Banking For A Year Abroad

Well first of all my visa arrived =D I got it on the friday of the week that I bought it. They posted it really fast. And it's really pretty! There are cherry blossom flowers on the top and my face in black and white in a little circle. It's very nice and really exciting to see my actual student visa, valid for 15 months all ready stuck into my passport.

I have 15 days until I leave for Japan. My massive list of things to do it getting shorter.

I bought my insurance a couple of days ago from Leeds University. They have a pretty good cover that's designed for Leeds year abroad students and only costs £50 when you're going to Japan because you have to buy another japanese insurance on top of it. I could have looked around to see if there was a better offer, but I figured Leeds would have it sorted.

Anyway, what I mostly wanted to talk about in this post was how to sort out a bank account for year abroad. I went and asked at a few high street banks and frankly, they were very unhelpful. The man at HSBC was very determined that the only way to do it was to buy a monthly fee account, which I don't really want to do. But this is what I found out from the few places I went any how:



Halifax
To send money to a foreign bank costs £9.50 per transaction online.  I already have my student account with Halifax so this seems like a simple deal.

HSBC
Sending money to a foreign bank costs £17. To open a HSBC account in japan you need a premier account which has a monthly fee which I think is £25 a month, although their website has SO much information and the prices are in the super small print it's hard to tell >.< They also have an aadvance account, which is £12.95/month and includes travel insurance and apparently you can take money out of any machine with your visa card without any charges.


Natwest
£20 to transfer money, but they don't do it online.

My friend Hillary linked me to this site http://www.caxtonfx.com/  which is apparently a free way of transfering money from one bank to another. It seems a bit like paypal to me, but maybe less expensive! And of course, Paypal does something similar with fees, although I think the fees are quite high for large sums of money.



Money is a little bit of a worry, as always. Going to japan is a very expensive trip. Although I'll be getting a lot from student finance, and I have about £4000 savings from working/an account my mum put in for me when I was a baby that has accumulated over the past 20 years. So I will have around £10,000 for the year.
It really seems like a lot to me, but of course, there's a lot of payments I'll  have to make.

I guess I need to budget and make sure I'm all sorted out.

Things I have left to do:

• Get some yen
• Make sure I have a list of everything I need to pack
• Pack it all and weigh the suitcase etc. 
• Sign a form to get my money from the bank.

Tomorrow I'm heading back up to Leeds for a couple of days with my boyfriend. And then on the 27th I'm having a leaving party as well as an early birthday party, because my 21st is on the 12th of September when I'm in Japan. Looking forward to that =]