Mother and 16 yr old son leaving America for Uruguay

Hi Katie!

We're headed there in about a week, so we can be your advance team lol. Mark's a teacher, so we'll be looking at schools, and we can ask your questions too, why not? Maybe we'll run into each other.

Dani & Mark

Hi Katie, the rules on currency is that you have to declare anything over $10,000. I brought $20,000 with me together with a till receipt from my bank and declared it at Uy customs. I'm not convinced the customs officer knew what she was doing but seemed happy enough for me to bring it into the country. I now use a transfer company to remit money to myself from my 'home' bank account for cash pickup here in Uy.

Good evening, Katie!

We were in your shoes 2 years ago.  I personally find USD 10,000 is a lot of money to have on you.  I would be scared stiff to loose it.  You have a long flight ahead of you.

As ColoniaMan pointed out, you are not limited to USD 10,000, ypou just have to inform customs how much money you are bringing into the the country if you are exceeding this amount in total.

I am surprised that ColoniaMan got away so easy, because they normally also want to know the source of the funds.  That it is from a bank account, does not tell anybody how you made the money.  The issue is money laundering.

You can pick up the money in cach if you use a money transfer company,  but depositing money in the bank seems tio me to be the safer company.  You can also transfer from a USD account in the US to an USD account in Uruguay without going broke.  Outbound transfer by bank are horrendously expensive.

I want to point to one of my pet peeves, just so that you are aware:  You can not get a cash advance with a Northamerican MasterCard credit card.  They are usually accepted for purchases though.

Never was I charged a fee for opening a bank account.  However the monthly charges are high plus there are transaction based charges ...

Hope this helps.

Armin

@armin31

Just how horrendously expensive are bank transfers?

@ColoniaMan

Sorry about the late reply and good that you ask, because I was so shocked that I would not want it to happen to anyone:

On an outbound USD 163 transfer (from a USD account to another USD account) to an Andean country USD 100 + 30 transfer fee !!!  Thus the transfer fee in total is almost as large as the amount transferred.

This is outbound.  But even the inbound transfers, again USD to USD, though not horrendous, they are painful, nevertheless.  The lowest commission I have seen there is USD 25.   

If you have a different experience please let me know.

@armin31

That certainly is eye watering. My neighbour who is also an expat said some time ago that it wasn't possible to take money out.

When I was going through the trauma of my shipping container, I remitted about US$2.500 from the UK as first payment and the agent received $55 less. My money transfer company explained that sending USD to a country other than the USA would have to be routed through a US bank who would charge for it. All subsequent payments remits from the UK for anything involving the container, incurred these fees. Curiously though, no fees were ever deducted when buying real estate, not for the properties, the inmobiliaria fees or the notary's fees.

@ColoniaMan

Thank you for the additional information regarding payments for real estate transactions.  That is indeed remarkable becuase in this case the recipients must not only be flagged as doing real estate related transactions but notaries also do many other things other than real estae, such as car sales, last wills, separation agreements etc.

Regarding US banks taking their cut would worry me even more because then the US would have control over me receiving my pension from Germany for example ...  But it is possible because there is such an animal as correspondent banks.   I will check this and post here later.   

For us ourselves money transfer companies such as remitly.com would be the answer for outbound transfers (as I suggested before) but you can not change how pensions are paid or any other moneys are received.

lots to think about ...