Paypal vs lindens

Hi-

My partner and I are purchasing a SIM. One of us lives in the USA and the other in Europe. I am trying to see what is the best method to have money transferred to me from Europe with the least amount of fees since I am the one paying the monthly tier. I did some quick calculations but thought I would ask here if anyone has more input on this.

Using $1.000 usd to make the numbers easier, if we transfer money from Europe to the USA, paypal charges 3.9% plus 30 cents, or $39.30 in fees. We net $ 960.70

If my partner purchases lindens for $1,000, as of this evenings exchange rate, that would buy 261,919 lindens. If those lindens are transferred to me, and then sold to go in my USD Linden balance, the net proceeds would be $ 924.63

Does that make sense? It seems just having the paypal transferred to me and into the account where Linden Labs takes the money is the least expensive of these 2 options. I guess some depends on the exchange rate too of the lindens.

Doing wire transfers is much too expensive. Are there any other options, or are these the best ones?

Thank you.

Dmitriy

I get what you mean about if you sell Lindens the value drops but you could just buy credit directly with your bank card for whatever amount to cover future cost that will directly be taken out of the credit you have already prepaid in advance.
All you have to do is click "increase credit" to pay amount directly into your credit
balance.
It will take you to another screen and ask you to re-log your password in and then
take you to confirmation page which you just click confirm.
Then on account page it will show your cash balance.

A limit purchase of Lindens at 273 L$/USD for a net $1,000US would yield 272918 Lindens, and would probably close within a week, more likely 3-4 days. Sell them at 262, close in 2-4 days, and net $1003.90. Yes, that's a profit. You could shorten the turnaround time by tweaking the prices, and still come out ahead of the Paypal approach.

Are you sure you will be charged for sending money? Paypal usually only charges for receiving.

The only times I've sent money by PayPal it's been free - are you sure of the cost?

I think Op is referring to example I buy L$ straight out via paypal or bank card at
price X but when I sell to get that amount in my credit balance I get another amount less then X amount being 1000.00 USD, it now is 900 the sell price of L$ decreases the cash value.
If put the cash amount directly into your credit balance price it shows at 1000 usd not the lower amount if you bought L$ then sold it at sale price.
Sometimes this is worth it but if it is coming directly to you for paying tier it just
best to keep it in $ credit balance then just buying L$ then selling it unless
you're gifting someone L$ or using $ from product sales.
If you're just increasing your credit balance that is coming out of your bank or credit card and that is all you want to do just increase your credit balance with the "Increase Credit" don't worry about the L$.
Selling L$ is best when you're wanting to cash out of earnings or forwarding L$ in your "increase credit" you already made in world.
I usually put in set amount in my increase account for tier, L$ purchases and
memberships due, it comes out of that area first before it comes out of bank thus
allowing me to prepay things too.

It's free to send, it's not always free to receive, that's how Paypal make money.

Dmitriy Gausman paypal recently changed the rules in Europe to mean that some transfers to friends are now free for both parties, you might want to check that out and read the small print carefully.

also check and see if you can have the person send the money via paypal mass pay option, from what I understand it only charges 1.00 US for the fee

Thank you all for your replies. I'll clarify a few things first about the sending/receiving fees. It is true that sending money has no fees, while receiving does. My partner, who would be the sender, would incur no personsal fees to send money to me, I do incur the 3.9% + 30 cent per transaction fee. Since we are partners in this, we both share whatever the net result of fees are, so in that case, who sends and who receives would not have an effect on one more than the other.

I didn't see anything at all about paypal waiving fees among friends if the transaction commences in Europe, but we'll see if we can find something more about that.

Timing the market is interesting but I am afraid that I will procrastinate or just not have the time to do that and as I saw today, that could be an almost $30-$40 swing in value.

Some of you mentioned the "increase credit" option to have money put into my USD Linden balance. If I understand how Linden processes the tier fee, they first look in my USD balance and whatever is there is taken first, and if it is not enough, they then go to the "payment info on file" source and remove the remainder. Should there be no money in the USD balance, they take it from the "payment info on file" source. Is there some benefit to using the "increase credit" option as opposed to just having the money on debite card? I was thinking I would just transfer the money from paypal to the debit card (free) and just let them take it from there. I think I would rather hold my money till the last possible moment than have it sit in a Linden USD balance.

I'll keep poking around but it seems the ideas you all gave are the best options at this time.

Dmitriy

I can't help but wonder if you're misunderstanding the way the limit buys and sells work, or misusing the term 'timing the market'.

Timing the market means trying to pick the right times to buy and sell. That's not the same as using limit buys/sells to optimize your prices. With limit buys/sells, you're not picking the time, you're picking the price.

I don't think the value of the Linden has changed by more than 2-3 L$/USD in the last year. Within the last 30 days, it's gotten more valuable by 1 L$/USD, going from 274/263 to 273/262 (buy/sell). But even if you went the other way, you still would have made money on the transaction:

$1000.00 US
- 0.30 US purchase commission
$ 999.70 used for purchase
x 273 Lindens/USD (the best buy rate over the last few days)
__________
272,918 Lindens purchased
/ 263 Lindens/USD (the worst sell rate over the last 30 days. The current rate is
__________ actually 262)
$1037.71 Gross proceeds
- 36.32 Lindex 3.5% commission
__________
$1001.39 Net proceeds

Not a bad return for one week. How did you calculate the $30/40 swing?

Thank you for the excellent explanation. I never had my settings beyong basic, so I had never worked with limits.

As an example of what I did, I entered in the basic buy window $990.70usd and it returned 260,554 lindens. Then I went to the basic sell window and entered 260,554 lindens and it showed the net proceeds of $923.18. That's where the huge difference came from.

I need to read a little more about this so I can comprehend it better.

Dmitriy