No 1 Currency - Foreign currency specialists

  Worldwide transfers for individuals

1. Transfers for individuals
2. Buying a home abroad
3. Emigrating
4. One off money transfers
5. Regular international payments
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9. FAQs
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Emigrating Case study

Paul & Lisa Robertson Emigrating to the USA

1. Decision to emigrate

We were on a company sponsored foreign assignment for 2 years. The company is American and our destination was influenced by the companies’ requirement to have my husband located at the Divisional HQ in Spokane WA. After the 2 years we decided we were not ready to head back to the UK and were enjoying the summers and the winters…the skiing is excellent! So we decided to transfer to local employment. The major psychological hurdle was selling our house in Scotland, which had been rented out for the previous 2 years. We knew we had to “move on” with our lives as we had been renting a home in Spokane which after 2.5 years was no longer something we wanted as a family…we needed a home. We looked on the market but did not see a home that suited our needs. So we decided to build and live the dream!

2. Advice for others

Do your homework on what’s important to you as a family/ or individual. Make sure that where you are moving to meets most of these requirements otherwise you will find it very difficult to settle. We love to ski and the outdoors…the Inland Northwest as a location is perfect for us and the weather is a real bonus. If you have kids make sure schooling is going to work for them. We cold called on a number of schools and went with our gut reactions on how we were treated and received at the school. Rent before you buy, especially in the USA, as real estate fees are high. You want to make the right decision on area before you jump in. If you are moving to the USA get your social security number as soon as you possibly can, as you can’t have a telephone installed and cable TV without it. You also want to open a bank account as quickly as possible …it’s more bureaucratic than you can possibly imagine!

3. The money transfer

My husband was still paid in the UK so we had to make regular transfers of money. Initially we used our bank, which was Bank of Scotland, to do all our currency transfers. It was very easy to do as we had banked with them for years. However, they are VERY expensive as they take at least 5 points of the exchange rate as their commission. I saw an advert in the Charted Accountant (CA) magazine for No1 Currency and decided to follow it up…and never looked back!

4. How No 1 Currency Business Helped

No1 Currency helped enormously in hedging our risk against currency fluctuations. We had signed a deal on our house build and they explained that although we hadn’t sold our UK house we could still sell some of the proceeds forward and lock in the rates, for a future date. This is what we did to give us more certainty that we would have the funds when we needed them.