losers in war per se, and a terrific amount of social strife. and that leads often to collapse if not addressed by periodic debt jubilees." As of now you are doing that. When you start earning larger sums of money, you will not withdraw and keep it in your house. You will leave it in the bank and they will earn money on it( By lending it out at a higher interest rate). When you are broke, that same bank will offer you a credit card or some other instrument that will help you survive. They will charge you money on that and make interest of you. When you have too much money and you start wiring money they will charge you a wire transfer fees. There are more than 500 ways in which banks make money off you. If you plan receiving $100 and $250 all your life and withdraw it immediately and don't plan doing anything else all your life, then you will probably not let the bank make any money off you. However, there are a very few people like that and banks barely lose anything accepting those customers. Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking Account does not charge for incoming wires (both domestic and international), and has $0 monthly fee and minimum balance (plus they offer ATM fee rebates and no international surcharge). Schwab bank does not allow International wire transfers.  Accepts domestic only. You can remotely close the account and transfer the money out to your account in home country. If you have netbanking you can also setup remittance service to your country "From personal experience of having been abroad for a while for work, I found the simplest method to be to Paypal it to myself from one country to the other. Yes, you incur a transaction fee - but it was always less expensive than ""real"" bank fees for me. Also - if you use a bank that has offices in both countries, adding an authorized user with a debit card and having them visit the bank every X often and making a withdrawal is a viable route."