Prepare For Default - Irish Style

Update: Open a Swedish Krona Bank Account in Sweden

grenaldi — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:43:31 +0000

I already looked into opening a Swedish Krona Bank last year with SEB, a private Swedish bank. At the time, the exchange rate was 1 euro=9.1 Krona. As I write, the exchange rate is 1 euro=8.61 Krona.

At the time of my enquiry I was very clear about why I wished to open an account (I [...]

Clarification of German Bank Deposit Guarantee

grenaldi — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:25:41 +0000

I wanted to clarify the situation regarding non-resident deposits in Germany, so I emailed the Bundesbank. See below the response. Protection is to €100,000 for both German Domestic and Non-resident accounts.

German Bank Deposit Scheme

Your enquiry of September 4th, 2012

Dear Sir

Your enquiry to the Deutsche Bundesbank about the German Deposit Guarantee Scheme was [...]

Buying Silver Coins in Zero VAT EU countries

grenaldi — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:13:03 +0000

The comparison table shows prices of Silver from various sources taken on 04 Sep 2012, mostly relating to purchasing silver coins.

I had been investigating going to Estonia or Norway to purchase silver to avail of the zero % VAT on legal tender (note that silver bullion still attracts VAT in Estonia), but the table [...]

Open a sterling account in Northern Ireland

grenaldi — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:03:57 +0000

You can find alot of information on opening a sterling account in Ulster bank by simply googling the topic. Since Northern Ireland is our closest non-euro jurisdiction, I’ll include what I have found out. I got this information by simply ringing 1800 303 004, the “Joining Ulsterbank” number from their Republic of Ireland website.

Please see Nov [...]

Buying Gold and Silver Jewellery in Istanbul Grand Bazaar

grenaldi — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:18:53 +0000

Recently, I was in Istanbul ( had never been there but found it a really great place to visit – Byzantium and Constantinople thrown in for free). The Grand Bazaar is a covered market area (proper covered, no flimsy rooves you may see in other places) containing 3-4000 shops. For more than four hundred years [...]

Different ways to buy silver from Ireland

grenaldi — Mon, 14 May 2012 23:32:56 +0000

I’ve previously looked at historical silver prices (see links).

Silver Purchasing options

In this post I review some options and compare prices with the quoted spot price of silver on for the day in question (The first three were done on May 15th 2012). The silver bullion or coins reviewed were 99.9% pure.

It’s a brief review so far, and [...]

Silver

grenaldi — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 23:27:53 +0000

Silver

First things first – silver is quite useful. It’s used extensively in industry – photography less and less nowadays, but electronics is a growing use (mobile phones have about 1/3 of a gramme in each one). We consume more than is mined every year. The shortfall is made up with scrap and recycled silver. In the [...]

Gold prices, measures, and some background

grenaldi — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:13:20 +0000

This website doesn’t have too many posts. But each gives detailed and practical information on what to do with your cash. So check out the archived posts available in the menu for information on various relevant topics, e.g. opening bank accounts abroad. And feel free to chip in with your own experiences.

And now today’s [...]

Agent Report from buying German bonds

grenaldi — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:21:07 +0000

Received a really detailed post from Suze who purchased German bonds last year, so thought I’d post it as a main article. Thanks Suze… I’d really welcome other posts with this kind of detail.

“Husband and I travelled to Frankfurt last November 2010, and opened an account with the Deutsche Finanzagentur for the [...]

Opening a Swedish Krona Bank account in Sweden

grenaldi — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:13:24 +0000

Sweden is another place you can consider opening a non-resident bank account. And it is possible for an Irish resident to do so.

To date I’ve only investigated setting up an account with one Swedish bank – this is SEB (Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB) bank, controlled by the Wallenberg family who have been involved in [...]