Soooooo Close

Okay, I got really excited there for a while.

I thought I found a site that would allow me to (essentially) convert money from my own living room without extra fees and charges. Allowing me to never have to make another trip to my Polish Bank to deposit Polish Zloty.

The site I found is actually an off-shoot of probably the most popular currency converter on Google (http://www.xe.com/fx/) and it has a pretty good set-up that will allow you to buy and sell currency for decent rates.

Previously I had avoided sites like this for a number of reasons - Mostly because it has been cheaper and easier for me to walk into a Polish Bank, use the ATM to get money from my American Bank account, and then deposit it into my Polish Bank Account (mostly for paying for preschool bills and the phone bills).

Well today I came across the site above and thought - this is perfect. I even used the the demo version to transfer money from a U.S. Dollar account to a Canadian Dollar account and it really seems like this would make my life easier. I can monitor the exchange rates and when it hits a point that I'm comfortable with - I can just hit the execute button. No extra fees, and the exchange rate seems to be consistently better than anything else I'd get.

A no-brainier right? All you need is a USD bank account and a local currency bank account - and I have both!

Yeah - Not so much. Turns out Polish Zloty is an "exotic" currency. So there are fees and costs associated with dealing in zloty.

Sooo close. If I'm ever lucky enough to be stationed in one of the 28 other countries on their list I'm coming back here. I like the concept and it fits in perfectly with how I bank in another country.