A 5-minute read that can literally change your expat life

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to move abroad to Switzerland for work. As a French citizen and being keen to explore the world, my decision was taken quite easily. The promise of a new career, world-class fondue and a fresh start lingered at the other end. After arriving and settling down, I opened a Swiss bank account— as any expat does, just for day to day use. However, as I lived at the French border, I was still using Euros and Swiss Francs at the same time, using the same account.

At the beginning, I thought it was fine. It was surprisingly easy to use my new card between both countries — no problems at the ATM or in shops, great! However, when I received my first bank statement, I realized I needed to learn about money transfers pretty fast. I had managed to pay 120€ of bank fees during the first month only. All these ‘easy’ transactions turned out being outrageously expensive.

My feeling after my first money transfer using my bank

Surely, there had to be a better solution than expensive transfer fees? I started to research alternative ways of sending money back to France, and a I discovered an entire new world: the one of international money transfers.

Ignorance has a cost, and I only needed to pay it once.

After my research, I found easy, cheap and nearly 100% automated ways to avoid the high fees imposed by foreign bank accounts.

Here is the story of how I went from paying 120€ for my bank transfers per month, to saving close to 90% on each of my transfers. This has resulted in me saving €2,000 in the past 12 months only— that’s €2,000 wisely used for fondue and ski trips in Switzerland.

Let me tell you how I did this:

Step 1 : Find & Use the Cheapest Way to Transfer Money Abroad

After some research, I found out that there were thousands of different solutions to send your money abroad and that you can do it without going through your bank. However, I then began to feel totally confused by the sheer amount of different international transfer solutions.

WesternUnion, MoneyGram, Transferwise, WorldRemit, Azimo, CurrencyFair, Worldfirst, TorFX, SmallWorld, Migros, oFX, bSharpe, moneyCorp, XendPay: these were just a few of the many new, cheap ways to transfer money I had discovered. I had no idea which one was the cheapest or the best for me to use.

They all seemed to offer different perks too, and clearly some were made for North American transfers, whereas I just wanted to know about European transfers.

I spent hours trying to compare them, to narrow it down to a handful, and in the meantime I was still using my expensive bank card and having nightmare about next month’s statement.

I asked my colleagues how they were dealing with this, but no one really seemed to have found the ‘best’ money transfer service. Obviously they are all different. So, my research continued.

One night, deep into the latter pages of Google, I came across Moneytis. At this point, I was willing to try anything — they seemed to be legitimate, as they were comparing services such as Transferwise and Western Union.

So I popped a search into their website, comparing how much it would cost to transfer 1,000 Swiss Francs into Euros. It immediately gave me a comparison for Transferwise, Paypal, World Remit, SmallWorld, Azimo — all of the potential money transfer services I could use there and then!

OK, we have found an easy way to find the best solution to make a transfer. Another thing to take into account is the moment when you do it. Let me explain that.

Step 2 : Send your Money Abroad at the Best Time

At the time I was living in Switzerland, a major national event occurred which had a huge impact on the Swiss Franc’s value.

Within a day, the Swiss Franc’s value went from 1 CHF = 0,7 € to 1CHF = 1€.

The direct impact of this was a 30% increase of salary for people living in France, like myself.

I remember the euphoria in our agency that morning. On the one hand, my Swiss colleagues were very upset and on the other hand, my French ones were all transferring their Swiss Francs to Euros until the last penny. Luckily, I was one of them.

This is when I started to pay a closer attention to exchange rates.

This kind of event was exceptional and caused by the BNS (Swiss National Bank). But as exchange rates are constantly changing, there must be a way to follow their evolution and chose the best moment make a transfer, right?

After doing this manually for 2 days, a friend of mine made discovered a tool that basically does the job for you! It monitor exchange rates for you and sends alerts when it is changing significantly (meaning that there can be a good opportunity for a transfer).

This tool is called Neomy.io. Neomy is an online robot which acts as a person — sending you a message every now and then when it’s time to transfer. It’s almost like having a friend who’s always got their fingers on the finance button, and they’re willing to share their information with you.

This is Neomy, the coolest little robot I have used so far.

Neomy sends top and awesome alerts when the exchange rate is in your favour. This magic little robot has the potential not only to help me save money, but also to help me make money on my transfers.

By choosing the right moment to send money, I managed to save 3% on my transfers in one year.

I sent an average of 3,000 € per month during 10 months and saved 900€. Not too bad isn’t it?

With these 900€, I went to the Açores islands for 1 week. This felt far better than giving that money to my bank.

Azores Islands are kinda cool, by the way ;)

Thanks to these 2 tools, I managed to save 2,000€ on my transfers in one year.

I was, and I still am, shocked not to see more people doing this, especially expats or those who get their salaries in different currencies.

This is my method but you can easily use for yourself — check out Moneytis or Neomy if you’re in the same situation I was in.

Not only will you save money, but it will also make you save time and energy. It’s up to you now.

Use it, tell me what you think. See how much you can hack the exchange rates (because we could all do with more fondue, ski trips and holidays to the Azores Islands).