# Bank accounts and currency change?



## celavie77 (Sep 19, 2011)

I'll be living in Italy in the near future, and I was wondering about bank accounts and money and things. Specifically, I've been using Bank of America for years now and I know they have some sort of special ATM deal that helps avoid charges. Does anyone have any recommendations about what to do with that bank account? I plan to live in continental Europe for the foreseeable future and I was just wondering how expensive it will be to get money from BoA account, convert it into euros for purchases/atm withdrawals, and/or use a credit card? It all seems quite confusing and I was just hoping someone on this board went through something similar and could give me some insight.


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## bunty16 (Sep 26, 2009)

Myself and others seem to keep a UK account, and also open an Italian account for direst debits. However, due to euro crisis I think it wise not to open an Italian account right now, not till things are more stable.


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## Lourdes (Oct 5, 2011)

Regardless of bank accounts, just keep in mind that the exchange rate between dollars and euros doesn't make it very convenient to actually convert too many dollars into euros at this point. What I have done is keep an account in the US and have one in Italy (through ING, it is one of the cheapest). Bank accounts in Italy all have taxes due to the state just for the fact of existing, something around 36 euros per year. Then each account has its own costs, the ING one is free if you keep a certain minimum in the account. A web based account is the best way to go, as they'll have to lowest costs.

If you're going to work in Italy and get paid in euros, keep your money in euros in the Italian account and use that for living expenses. Transfer funds from the US account to this account as you need them. If the exchange rate were to continue to get better, then you could pay with US bank account/credit cards to make purchases, it hasn't been convenient for a few years now though. So you don't really want to continue using the US account or credit card for daily expenses while living in Italy.


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