UK rates have fallen slightly (Or rather, not going up quite so fast)

Sky News

Are you doing the transfer via a normal bank account, or are you using a specific ForEx exchange service? If you are regularly transferring money, it is well worth setting up a ForEx transfer account as the rates are considerably better. I have been using FX Global Transfer which is linked to the oanda.com website for the last couple of years with no problems. You can look on their website and get a live quote which will show you how much you could trade at now if you want to compare that to your bank's rate.

Any questions then feel free to PM me

As above - I used OANDA and it worked well for me.

Although off topic, another comment on the RPI savings bond I previously mentioned ... it may not affect people here but the interest is paid tax free in the UK which makes it much better (at the moment) than any other savings account/bond I can find there.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/cpi0711.pdf

page 7.

misread your not as note lol, I was a bit peckish around that time doh!

Straight from the horses mouth as it were I hate those dumbed down articles!

though anyone watching the CPI shenanigans will note that revisions to the basket of goods is somehow always chosen to understate inflation as much as possible, almost as if they were trying to manipulate the figures...

Luckily they can only do it once a year, and everything they have to drop out or put in has to be justified... I don't pay too much attention to the basket itself it's quite amusing to see what's going in and out but the major stuff is always going to be there.

You're right - I did not understand the meaning of the RPI when I previously read about this. Indeed it is very unusual for the RPI to drop year on year, so there is usually a return - in the past 5 years the only time with no return would have been the anniversaries arising between may-dec 2009. Not sure I agree with your 0.5% statement though - when I look at the calculated example in your link, they claim it is 0.25% and it does appear from the explanation and calculation to be a lot less than that!

Anyway, not nearly as bad as I assumed. Maybe worth comparing with other fixed term bonds though - I would guess they are not so different.

depends on where we are in 5 years. we could be in the same situation, or we could already be in a high interest, high inflation environment.

The example is just that... "an example", look at the summary box at the top of the page here says index linking + 0.5%, this is actually lower than what they usually offer which is 1% but it's not 0.25%

The compound bit I believe is on the interest and index linking accrued however I haven't bothered verifying that as it could largely be ignored and is only important if you wanna work it out over 5 years.

i do wonder whether, over a 5 year period, a simple CHF account paying 1% interest will out-perform this...

Remind me in 5 years to let you know!

It depends if you account for currency fluctuations or not which brings us to our favourite topic

Heavily depends on the UK£/CHF exchange rate in 5 years.

I would be tempted to keep my money in CHF until the day I see a reason for UK$ trend to move up (or CHF trend to move down).

Then you will be too late!

your chance to vote here:

CHF vs RPI bond

Note the interest is 0.5% AER which is not necessarily 0.5% per year but it's the average over 5 years period. See here for the actual year by year rates.

We've been using Currencies Direct.

Still faring strong at 1£ = 1.323 CHF

Hopefully it'll weaken a little within the next month or so, before I have to convert my sterling to francs.

I'll bear the xe.com website in mind when I come to transfer though, thanks for the tip.