Language barriers and difficulties, transferring money to make payments and opening a bank account
Language barriers and difficulties
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Not knowing English can be a scary thought when moving to the US. I had a good level of English when I decided to come here but I know a lot of guys that came with very low knowledge of English and it took them just about a couple of months before they started talking and understanding English with no problems.
I would recommend starting watching movies in English, maybe read in English, or do stuff that will start to get your brain used to the new language. After one year you will know English better than you could’ve ever learned in school. How well you are going to speak English is completely up to you and how much you try to speak so don’t be shy, you will make mistakes but that’s how you are going to learn.
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There are many ways to get English classes during your stay in the U.S. In my first year, for example, I took free English and math classes from a place called Metro North ABE (Adult Basic Education).
Metro-North is a partnership between eight school districts and other community partners in the north metro area that together, offer free classes to develop basic skills for adults from 17 years old and up who are not enrolled in a high school program. Metro-North is completely funded with both federal and state funds.
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During those two months, I would go to class twice a week for a couple of hours. I would definitely recommend it if your English is not very good or you feel like you want to be more fluent; maybe you can try it for a couple of months as I did and if you feel like it’s helping keep doing it.
It is completely free so try will never hurt. The final goal with those classes is usually to get a GED, which is basically a high school diploma that you can use to go to college so if you have not finished high school in your home country you need a GED to be able to apply to college.
The website for Metro-North ABE in Minnesota: https://www.metronorthabe.org/domain/86
Other ways to get English classes would be thru private companies or online classes that you will need to pay money for it.
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Best ways to transfer money and make payments in the U.S
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Transferring money from a European account to a U.S account can often result in having to pay a lot of processing fees from the bank and a bad change from CHF to $ or € to $. The best ways that I found out were thru PayPal if you want an easy, fast way to make payments to U.S accounts but there are always a pretty good amount of fees to pay so I would avoid it for very big payments.
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The best way for me was to go thru my swiss e-finance bank account, ask whomever you need to pay for their information, and make the payment. It will take them about 3-4 days to receive the payment but there are usually almost no fees to pay.
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For spending money, I would recommend getting a credit card from your bank from home (like a MasterCard) and transfer money from your account to that card and either pay with a card or get cash and pay cash so you can make sure you don’t pay any extra costs in some places.
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If you want to get cash, there’s some ATM’s that will make you pay a ridiculous amount of money to withdraw from them and others that will not make you pay as much if you are in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Iowa make sure to go to the ATM’s inside of the gas station called “KWIK TRIP”, they have a 0$ fee on withdrawals so you are only going to pay for the exchange rate.
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Example:
For a 100$ withdrawal, some ATM’s will ask you a 7$ fee + pay for the exchange rate (usually about 2$) KWIK TRIP will not ask you any fee so for 100$ withdrawal you will only have to pay about 2$
Open a Bank account in the US
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Another way to transfer money from a European bank account to an American is to open a Bank account in the US. Therefore, opening an account is very easy and requires no money at all. Actually, depending on the bank they will give you something as a gift for opening a new account.
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All you need to do to open a bank account is: a passport, a Social Security Number (if you have one).