Saving whilst working overseas

sarahbythesea

My daughter is currently working in China but would like to put some of her spare money into savings. As I understand it because she’s not resident in the uk any longer she can’t add any more to her existing isa and she can’t open a new UK savings account ? Does anyone have any suggestions what she could do to invest please ?

wmb194

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6679612/saving-whilst-working-overseas

If she still has a UK current account NS&I might be an option.

https://www.nsandi.com/help/join-nsandi/using-nsandi-outside-uk

dingbat58

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82100839#Comment_82100839

I'm abroad, and NS&I is definitely an option - even a Direct Saver account may be worth a look?

But, we've hit a problem, and are trying to get NS&I to fix it! You SHOULD be able to make deposits quickly and easily into an NS&I account using a debit card from a UK bank. However, with some debit cards and banks (in our case it's RBS and their Mastercard), the payment fails every time we try! RBS has investigated and insists there's nothing wrong with the transaction from their side. NS&I has been trying to put the blame on the "card issuer", but all the indicators are that the failure is with NS&I (or their third-party card processing supplier which is a subsidiary of Barclays).

This is an issue that seems to relate to how the various systems in the chain treat addresses, and especially the format of non-UK addresses, but I'm still trying to get NS&I to take it seriously. I know this has been an issue since at least 2023, when someone else escalated their complaint to the Financial Ombudsman - nothing appears to have been done to resolve it since then.

subjecttocontract

Why can't she save money in China ?

When I worked in Europe it worked fine.

poseidon1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82103619#Comment_82103619

EDITED

'Needs to be to said' China is definitely not comparable to Europe for foreigners working there.

Typical Yuan bank savings accounts currently pay paltry interest of between 1% to 1.5%.

There are also arduous exchange control rules which restrict foreigners in the way they can expatriate their Chinese earnings/ savings as explained below :

https://the-networker.co.uk/transfering-funds-into-and-out-of-china/

China has nothing like the range of retail investment and saving products that are in abundance here in the UK. Indeed fair to state neither does continental europe for that matter.

Probably also fair to say that many foreigners who travel to China for work, are unaware of these lack of savings and investment opportunities until after they arrive. Typically few do any meaningful due diligence on what to expect prior to their departure to the country.

A friend of mine who lived out there for many years, routed his savings via Hong Kong based banks by judicious exchange of restricted domestic Yuan ( CNY) in favour of offshore Yuan ( CNH). How many people ( other than currency experts) understand ChIna has two different variants of its own currency and what this means when it comes to personal saving and investing?

subjecttocontract

If it's needless to say, why say it ?