Pay U.S. student loans while living in Shanghai

[jliu3]

Is it possible to pay my student loans without being charged an international wiring fee from the bank every month?

I tried to seek out the following options:

1. asked my company if they can deposit my salary directly to my U.S. account. Answer: No.

2. HSBC: will not charge for international wire transfer only if you have a premium or advanced account, which I cannot afford to open.

3. Citi: I am not sure about this. But I think it allows you to wire money from the U.S. to China for free, but does not allow you to wire money from China to U.S.

4. Check with loan company: great lake: does not take credit card.

Anyone know anything about this or other options????????

Really appreciate your help.

[Cat Jones]

I'd be interested to see if anyone has found a way around the transfer fees.

The only other way I've seen suggested is to get a second bank card for your Chinese bank account and mail it home to someone you trust. They can use it in the US to withdraw cash and can pay it into your US account for you. What I don't know is whether Chinese banks will allow you to have a second bank card.

I tend to end up taking my Chinese card with me to the UK when I go home and withdraw cash every day and pay it into my UK account. But even then I'm charged a small fee every time I take cash out.

[Rufus]

I bank with ICBC and I've set up to use their online banking system. It's anything but user friendly, but workable. Using that, I send out a wire transfer every so often to my bank account back home to pay student loans. The exchange rate is pretty good but it charges me about 100 RMB in fees every time so I try to send home 2-3 months worth of payments at a time. There are really not a lot of good options due to China banking regulations.

[roddy]

That's interesting. Was there any extra set up to be able to do international transfers?

[anonymoose]

Is there a limit to how much you can send in one go?

[brucehuang]

I have great lake too. Just call them and apply for income based repayment and make a zero income statement, then you'll start paying when you "make" money.