Banking in France

One of the things that we found really frustrating when getting ready to buy the house in France was opening a bank account. In the end we went with Credit Agricole because it was the cheapest. Not the easiest though. They asked for tons of paper work but they charged the cheapest (at the time) rates for an account that came with a cheque book, debit card and Internet banking. Unlike in the UK, Internet banking is not free in France. Also Credit Agricole has an English-speaking department called Britline, which is great since they specialize in people moving from the UK to France. We were initially going to go with Barclays but they charged sooo much more that we figured the hassle of using Credit Agricole was worth it.

Euros still feel like monopoly money to me.