Moving to a new country? Don't pay an outrageous transfer fee!

I love to travel. Whether near or far, I take every chance I get to hop on a plane and explore a new place. As a past college student, many of my friends traveled abroad several times during their undergraduate, and graduate, careers. Guess what? Your credit does not move with you when traveling abroad. That means, yes, no student loans, no foreign credit cards, etc. All of the money you need to survive abroad, you need to withdraw in the United States and send to an overseas bank account (or keep it under your mattress). 

I am writing this article for my friends who will be abroad for an extended period of time. If you have a bank account that is suited for either, Euros or GPB, you need to stop paying the ridiculous conversion fees of banks. After all, how are we ever going to promote decentralization of currency and data if we don't utilize it!

A super easy way to transfer this money is through gdax.com. If you are not familiar with GDAX, it is actually the backend service to Coinbase.com, which is the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the United States. I can go on and on about this service, but to make a long story short, you can transfer your money with little to no conversion fees. This process can take as little as 4 days. There are currently some other cryptocurrency solutions for successfully doing just this, but that technology may be a little beyond the reader's knowledge base.

We can break this process down into a couple of steps. There are tons of resources online of how to get started. I am just going to outline the steps so you know the process.

You can do this in 4 easy steps!

Step 1: Sign up for a gdax.com or coinbase.com account. Since they are run by the same company, opening one on either site is an available option. It may take a couple hours/days for verification depending on a couple different things. Please be patient.

Step 2: Deposit a desired amount of currency (USD, GPB, or EUROS) into your wallet in GDAX. This is a very easy process. Upon registration of your account, simply sign in with your bank credentials like you would paying a credit card bill. You will then have access to pull money out of your account. I believe GDAX takes 4 days to deposit your funds.

Step 3: Once your funds are deposited, make sure your destination bank account is also linked to your GDAX account. For instance, if you are transferring from Chase USD to Santander GBP, make sure you have successfully linked both of those accounts.

Step 4: Now it is as simple as buying and selling Bitcoin! Navigate to the USD/BTC drop down menu on the top left hand corner of the screen. What we will do is buy Bitcoin, which is a near instantaneous transfer when money is already allocated in your account. Upon buying Bitcoin, which will charge a marginal fee (very small for gdax), you will navigate to the BTC/GBP drop down menu and select that. Upon doing so, sell your Bitcoin and allow the balance to transfer into your GBP wallet on GDAX. Now, just simply transfer these funds into your GBP bank account as you would with any other service. This may also take up to 4 business days.

And just like that, you have successfully transferred funds from USB to GBP with a conversion fee nearing 0%. If you place a limit order in GDAX, you will not pay a transaction fee. 

NOTE:

The reason why I say it is best to initially deposit money from your bank account into your wallet is to reduce the chance you lose (or I guess gain as well) money. If you buy Bitcoin, and wait 4 days for the Bitcoin to deposit, you risk the chance of losing money if Bitcoin prices goes down (I know, I know - we all hope they keep going up). To play it safe, making transactions that are almost instantaneous will allow you to ensure you get the best conversion rate. 

Thanks for reading and happy traveling!