I am a planner and a saver. Had I not hit “reset” on my life, we’d right now be about three months away from owning the Connecticut house free and clear. Yep, that’s right, no mortgage, tons of equity, complete freedom! That is in part why I’m in the position to buy my fabulous new home in Denmark!
Last week, I wrote about the hurdle with my contract. I solved that one and I’m scheduled to close next Tuesday, but again, the universe may have other plans.
You see, I have an ING Direct account full of money. Money that’s just sitting there, collecting interest, waiting to finance my new life. Or so I thought.
I finally got my Danish finances set up and went to transfer money from ING to here and what do you know??? ING doesn’t use SWIFT Codes, and banks here don’t use 9 digit routing numbers. Awesome! After waiting eons for ING’s customer service line to open, a very unhelpful call center employee told me that I’d need to route the money through my bricks & morter bank in the US. That’s it. That’s all the advice he had.
So I called my US bank and they cheerfully told me that they don’t do international transfers online, but if I come into the local branch, they’d be more than happy to help me do a wire transfer. Unfortunately, they will not pay for a round trip ticket to Connecticut.
Fortunately, there are companies like XE Trade that specialize in international transfers. Unfortunately, the war on terror, drugs, money laundering, and the like have made quite an ordeal of opening an account. The first name and photos on my driver’s license and passport match, but the last names don’t, so they needed a copy of my divorce decree. They also need to see a current bank statement, which is on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic and not due to arrive for another 4 weeks. They also need to see something “official” like a bill or a bank statement that shows my Danish address, and they can’t quite grasp the fact that the reason I’m in this hellish process is because I need to get ahold of my money so that I can get a Danish address!!!
I do not have time to deal with this!!! I will get it sorted out, but I cannot believe that in 2010 with all of the available technology, it is this freaking difficult to transfer money between countries.
From where I’m sitting right now I feel like I may as well be broke :(
Anonymous says
Have you tried using Paypal to transfer the money from one account to another? I send my sister money from US to Poland and the fees are minimal.
Sage says
You gave me hope for a second, but PayPal fees for this transfer would be over $6,000.
It’s cheaper to fly to CT and do the wire transfer.
~ Sage