Opening a foreign bank account
Hi I'm planning to go to school in europe, and wanted to see if I could open a bank account in France/Berlin or other Euro country without living there? I want deposit and covert all my USD into euros when I believe rates will be best, and let it sit there until school starts and use it to pay for tuition. I believe the USD will weaken next year.. but just a guess... Which is why I want to do this. Anyone have any experience with this?
Thanks @Meyori. I wont be opening a foreign bank account after all lol.
European banks that allow you to have a bank account with a US address are either very small or very big. The latter will have branches is the US and would lose their banking license if they didn't comply with IRS rules. In practice this only means that your European bank sends you one more IRS form that you need to consider and submit when doing your taxes.
Without living there would probably be next to impossible. It sounds like you’d like to just hold Euros. You don’t need a foreign bank account. You can open a Fidelity Brokerage account (Free) and call them to enable international stock and currency trading. You can then do currency exchanges there from USD and hold euros. When you’re ready to move money to Europe you can simply wire the funds to your bank. Their rates are reasonable. It’s worth checking out.
Thanks! I think this is the solution I will approach! I already have multiple fidelity accounts.
Yes, there are banks that allow you to open a bank account online with a US address. https://www.deutscheskonto.org/en/comdirect-opening-current-account
Thank you!
That site looks very interesting but also somewhat scam like...
You could open a US based account that holds foreign currency. Unfortunately this isn’t popular in the US and so isn’t as easy as it should be. Note: you will not have FDIC or foreign equivalent protections on foreign currency held with a US institution. Fidelity will let you hold foreign currency. This also means no need to do reporting of foreign bank accounts. Once you do open a foreign account, you can wire the money (in euros) from your US euro account to your euro account within Europe. Disclaimer: some financial institutions unfortunately do not allow you to wire funds in foreign currency, or charge ridiculous fees. Edit: if you really want a foreign bank account, the easiest way to do this is to physically show up to HSBC. They will require you to have an account with them locally first. Be aware that they are a very snobby and evil bank. They were founded to profit off the opium trade. They profited from illegal rigging of libor interest rates, and money laundering for the Mexican drug cartels. However, they are big enough to be considered a legit and non suspicious bank. (😂😂😂😂🤷🏻♂️ wtf) ...and do business practically everywhere in the world.
If you park enough money with them you can get a Premier account which gives you a free bank account in any countries you want. Park even more and you can get credit cards in those countries as well. Extremely convenient but the exchange rates you will get from them are murderous.
Ah but as a bonus you can transfer between their accounts without it going over SWIFT.
Open the local account per others and then use OFX or TransferWise to send the money to the account, don't let the banks do the currency conversion unless you've actually negotiated with them and compared the rate with these two transfer services.
Transferwise borderless will do just fine
I suggest quitting school if you can predict when conversion rates are best.