investrment in france or uk

[carpetfitter]

Anybody got any advice about where to put a sum of money before moving to france?

Dont want to tie it up long term

 

[Dave&Olive]

YES  my bank account it`s empty at the moment so you can use it for a while ..  

[graham34]

As you can get 5% plus in a UK building society and will struggle to get more than 2% in Euroland then I would stick to the UK. The only variable here is what may happen to exchange rates. These are more or less unpredictable, but you could hedge your bets by moving over some of it to euros at different times - this will help smooth out exchange rates.

If you want more certainty then plenty of exchange specialists have been mentioned here (search Finance threads) who can offer guaranteed future exchange rates, but remember that you will be paying someone else to take the risk.

Graham

[mascamps.com]

Citibank Direct Cheque account is the best if you're moving abroad. Their interest rate is pretty good (better than most savings accounts) and you get a Visa debit card which can be used for cash withdrawals and purchases abroad for next to nothing (no transaction charges, under 1% foreign exchange charge).

If you ever want to transfer money back, you can open a Euro account with them and just post yourself a cheque. It takes about 2 weeks to clear French cheques and there are no charges for doing so. You can transfer between the sterling and euro accounts for a charge of under 1%.

They'll also let you change your address to one outside the UK.

 

[I1]

I've found that Term Deposits with by "main" UK bank account best. Term deposits seem to vary quite a lot between different banks. I use Cater Allen and find them very efficient. When the term expiry is close I e-mail them to find the interest rates for different terms, then decide (normally for a 1, 2 or 3 month term) and e-mail them back my instructions. If things get tight one can do it on the telephone.

Interest rate is probably not absolutely the best you can get anywhere but it's pretty high. Interest is paid gross (no tax deducted) automatically, you don't need to be UK resident (even for tax purposes as with people like ING), etc. - though you do need to have a current account with them.

I have been told that their Term Deposits are actually the Abbey National ones and are identical, Abbey National owning Cater Allen (but you get the Cater Allen excellent service to go with them).

I have a Citibank set of accounts (cheque, euro and a couple of saving accounts), but found their service not great, interest rates not particularly good (with a few stunningly bad rates – so don’t get caught on those) and the cards only really useful in the UK. Also when I did some exchange rate comparisons, they came out in line with other high street banks and you can get much better elsewhere.

As a previous post pointes out, this year there must have been a 7% range in exchange rates £ to € which "dwarfs" the interest rate differences. However, whenever I've considered changing money here and there to optimise things I've thought again that there are experts doing this far better than me and I do not want to become a currency speculator but with my own money. When it comes close to time to need more euros I start to watch the rate and things that impact the rate to try to select the best time. I find the RBS weekly/monthly/quarterly economic reports very helpful when trying to work out which way things might move – in fact I tend to read them all the time just to stay aware of what is going on in the economies of the different financial zones.

[mascamps.com]

I used to be with Cater Allen and the service is certainly good. The problem is that their rates are good only for fairly serious amounts of money and they charge £10 a month if you drop below £5000 with them.

I disagree with the comment re the Citicards outside the UK. They're accepted everywhere and without a cash advance charge. The exchange rates for them are best if you switch currencies online and then withdraw using a euro linked card from a euro current account.

The Citibank Direct Current Account has one of the best interest rates around: 4.5% on £1 or more vs 2.5% with Cater Allen on over £100,000.

If you've got "serious" money (£20,000 or more) that you can leave on deposit maybe it's better to run with Cater Allen but for us ordinary mortals, I reckon Citibank is hard to beat.

 

Arnold