francovendee wrote:Canuk wrote:On a side bar to the 'stockpiling' issue of food and medicines, a real world crisis should the uk fall out after the 29th with no deal, yesterday I closed both my British bank accounts on the advice of my accountant who is advising other expats to do so now. The prospect of having cash or pensions locked in the UK and no way of accessing them (even for a brief period) abroad has scared the living daylights out of most of the expats near me.
France is one of the EU countries who has still to give firm advice on residency, health care and taxes post 29th March (only 71 days away). If there is another referendum I don't think there's any legitimate way they can shut out the 1.3 million Brits from the vote. That's a scandal which deserves more heat and light.
Interesting advice on bank accounts. I have a Natwest account registered to my French address and I'm not sure how I'd manage without it. Pension from the Gov't is paid into my French bank account in €'s but my private pension, paid in £'s , to my Natwest account. I'm not sure how I'd get around this if i only had the French account.
Your Natwest account could be tricky. Access to it might be temporarily restricted, there's just no knowing what will happen in a no deal crash out, until it really happens. You could open a multi currency online account (which would give you much better currency transfer rates). There's loads of them, and they enable you to hold up to 10 different currencies with often low or no conversion rates between. I thought about opening an HSBC account here but apparently, like Santander, the British and European banks are completely separate, you couldn't even check your British balance in the bank. Crazy, but true.
I still know pensioners here who take their pension from a hole in the wall from their British accounts and take a 10% hit (plus a 3 euro fee) every time. It's crazy. But it's hard to explain to someone in their 80's there's a better way to do it.
If it was me, I would 'stockpile' all my revenue in a UK account and then just before things look toxic take it all to France via a company like Transferwise. When we bought our house here we did exactly this and saved nearly 4000 euro over standard bank transfer fees.
You could save a lot of money having your UK pension paid into a bordeless account. I've posted a handy guide below.
TransferWise also have a very easy to navigate app for your phone. The only checking they do is a scan of your passport to verify ID and then your good to go. I don't know how many of my elderly neighbours I've set this up for now, takes me 5 minutes but for some of them it's just beyond their imagination! I often get a knock at the door when things go awry, but that's what good neighbours are for!
https://www.transferguides.com/multi-currency-account/