Sending money overseas.

[Flyingkea]

Hello, I have a number of questions so first of all the situation;
I'm currently living in Australia however did my tertiary study in NZ. I now have a rather large student loan, and with 5.5% interest it does need paying off. Currently sitting approx $97000 as I trained to be a pilot. I have about 20000 sitting in the bank at the moment, being very unproductive little employees.
Also I am currently a SAHM with a 3 month old baby boy (who shall be known as "the limpet"), my partner works full time. We've planned for me to take a year off work to look after the limpet, but my Govt paid maternity leave ends in December. My partners take-home homepay covers all expenses with a little left over, but I'm not sure what happens to that as we haven't merged finances, and he doesn't know either, we've only been in our current house 3 months so are only just starting to get an idea of ongoing expenses. I try to keep expenses down, by cooking all our meals, cloth nappies, breastfeeding and walking as much as possible. (I do have a manual 2008 nissan tiida though which is used usually about once a week to get to mothers support group, paid cash upfront for it, to the dealers surprise!) The V8 holden SS station wagon is the SO's toy and is not to be touched. (It is starting to need work done on it, so murmers have been made of onselling...). He is debt free but has no real assets due to being in a former very unmustachian relationship and lifestyle, I am slowly  working on converting him, it just takes time and a lot of convincing.
I have a job that I *could* return to, on the other side of the country, (we moved cities a month after the limpet was born) but I hated it there with a passion so will be trying to get part time work here when the limpet is older.

So now for the questions;
1) I want to send back about 12000 back to NZ, what is the best way to do this? The bank has a low fee of $22 but also a pretty poor exchange rate (about $600 worth compared to the exchange rate when I googled it. Obviously not ideal, but I don't know what I can trust to get the money safely over.
Any suggestions?

2) Is investing some/all the remaining money the way to go? I don't want to send it all over as unlike a credit card I can't draw money back out in the event of an emergency and with such a young child I am hesitant to lose my cash reserves. That said I've never invested before, so I'm assuming vanguard is a good way to go? I see MMM endorses it over in the states. I used to think investing was a good way to lose money as home in NZ I have family who lost their nest eggs with bluechip companies that went under. Anyway I just want to get the rest of my little employees working more efficiently overall. I figure if I can even partially offset my student loan interest for now, thats a better position to be in.


3) This question is a little tongue in cheek, but any suggestions for a SAHM to bring in extra income on the computer? I'd like to be more productive when I'm tied to the couch for 3-4 hours straight due to a limpet being well, a limpet. I see a lot of ads for work that turn out to be scams or involve selling junk. I am reasonably computer literate and have decent math/english skills

Thank you for your time, opinions and replies.

[PeanutUtd]

1) I want to send back about 12000 back to NZ, what is the best way to do this? The bank has a low fee of $22 but also a pretty poor exchange rate (about $600 worth compared to the exchange rate when I googled it. Obviously not ideal, but I don't know what I can trust to get the money safely over.
Any suggestions?

I use Ozforex to transfer money between Singapore, Australia and the USA (I live in Singapore) and haven't had any issues so far. I have no experience with their NZ service of course. Fee is $15 in Singapore, unless transferring more than $10k. Was happy with the exchange rates when doing my research 12 months ago, must confess I have not compared it since then.

Certainly could be better ways to do it, have not tried Norbert's Gambit as suggested by @Cathy.

[Flyingkea]

Thanks, I had a look at both websites and Ozforex looks like it is straightforward to use. I must admit, I'd never heard of Norberts Gambit before, had to google that one, will keep it in the back of my mind.

Agreed re paying back loan ASAP, I was sorta referring to investing emergency fund and getting that to generate a small income. But when I worked out that it's about $15 interest a day on student loan (pity there's no available work that pays a legal wage in my career as if I went home it would be interest free) I managed to talk my other half into sending more over.

Thanks for the advice/suggestions!

[bigalsmith101]

I lived and worked in Australia for a year. During that time I worked part of it for a boat importing facility, importing boats from the US.

We used OzForex as the primary currency transfer option. Banks have TERRIBLE rates. I've transferred over $250k AUD into USD, and about the same amount bank. I've transferred AUD into Israeli shekels as well.

The more money you transfer, the better rates you'll get (except at the banks).

I even sent my personal stash in AUD back home to the US via OzForex. As mentioned, the rates shown up front are the "best" rates available. To see what your actual rate will be, you'll need to create an account, log in, and perform a buying action to see what rate they will give you for the sum of money you intend to transfer.