Hi! Newcomer here, please forgive me if I have chosen the wrong forum for this.
I am a Canadian citizen who attended school in the US, got married in 2016 and am now in the process of applying for US permanent residency. I also graduated in 2016 and have been repaying loans for about a year. My payments are quite high, $595 CAD a month originally (after negotiating lower payments), and will be up to $620 a month starting in November as I had to do a 6-month interest-only payment period recently. However, the amount isn't the problem; it's actually *getting* the money to NSLSC that is, as they refuse to do monthly debit withdrawals from a US based bank account. The only 2 options they presented me are to mail a check every month, or to set up automatic debit from a Canadian bank account.
The first option, mailing a check, costs about $15, which is reasonable. However, it requires that I take time off work every month just to make the post hours, and involves transit problems since I don't have a car. It sometimes results in late payments because international post is ridiculous, and there is always the risk it gets lost in the mail. If I send by courier, the price moves up to $45+
The second option, auto debit from a Canadian account, is obviously easiest. I do have Canadian bank accounts (both Scotia and BMO), but I am having a hard time finding a way to send money from US to either Canadian account without paying enormous fees or involving a lot of running around. The easiest/cheapest I have found so far is $35 for a direct wire transfer from US account (Bank of America), but there may also be a fee to receive the money on the other end, not sure how much yet. In the past, I have sent transfers through Western Union to my mom and had her deposit it to my Canadian bank account, which costs $10, but it takes 4 business days and causes my mom to have to run around to make it work (a same day Western Union transfer costs $45+).
I am posting here to ask: has anyone else has found a simple and not too expensive way to transfer money from abroad monthly, or to pay the NSLSC directly using foreign banking? How are other Canadians who live abroad managing this? As it is something I will be doing for the next 14 or so years, finding a better option for sending the payments would make life a lot easier.
Thanks for any suggestions or experiences, and again sorry if this is the wrong forum!
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