Dear LPG,

I think that this might interest some of the pensioners that read the messages posted on your website.

I am getting a little older and I have decided to give away some of my savings to my children and grandchildren, and I am sure that I am not the only grandparent who has decided to do that. 

I don’t think that I want to give that much away but I never knew how many rules the HMRC has in place about how much you can give before having to lose a lot of it to taxes.  If it is a wedding present you are all right as long as you don’t give more than £1000 and, from what I understand, if you give less than £250.00 per person to family members that is OK too.  Though, after that it appears that there are two variables to be checked out here; the first is how much you want to give and the second is how long you plan to live after giving the gifts. 

I found the rules and thought that it might be a good idea to pass them on, but then life got a little bit more complicated…

One of my grandchildren lives abroad and for some strange reason does not want money transferred directly into a bank account.  I have found many ways of transferring money directly from one account to another wherever in the world you decide to do that ,which includes no fee at all, but sending it directly can be much more expensive and problematic.  I have just learned how much extra it costs to send money to someone overseas without using the direct transfer method.  I have younger friends that send little sums of money abroad and asked some of them.  They told me about Western Union, Money Gram and similar services, but I found myself blinking when more than one of them told me that if you send more than a couple of hundred pounds in one go, it might be thought of as a bit suspicious, as would sending regular payments to the same person and so I was a little put off of going down that route. 

I phoned the money advice service and their advisor was very helpful.  They told me that you can actually take as much as £10,000.00 out of the country without having to declare it, although you then have to check the rules about how much you are allowed to bring into the country you are visiting, and then there are the exchange rates to be considered; is it better to take the Sterling and change it there or do you get a better rate if you change it before you leave the UK.   It is all very complicated.  I have decided on a little holiday, but whatever you decide to do, the rules make interesting reading so I hope that LPG will leave links to the websites under my news post.

RW, Dulwich

LPG would also like to remind readers of the telephone numbers of the Money Advice Service:- 0800 138 7777, and the Pensions Advisory Service:- 0800 011 3797.RW left the following links on the subject…

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