Maintaining Financial Accounts Back Home

[K & V 33]

My wife currently has a bank account in her country of residence. When she moves to the US can she maintain her foreign bank account?

And when she opens a US bank account what steps will she need to take to transfer her money over?

[Adil & Jeanne 296]

Her new bank in the US will give her the bank routing number, exact US address, and all the information she needs but she needs to go to foreign bank and tell them she will be doing this. / too late after she gets here. Her foreign bank will tell her what to do in Italy before she arrives and what they accept

there is a long list of information she willl be sending to the foreign bank as smaller banks go thru larger banks for foreign transmissions / i had to have routing number of 2 US banks

[acgmph 42]

It depends on the country. I don't know about Italy, but in The Netherlands you can easily do that - maintain a local account and have an US address and phone number attached to it. I get my statements and all the correspondence in the US. I presume, as we're both EU there are the same rules in Italy too.

To open an account in the US she will need an ID and the SSN (probably the card). Read on your bank's website if more documents are required. It will help to have a joint account (to later prove to USCIS a strong relationship and bonafide marriage when she applies for removing of contidions), so maybe go together to the bank and add her as a beneficiary to your account. Get a checkbook for her and debit/credit card as needed. If you don't want to share a bank account, then open a new one for her, and get a checkbook and debit card (being new to the country she will probably not get a credit card until she establishes credit).

Now, to transfer her funds is a bit more tricky, as the US does not participate in the international bank account numbers thingy (IBAN). So in order for her to make a transfer from Italy to the US she will need the SWIFT BIC code of her US bank, routing number (first group of numbers on the checkbook), account number (second group of numbers on the checkbook), name of the account, full address of the beneficiary (her US address) and the bank's address (HQ is fine, you don't need the branch address). From The Netherlands I can do this online with my bank, so it depends if her Italian bank offers this on their online banking system. If they do not, then she needs to do it from a physical branch location.

Hope this helps

[Boiler 45,794]

All online now.

[D.Ba 85]

I keep my account in Germany and find the transfer just as easy as to another European bank. Online or phone. But costly! 30 EUR per transaction. And they limit the transfer to around 10 Euro because they want to avoid money laundering issues.

I never needed a SSN to open the US account, let alone a drivers license. A US address was enough. And that was before K1, when I was on VWP. And I went on my own.

Oh, and you cannot buy securities (shares) for your European account any more when you're in the US. But you can keep the ones you have, collect interest and dividends.

Edited September 17, 2015 by D.Ba

[K & V 33]

Thank you all for the feedback! We're trying to get our ducks in a row ahead time.

Edited September 18, 2015 by K & V

[inkasminka 39]

You might also want to check out services like TransferWise. I used that one before to send money from Europe to the US with really low fees involved.