How much money can we legally carry without declaration?

fifeken

Also remember, although an individual may take up to 10K Euro before having to declare it, any significant cash amounts may raise eyebrows and you could be asked to prove the source of the money or risk losing it.

angelil

A lot of banks have overseas/relocation services whereby they will help you set up a bank account in the new country before you arrive there, help you transfer your money etc. HSBC I know definitely has such a service. You haven't mentioned it, but will you be closing your UK bank account(s)? I personally would keep one open: I live abroad now but still have a UK bank account with a small amount of sterling floating in it at all times. You never know when you might need it again.

Voyager2002

Remember that this limit is just the threshold at which you declare the money: you are allowed to take as much as you like! So if you are going to be taking more than 20,000 between two adults, just fill in the form!

A more serious consideration is what rules apply in the country of your destination. Do they have an embassy here that could tell you?

And is your destination a country without ATMs? Otherwise, surely you could withdraw cash once you are there. There must be very few countries in the world that are totally without such machines: probably only Somalia and perhaps Eritrea, and if that is where you plan to live there are lots of more serious things to worry about!

mcfisco

HMRC can ask for proof of where money came from and that - if applicable - income tax has been paid
Any amount over €999 is subject to these checks, not really sure what the chances of being identified as having a cash amount over that is though, although they do have money dogs apparently.
If you have a large amount and split it between the family to stay within the guidelines you'd be more likely to get a more thorough investigation if stopped. They'd be very unlikely to accept that all members of the family just happened to be under the declaration limit.
There's always vigilance for drug money leaving the country but most of the time it's the 'kebab run' where high cash business owners are taking tax free cash out of the country