My son is living in England and I would like to send him money for the holidays.
I'm not sure what is the best way to send money; money order, cashier check, American Express travelers check. With the dollar so weak I hate to lose even more money in service charges. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Go to www.xe.com/fx and open an account with XETrade. It takes a bit of time and effort to set everything up, but it works really well and the cost is minimal (just a little more than the current exchange rate). Money is taken from my checking account via an electronic fund transfer, converted into a draft in British pounds, and mailed directly to the recipient. Sending the money overseas by wire is also an option, but that costs more. I've been using this service for over a year to send money to relatives in England and I'm very pleased with it.

Tuki, I think Tim's got the answer. I needed to send euros to France recently and I couldn't find any way to do it that wasn't expensive. When I finally found XETrade, it was too late for my purposes, but they sure looked like the best thing I'd found. Tim, I'm glad to hear that you've used XETrade and are happy with them. That's what I'll use next time.

Send him an ATM card with access to one of your bank accounts. He can then use the ATM card to withdraw money. There will be very little loss, except possibly the bank markup on the pounds (often 1-3%), and a fixed transaction fee set by your bank (which may be $0 to $5).

Tim: how much does the recipient's bank charge for processing the xe draft?

I appreciate Tuki may want to exercise some tact in this, but Lloyds TSB, who have about the largest branch network in the UK, charge me only £8 to pay ordinary US cheques, in dollars, into my ordinary British account: the exchange rate seems to work out about 2 percentage points above the midmarket rate (but who can ever really be sure about these things?)

I've never asked my relatives what it cost them to have their bank process my draft. (Since I'm not familiar with the British banking system, I've assumed, perhaps wrongly, that it cost them nothing.) XE's currency converter shows today's midmarket rate as 1 GBP = 1.75028 USD. I don't remember what the rate was on December 6 when I did a trade (Christmas gifts), but I paid 1.81067 USD for each GBP. That includes all fees.

I like WillTravel's suggestion.

You can open an account especially for him.

You can also send the card in the mail and the PIN in an email.