Overseas study

Wenlock14

Hello all you experts. I'm a newbie and have joined with a specific issue in mind: my youngest son is about to head off to university (nothing unusual in that) but the university is in the Netherlands, so he'll be living and studying in Holland for three or four years.
We'll be financing all aspects of his time there and want to find the best way to manage the money transfers and payments we'll be facing. The good news is that fees in Holland are just 1900 Euros pa, as opposed to most UK fees of £9k.
We'll need to pay fees, rent (about 350E per month) and living expenses.


Any bright ideas please?

Voyager2002

For a start, advise him to open account with Metro Bank and/or N and P, since these issue debit cards that do not charge for Euro withdrawals. That will give him access to cash there.

He will need to open a Dutch bank account, and there are various ways to exchange pounds sterling in a UK account for Euro in an account in Euroland: currency brokers are likely to be far more cost-effective than the service offered by any bank.

Wenlock14

Thanks Voyager. I've already set-up an account with Western Union in preparation for the exchange deals. How would you rate them?


I'll have a butchers at Metro Bank and N and P. Presumably these would be Sterling accounts for him to dip into? He'd be able to put his own money there (switched from Co-op Bank) to supplement all the extra-curricular expenses that parents don't understand!

Voyager2002

Wenlock14 wrote: »

Thanks Voyager. I've already set-up an account with Western Union in preparation for the exchange deals. How would you rate them?


I'll have a butchers at Metro Bank and N and P. Presumably these would be Sterling accounts for him to dip into? He'd be able to put his own money there (switched from Co-op Bank) to supplement all the extra-curricular expenses that parents don't understand!

When you say Western Union, I hope you mean Custom House at https://www.xe.com, who are owned by Western Union. They are the currency broker I use for international bank-to-bank transfers, and I like their service. If you simply mean Western Union itself, they provide a very rapid but very expensive money transfer service, and I would only use them in an emergency.

And yes, the accounts I mentioned are just ordinary UK sterling bank accounts, but when you use the debit card to withdraw cash at a machine in the EU you get a favourable exchange rate and no fees. The downside is that you have to visit a Metro bank branch in order to open an account (they are all in or near London); while the N and P Classic Gold account must be funded with at least 500 per month.