Best/cheapest way to send money to U.S.?

[dimsumfan]

Hi,

Needing to send money (about or more than $10,000) to the U.S.? What's the cheapest way to do this? Wiring? Travelers checks? PayPal-type situation? I'll be traveling there, so put the yen/dollars in my pocket? Also, anyone happen to know what happens at customs if you bring more than $10,000 to the U.S.?

Thanks!

 

[Mandylion]

Do you have a bank or postal account in Japan? Then getting a wire transfer is fairly easy and cheap. Lloyds Bank has a service that charges you 2000 yen plus whatever the other banks inbetween charge (about 50 total to the US depending on the bank). Usually the funds are transfered the next day.

If you are just on vacation and need to send cash home, things might be more interesting...

Last I checked, you will pay duty on cash in excess of 10,000 USD if you try and bring it into the US with you on an international flight.

 

[pdx]

One other way is to get a Citibank or Shinsei bank account (go for shinsei, no stupid charges etc) and just withdraw from the atm when you are over there.

This could be a problem if you have to withdraw a lot though because a few banks have limits on how much you can take at a time... slowly chipping away at 10k would take a while.

 

[mad pierrot]

Personally, I recommend Go Lloyd's like Mand said. Find info about them here.

It's a bit more expensive than your other options, but fast and easy. Typically it takes a day to get home. Otherwise, you can send money home via an international money order at any Japanese Post Office, but it takes well over a month to get there, and sometimes even longer to process.

 

[Anguz]

I'd probably try something like iKobo, which has been the cheapest way to send money from one person to another internationally, that I've found so far. I'm not sure about ammount limits, but you can search on that in their page.

Good luck

 

[schwerpunkt]

International money order seems to be the cheapest that I've found: to transfer up to 100,000 yen there would be a 2500 yen charge ( and then a 500 yen charge for every 50,000 additional yen transfered .) Turn around time I've found has been more like ten days rather than a month.
Assuming you could set up a pay pal account with your account in a Japanese bank and then send it to your account in an American bank through Pay pal, there would be a 2.9% fee.