Hi all,

I'm moving from USA to Netherlands soon, and will be employed by a university there. I will be paid in Euro.

Does anybody know a way to convert Euro cash to USD cash without a forex fee? Do any (European) banks do this? Or is there a loophole somewhere?*

Thanks in advance,
-cmhsieh54


* For example, one can often sidestep forex fees (both purchase, and ATM) with USA-based debit cards.

Sure - get a bank account and a debit / credit card, that allows free withdrawals. I do not know about the NL, but there are quite a few on offer in Germany. Or: Simply transfer the money from your dutch bank account into your US bank account. You normally pay a fee for the banking service, but not these strange US forex fees.

The dollar is expected to weaken against the Euro. You may be better off holding Euro's and cashing out when you move back at a favorable exchange rate.

You may also be able to set up a brokerage account and have the broker do the exchange. We deal with JPM for our Euro clients and they charge ~1-2 basis points for a conversion. I am not sure if there are minimums for doing this as we usually deal in 100k+ transactions.

Just out of curiosity, why would you want that? You're moving here, being paid in local currency and we don't accept dollars anywhere except for the Starbucks at Schiphol. That, plus the Euro is, at least currently, much stronger than the dollar which to me makes it a bit strange to convert anything at all.

If you'll be employed here, you should be able to get a Dutch bank account and skip any fees whatsoever.

Whoops, sorry my post wasn't more clear... I'm interested in converting to USD for the (high) possibility that I'll end up moving back to the USA after 6 years. The reason that I'm asking now as opposed to later is in case there is a cap on how much I can costlessly convert in one transaction.

IME, usually, it works the other way around: exchange rates are better when you transfer large amount rather than lower amounts.

IMHO, it is not possible to predict where exchange rates are going. As Keynes wrote: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Yup, I'm fully aware of that. However, I'm asking about *ANY* loophole, not just via actual conversion. So, for example, many USA-based checking accounts allow free ATM withdrawals overseas, with no forex fee or bank fees. I'd be particularly interested if anybody somehow had that kind of checking account in Europe...

You can open a checking account at the "Deutsche Bank". There you can withdraw without any ATM-Fees in the States from the Bank of America. However I don't know whether they charge you any conversion fee.
cheers
757DUD

You know, it seems like ALL transfers have SOME fee or two. Some are obvious, others are buried in the transactions.

Institutions just don't usually transfer at the interbank rate.

I've found that ALL of my hundreds of international ATM withdrawls were at interbank +1% (or sometimes more, depending on the home bank's greed), even though no "ATM fee" was ever added.

Perhaps the only way to do a totally fee free conversion would be to exchange currencies directly with another person at that day's interbank rate. This would seem unlikely to happen.

OP: there will be many expenses while living in the Netherlands. There may be minimal surplus to convert if you relocate to the USA some years later.

Besides, who would move back after living in the Netherlands?