Taking cash to Australia - help?!

simonpearce

Hi,

I'm off to Oz for three months am struggling to work out what's best to do with cash.

I've got about £2k worth of AUD. I bank with HSBC who charge between £1.75 and £5 to withdraw cash from my current account whilst abroad. For £12 a month it's not worth their paid-for account.

I really don't want to have £2k worth of AUD in my pocket but really not sure what the next best option is

(This cash is for cash purchases only - I intend to use my long term 0% credit card where possible which will be repaid in full on return)

Any tips welcome!

Cheers

whatmichaelsays

Get yourself a FairFX Anywhere or CaxtonFX Global pre-paid card. It's a pre-paid Mastercard which you can simply use to pay for goods or get cash out as and when you need it.

simonpearce

whatmichaelsays wrote: »

Get yourself a FairFX Anywhere or CaxtonFX Global pre-paid card. It's a pre-paid Mastercard which you can simply use to pay for goods or get cash out as and when you need it.

Cheers - I did look at those. Unfortunately the FairFx card charges €1.50/$2 for ATM withdrawals and the CaxtonFX card has pretty poor exchange rates and more t&c than my mortgage

Red_potsy

We have just been living in Australia for 20 months. On advice from this site we set up a citbank UK current account and a citibank australia current account and then transferred money easily, without charges between the two. It did take a while to set up the accounts and we did need proof of id and address.