Okay dear readers its education time again. It looks like 3045 is all better and sat out on the truck lot waiting for me. My next little excursion is down to Bakersfield with a load of meat which wont be ready till tonight so im keeping busy by updating the blog and were off to view another house this afternoon.
When we were doing our research back in UK, one of he things we looked at was banking, the world is a much smaller place these days thanks to the internet so we started the ball rolling before we left.
Now remember, i am no expert and im telling you excactly what we did, it might not be the best option for everyone but it worked for us.
The bank we chose was the Royal Bank Of Canada, because it has lots of branches, lots of products and a very nice user interface for internet banking. One thing you need to be aware of over here is the fact that you have o pay to bank over here, at the momen we pay about $30 per month for the VIP option.
Before we started anything we contacted our bank in UK and explained the situation and asked them for reference letters, this they couldnt do but gave us the details so our new Canadian bank could contact them directly.
Next i joined the Experian website so i could get a hold of our national credit rating, i think this cost about £15 altogether (please note i keep swapping between £ and $), i printed this off and put it in my immigration folder.
I then printed off bank statements for all our accounts and our credit card and they went into the folder too.
Next i phone the RBC in Lethbridge and made an appointment for or recce trip last May so we could go in and set everything up.
When we came over in May we saw a personal banker and set up the VIP package with a checking account, a savings account and a creditcard account and also set up an account for Luke too.
All the paperwork went in and we were issued with temporary bankers cards and our propper cards were posted to our UK address, they came about a month later.
One point to note is that over here we have a different banking system to europe and i found that my UK debit card wasnt accepted an sometimes i couldnt use my UK credit card so it was a case of keep drawing money out at ATM's. Having the temporary RBC checking cards really made life easier.
Okay, all was going great till i started going to the States, i couldnt use my bankers card except at ATM's so i was forever drawing cash out and the ATMs at the truckstops charge you a ouple of bucks per transaction. I had to keep using my credit card and keep switching money about online, it worked but it wasnt ideal.
A few weeks ago i asked the RBC if i could have an American Dollar account, its just another checking acount that runs along side existing canadian dollar account, it costs about $3.50 per month to run unles you keep $750 or so in it and i have a separate bankers card which i can use anywhere south of the border.
Now i carry about $100 of each currency in cash for things like tolls where you cant use a card, everything else is swiped, the advantage of this is if H&R manages to lose my reciepts or i am reimbursed incorrectly then i have my bank statements as an extra proof of purchase.
One of the reasons i have written this post is beacause i have heared some real horror stories of people not being able to open accounts, having to pre-pay on credit cards and all sorts of stuff.
The way we did it, we ended up in the top 20% credit rating of all Canadians, not bad for somebody without any Canadian credit history.
Remember folks, its all in the planning................................................
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