Finance guy here. AMA.

Started by tornadohunter
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tornadohunter

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Hey SDN,

So I have my undergrad in Finance and Accounting and an MBA concentrated in Finance. I have been contemplating going to med school and found my way to this forum. Figured I could take a few minutes to answer most financial question you may have.
 
I received this question via private message and was given permission to post anonymously.

Wanted to ask this question privately, but you can post it anonymously in the thread you started if you wish.

What's the most efficient way to send large amounts of money back to Canada? My loans are from private Canadian banks, and I'll be paying back about 300k over the next 5-6 years, but I live in the US and earn USD. Obviously banks charge wire transfer fees and also give exchange rates that are much worse than the InterBank rate. I've looked into companies like Oanda and TransferWise. Is there some other better way? I've looked up Norbert's Gambit but that only seems to work when selling Canadian dollars and buying US dollars.
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I can't give you a definitive answer but I can offer some insights. After researching, TransferWise looks like your best bet. Oanda seems like it is more of a FOREX trading platform.
May want to compare to ofx.com. OFX gives you the ability to lock in rates but as I state below, that might not be a good idea. At the current exchange rate, it will take ~225,000 USD to pay off the 300,000 CAD. (Current rate is $1.34/CAD. So $1 USD buys you 1.34 CAD)

As for the currency outlook over the next few years:

So interest rates [Edit that i felt is appropriate: Should clarify this as US interest rates] will undoubtedly rise over your time horizon. I assume you borrowed the 300k in canadian dollars? As the interest rates rise, the strength of the US dollar will increase against the CAD. So it will take fewer USD to pay off your loan.

http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/usdcad=X?ltr=1

OK thanks! Interesting, I didn't know that as the interest rate rises, the US dollar strengthens relative to the Canadian dollar. Why is this?

And yes, I borrowed in Canadian dollars.
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http://www.investopedia.com/ask/ans...-affect-currencys-value-and-exchange-rate.asp


*Full disclosure: No links are meant to be construed as an advertisement. I have no stake in any link mentioned in the post. Felt they are necessary to adequately answer the question.
 
With the banking issues going on (e.g. Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse being fined billions by the US), some current and future bankers seem to be considering other career paths which, for the most part, don't include medicine; a few of their stories are on the Wall Street Oasis forum. Did that and/or something related have anything to do with your decision to go to medical school, and if so, what made you choose medicine and not something else? What are you planning to do after your residency (e.g. something in the pharmaceutical industry)?

I ask these questions since there are a lot of new jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, and Michio Kaiku posted a video on youtube discussing that in terms of the poor quality of the US educational system and its need for importing foreign researchers on H1B visas versus the loss of jobs due to automation, tech advances, etc. He argues for retraining workers and better-educating students to solve the US's problems, which could be similar to what you're doing, but blames the US educational system for preventing that; effectively, technology has created a need for positions that the US educational system is incapable of training people for.

Therefore, the working class have resentments against the democratic party because of their poor educations, and the US's (and UK's) current class and political conflicts resemble what happened as a result of or caused the industrial revolution, Marxism/communism, etc; other sources say similar things, such as "A large discussion is currently taking place as to how our society will handle what is essentially another industrial revolution" in the context of pharmaceutical development and what I'm researching at my university. He concludes that the Brexit and election of Donald Trump were due to the above; I agree with him and what he's implying, which appears to be to attend good US and UK universities for tech, medical/pharmaceutical, and other employable degrees.

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OxToCA said:
With the banking issues going on (e.g. Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse being fined billions by the US), some current and future bankers seem to be considering other career paths which, for the most part, don't include medicine; a few of their stories are on the Wall Street Oasis forum. Did that and/or something related have anything to do with your decision to go to medical school, and if so, what made you choose medicine and not something else? What are you planning to do after your residency (e.g. something in the pharmaceutical industry)?

I ask these questions since there are a lot of new jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, and Michio Kaiku posted a video on youtube discussing that in terms of the poor quality of the US educational system and its need for importing foreign researchers on H1B visas versus the loss of jobs due to automation, tech advances, etc. He argues for retraining workers and better-educating students to solve the US's problems, which could be similar to what you're doing, but blames the US educational system for preventing that; effectively, technology has created a need for positions that the US educational system is incapable of training people for.

Therefore, the working class have resentments against the democratic party because of their poor educations, and the US's (and UK's) current class and political conflicts resemble what happened as a result of or caused the industrial revolution, Marxism/communism, etc; other sources say similar things, such as "A large discussion is currently taking place as to how our society will handle what is essentially another industrial revolution" in the context of pharmaceutical development and what I'm researching at my university. He concludes that the Brexit and election of Donald Trump were due to the above; I agree with him and what he's implying, which appears to be to attend good US and UK universities for tech, medical/pharmaceutical, and other employable degrees.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Click to expand...


Here's another article on investment banking vs. automation:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/radical-changes-are-on-the-way-for-investment-banks-1464904490
 
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