oh my

I'm trying to be a good girl and get my affairs in order before next week. One of these said affairs is to get a bank account in the UK. Of course, my current bank doesn't have branches in the UK, which meant I had to open a new account with a global bank. It's a multi-step process apparently:

1) Go online (because there are no global banks around here) and open a US-based checking account. Done.

2) Call customer service to obtain a form to apply for a UK-based account + a credit card.

3) Be transferred to three different people, only to find that it costs $245 to open a UK account from the US.

Yeah. No.

I think I'm going to wait until I get there to open the second account. Either way, I'm going to lose money because I either have to pay to open the account now OR bend over and take the exchange rate on my US credit card. Sigh.

In other scariness, the third dude I talked to was based in the UK and speaking English, but I could only understand about every 5th word. :-)