[Tim Russ]

Hello friends,

I have just accepted an appointment to move to HK for an indefinitie period starting in November. The company is a small, American company with no experience relocating people, so I will have to do much of the logistical work.

My questions is, as an American citizen currently living in Boston and moving to HK, how do you advise I set up my banking arrangements? Should I maintain a US bank account into which my employer can direct deposit funds, then I do monthly wires to myself to pay rent, living expense etc. Or should I have them wire my entire salary into a HK-based account?

What are the pros and cons of each scenario? I don't think currency speculation is too much of a gamble based on the HK$ being pegged to the US$, but I wonder about convenience, savings account interest rates in HK etc.

Thanks for any advice you can give!

[JJexpat]

Personally, I have everything go into a HKD account, and maintain two other currency accounts. It is very easy, once you are set up, to do overseas transfers, inter account transfers, etc. on line. You can also set up virtually any bill as autopay, including rent. I suspect you will only love $$ in wiring money about. On the other hand, local interest rates are very low so best plan some investments. Don't worry, from the moment you land, you will be on the list of every financial advisor in the place and an "assistant" will track you down. In that regard, assistants who did not pass on my specific interests (not one did) lost the opportunity. I ended up working with someone who called me direct.

Enjoy Hong Kong ;-)

[penguinsix]

We have two accounts, with our payroll going into our US account via direct deposit and wires to our HK account when needed. It made things much easier for US taxes (and yes, please read all there is about expats and US taxes) and also because we had a number of expenses in the US (our US house, etc).

In a pinch, you can always take out HK$ from your US$ via an ATM card. I guess it really depends where your expenses will be over the next year or so.

[PDLM]

Remember also that you have the option of being paid into a US$ account based in HK. So as P6 says it really depends where the balance of your expenses will be. You could try to get the payments split between the US and HK, but the key to minimizing charges is only to move money around in large-ish chunks - taking, say, US$100 by ATM from the other country on a regular basis is going to run up the charges much more than moving, say, US$10,000 across to the local account and then using a local ATM.

[links]

well for my case i kept my singapore account while my hq will pay my initial salary in singapore and i open a hk aaccount to receive my hk overseas allowance.

you will need a hk bank account for your convinience.open the bank account in the same local bank which your company is using.it will help to save u some good money for drinking as hk bank charges hkd$50-$100 for overseas and inter-bank transfer per transaction.