converting USD to SGD

[Yachtmaster]

Well. That's dumb. Again. Yes. It's silly.
Lol. Nobody asks for your opinion. Get it?

Somebody is looking for an argument again. And/or receives some income from currency conversions.


That's rather the point. I minimize currency conversion fees. It's called a "petty cash envelope," mainly. Before I embark on yet another fun voyage, I grab the currency(ies) I have/will need from the envelope. If there's some left over, I put it back in the envelope. Loop, repeat. Life is both simpler and cheaper this way.

Some of the notes have pretty pictures, too.

In this case, we're talking about U.S. dollars, the world's reserve currency, in electronic form. The currency of Amazon.com. It's a very useful currency to most, at least in due course. It's not, say, Omani rials. (Which happen to be pegged to the U.S. dollar, but leave that aside.) I don't have much trouble spending U.S. dollars if I wish to. Many merchants like them. I can also (re)invest them easily. Most of the interesting, low cost investments require U.S. dollars, euro, or occasionally British pounds as input.

 

[Hafi]

Somebody is looking for an argument again. And/or receives some income from currency conversions.

no need to get agitated with him, looking at the way he post... clearly he is not financial savvy hence I wouldn't even bother to refute his rubbish posts since I know all he could response is even more rubbish.

 

[dreant]

People,

I have some income due to stocks grants from my company from in USD.

Currently I am wiring it back to my citibank USD account and then transferring it online to my citibank SGD account.

The rate Citibank is giving me is 1.384 and the spot rate I googled is 1.395.

So that is a 0.8% charge, which works to around USD$800 for a $100k transfer.

Is there any other cheaper way to transfer the money back or is this rate pretty good?

Citi's FX rates has always been pretty bad.

If you want the funds in SGD at the best possible rate; usually DBS gives better rates compared to other banks.

If so, just have the funds TT'd into your DBS account instead. There is a SGD10 incoming TT fee (which Citi doesn't charge); but if you work out the difference in FX, you're still ahead.

Depending on what status you have with Citi, you could have them put it into a local USD checking account. With that, you can write a local USD check to yourself, and deposit it into any bank in SG. So, you can bring that USD check to DBS and bank it there anytime. The upside doing so is you do not need to change all your USD to SGD at once.