International banking options

We have had to make a lot of important decisions in preparing for this move. I've had the good fortune of traveling the world prior to moving overseas and those experiences provided me with at least a base knowledge of the challenges we will face (I'm sure some of the challenges will still be difficult regardless of the foresight).

One challenge I was anticipating is access to money. My employer can direct deposit my paycheck to any bank with a routing and account number. In my early days of travel the best way to access money was by ATM. Over the years ATM's had become easily accessible around the globe. Using an international ATM eliminated the need to carry large amounts of cash or reduced the pressure of anticipating every need while traveling. There was a time when ATM's also offered the best exchange rate. Many places had stopped accepting traveler's checks because they were easy to duplicate and were often fraudulent.

In the past year I have seen my bank charges soar for using an International ATM. We aren't just talking the usual $2 charge for using an out of network vendor. The first fee was $5, the second was over $7 and the last was $11. Add that up over the course of two years and we are loosing a significant amount of money to bank fees. That was my motivation to look for other options.

We have decided on an internet bank. Yup, no building, no teller, just the internet. Our paychecks are directly deposited. We will utilize online bill pay for accounts payable. We earn interest on the money in the account (an option not often available at traditional banks). I've trusted this company for years to handle my savings and found the experience quite pleasant and the interest rates better than anyone else was offering. We will still open a bank account at our new location to avoid ATM surcharges, but the online bank offers easy and fast electronic money transfer from one account to another. This option satisfied all of our banking needs and even gave us the bonus of earning interest on our dollars.

As a side note, I learned quite a bit about off-shore banking through this research process and the one take-away I have from that experience is: it pays to be rich. The more money you have, the better perks and benefits you get. In case you are wondering, we don't even have the minimum balance to enter the off-shore banking world.