One-Quarter of World’s Population May Wish to Migrate

Interesting item from Gallup:

"Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country? Gallup Polls conducted worldwide between 2006 and 2008 reveal that more than one in every four people polled report a desire to move abroad. Specifically, across the 82 countries where Gallup asked this question, the median percentage saying they would like to move abroad was 26%. Although there are many reasons why people migrate, this percentage suggests that a substantial proportion of the earth's population may not be happy living where they now live..."

The full article can be found here and offers some useful insights into why people want to move to another country.

Transferring money abroad? Consider using a broker

There's a recent good post to the Personal Finance forum where one of our members outlines the various methods for transferring money abroad. Most members will already know we work with a foreign exchange company to provide such a facility and they recently sent me through some material which outlines their services in more detail but also serves to highlight the benefits of using any good broker, namely that they:

• Guarantee to give better exchange rates than the banks

• Arrange forward contracts enabling clients to fix the rate for a future date (Example: 6 months ago clients could have bought EUR with a ‘forward contract’ at a rate of 1.46. The rate today is 1.26, a difference of 13%)
  

• Offer a 1 to 1 service from dedicated and experienced consultants to help clients manage exchange rate risk

• Provide a rate watch service and daily market updates

• Arrange regular transfers for pension, mortgage, salary payments

The last point (arranging regular transfers) is - to be honest - one I often forget to mention when discussing the value of foreign exchange services, I tend to concentrate on larger lump sums for house or boat purchases. That's a mistake on my part, though, there are clearly significant savings to be made in finding the best deal for handling smaller, regular money transfers too.

If you're planning on transferring funds abroad, it makes sense to see what a good broker can offer!

New Middle East forums

For a long time, forum members at Expat Focus with an interest in any of the Middle East countries have used a single forum for all their posts. To make things a little easier we have now created a new "Middle East" category under which the following individual forums are located:

http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-forums-saudi-arabia
http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-forums-uae
http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-forums-qatar
http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-forums-jordan
http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-forums-middle-east

The last one in the list is the original Middle East forum which still contains the old posts but is now listed as "Rest of Middle East" (i.e. intended for countries other than those listed above).

We hope this will make it easier for forum members to enjoy discussions related to their particular country of interest and look forward to welcoming them to the new forums.