Banking overseas
April 28th 2011 14:51
To continue my story, after receiving my visa and selling my house I had to figure out how to have access to my Social Security, annuity and pension. This was much more difficult than I had imagined. The big banks of the US, CitiBank and Bank of America also were present in Malaysia, but as I soon found out, were considered to be completely different banks. I was promised by a CitiBank branch manager that I would have no problems transfering funds to Malaysia and accessing my funds in the US. I opened an account and found out none of this was true, unless I maintained a balance of $250,000. Of course everone has a balance like that! Finally I went to my local bank in Boston, where the manager suggested I access my money via ATM machines. I could use my online banking to pay bills at home and transfer funds from my account to another US bank account. As long as I did not use a foreign address, everything was fine. The foreign address thing is another preposterous practice of US banks. All banks say that a customer cannot maintain a US bank account with a foreign address. No matter how long the account had been opened previously. This is totally false. According to the US Treasury department, foreign addresses are allowed as long as the banks keep records of the addresses and notifies the department. This will cost the banks a little bit of money that will eat into the billions of dollars in profits they earn from all of us. Just another example of the banks charitable behavior and another pain for those who wish to retire abroad. Now I am here in Malaysia, but I still get upset when I think of these banks and the bid bonuses the CEOs get.
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