How to pay the off-post rent in Korea

My biggest question about moving off-post was how we should pay the rent. Back when I was an English teacher, the schools held the leases; all I had to do when I arrived was move right in. I paid the utilities, but the housing was free.

In order to pay my dollar-denominated student loans and credit card bills, I would periodically get a 미화송금수표 (美貨送金檢查, USD remittance check) from my Korean bank and mail that off to my U.S. bank. It had fewer fees than a wire transfer, even if it took a few extra days to get there.

Now I have the reverse problem -- my income is in dollars and our principal expense (rent) is in won. Since my salary is directly deposited, how am I supposed to withdraw all the rent money? Visit the ATM every day for a week?

As I recently learned, though, there are two ways to conveniently do this. The first is to set up an account with the on-post Community Bank, operated by Bank of America. With what's called a "standing payment order," the bank can do a currency conversion and transfer money to a Korean bank.

This is probably the simplest and the most appropriate for an amount under $2000, but the official conversion rate is set by USFK at about 2 percent off the interbank rate, and there's the risk of bad timing.

A second method is to do an international wire transfer from the U.S. My bank charges a $35 fee, but the rate looks to be only 1% off the interbank rate. From the Korean account, you can then do the Korean-style bank transfers (Korea doesn't really use personal checks.) Given that this past month the won hit a six-month low against the dollar, I was eager to convert as much as I could as soon as possible. I therefore chose to use the second method to convert a big chunk and deposit it into my wife's account.

This way, we have some flexibility in deciding when to convert again. We can either convert smaller amounts on a month-by-month basis (if the won strengthens) or wait for the next financial crisis (which usually weakens the won) to do another big chunk.

As an English teacher, I rejoiced with a strong won; now I'm on the opposite side of the equation.