changing dollars into pounds...uk or usa?

not sure if anyone can help on this....

moving back to britain in may as im sure some of you know, and we are taking around $17,000. now, would it be best for us to change that into pounds while in the US, or shoud we exchange it for pounds when we get back it britain?
I know the post office back home dont chare comission when exchanging money, but im ot sure if they will exchange amounts that large? does anyone have a clue?
thanks guys
chris

I can't answer specifically your question because there are a lot of 'if's involved. It's almost like the stock market these days. You'd be exchanging on speculation. And I don't know about the Post Office changing that much. I would doubt, but a phone call will tell you.

What I would be watchful for is the currency exchange rate. It's mad right now. A couple months ago $1.70 = £1. I just had to change some money over and the rate was $1.97 = £1. (The UK bank charged me £28 to do that, BTW.) I understand it's expected to soon go to something like $2.10 = £1.

If in your shoes, I would probably make the exchange as soon as you can before the dollar gets any weaker. Who knows when it's going to bounce back to "normal"?

You might want to take a look at what this website has for information:
Foreign Currency Direct
They may not be useful for you specifically, but their web site does contain information on how to transfer money when emigrating from the US to the UK, including conversion rates.
I don't know this company to recommend, just something I found online.

thank u very much, that is very helpful! i know i can change it though my hsbc bank back home, but i knwo they charge. it would rock if the cardiff centeral post office will change that amount, as ive gone though them before, and they dont charge at all.
i wish i could exchange all the money now, but allot of the money is coming from selling our cars, spare guiar amps, tax returns etc.....and seeing as we are moving may, allot of the stuff we are selling we need till at least april.
I'll give the post office a call on monday.
thank u again

When is the dollar expected to go to 2.10? Any lower? I'm not traveling til March but I would hate to miss that peak (or valley) before I exchange our traveling money.

As regards the Post Office, do check their rates - they don't charge (nor does, I believe, M&S) commission, but they get you in their exchange rate. Our bank charged but was exchanging notes at a better rate. (This was for the last trip home, changing £ > $)

There's no scheduled date! It's one of the things economists are never sure about since there are a lot of game theory factors. The dollar seems to be be going lower, but it's not clear if if will gently descend or take a drunken plunge. The ones who will determine this are Japan and China, who are the main buyers of dollars. If they decide to alter their portfolio by shifting to euros, then the greenback could plummet. Or if Bush gets his desire to take out a few more trillion dollars of debt, to privatize social security, big banks could decide that there's no way the US will be able to pay it back and then, like a lot of other debtor nations, the currency will go monopoly money.

man, it will become like post ww1 germany, money in wheelbarrows!!!!  Really not looking forward to changing our dollars into pounds.......for the last 2 years ive loved it when my family have given me money in pounds!!!!
Well, when we get back in may, i'll check my exchange rate with my post office and also with the banks and see who gives me the best rate.
now im guessing the banks back in britain would have no problem convering $17,000 into pounds, right?

In my experience the last couple of days, no; HSBC in the UK was quite happy to take the $ check.

Why do you have to change all of your money at once? Why not just change money as you need it?  This way, if you plan to visit the US, you won't have to convert any of the money back to dollars and pay conversion fees twice.

You can withdraw money from your American account at an ATM in the UK, write checks to yourself from your American bank account and cash them in the UK, or add someone who is staying in the US to your bank account, so they have access to your account and can send you money.(There are probably other ways that I haven't thought of.)

Have you changed this amount of money all at once before? I would think there would be a lot of security procedures involved and it would be difficult to do. It looks like it might be fishy, like you might be trying to move a large sum of money out of the US to hide the proceeds from illegal dealings or something like that.  I know that the currency exchange I go to has a limit to the amount of currency you can change without special procedures.

When I moved from the UK to the US I used a company called XE Trade https://www.xe.com/fx/  and have nothing but positive things to say about them.  It takes a bit of time setting up an account and involves faing documents to prove ou are who you say you are.  You basically "sell" them your dollars and "buy" pounds, they give you best rate guarantees and they will let you do more complicated trades all online.  It's basically free...for example if the exchange rate is somehting like 1£ = $1.90, then your rate for a trade might be slightly higher, like 1£ for every $1.91.  ( this is not exactley what they are, but it's a very small increase).  You can do wire transfers, EFT's and Bank Drafts to get your funds delivered.  They are a very professional company and anytime I had a question, they emailed me withing a few hours.   They do have a limit on exchanges, but I believe they will temporarily up it for you (and I think they can raise your trade limit if they get extra identification from you for security purposes) or you could do half in one month and half in another.   I highly reccomend them!! 

Also, I personally wouldn't make a habit of using my USA bank card in UK Atm's unless you happen to have a bank that doesn't charge extortionate amounts for foreign withdrawls.  And you can't check your balance at the machines which gets pretty annoying.  Best of luck whatever you choose!

Jackie

thank you jackie, thats very helpful indeed!!! I still have my bank account open in the uk, im just goign to add my wife onto it. man, i know what you mean about it being annoying that you cant check your ballence, i can only do it online here in the states!
    well the reason we want to change all our money is for one simple reason.....we have things we want to buy we arent shipping everything over(although we are still shipping a fair amount), so we still have things we need to buy. not saying we wont save some, but to be honest, as we've been saving for our return to britain, we are really looking forward to a huge splurge
thank u again jackie, i will look into them, it seems like the best solution so far indeed!

Glad to be of help, sometimes it feels like your brain fills up with seemingly useless information all pertaining to immigration 

With that amount of money, you really should be going through a currency broker for the exchange... some will even do "forward contracts", where you effectively lock in the current exchange rate but can wait for several months before doing the exchange (which can be good if it looks like the dollar might go down, although at the moment I'm not sure that's the case!).

Some companies:

XE trade (mentioned above): https://www.xe.com/fx/
Halewood International Foreign Exchange (HIFX):  http://www.hifx.com
Moneycorp:  http://www.moneycorp.com/

Shop around and see who will give you the best rate (they should give you a better rate then the post office!).  Remember, a couple of cents difference in rates can mean huge savings!

suddenly changing a large sum of no obvious origin is probably going to show up on the money-laundering radar. Best to get professional advice and avoid an 'interview'

we will just ask the chicargo consolate when we go up there to get jonis visa in feb. im sure they will have some advice, seeing as they deal with people moving to the uk all the time.

You can withdraw money from your American account at an ATM in the UK, write checks to yourself from your American bank account and cash them in the UK, or add someone who is staying in the US to your bank account, so they have access to your account and can send you money.(There are probably other ways that I haven't thought of.)

Not a good idea to write USA dollar cheques to yourself to deposit into a UK account.  My bank charges about £8.50 per cheque and it takes about a week to process.

Also- the annoying thing about the USA banks is they charge ATM fees, at $1.00-$2.00 per withdrawal it adds up big time. Also there are limits to the amounts you can withdraw in one go.

I would recommend the links that Jackie supplied for that amount of money.

Another word of advice - even though you are moving back here - it might be a good idea to keep your USA account. I thought I wouldn't need mine and closed it - only to have my mom open an account for me at her bank a few years later.