What did your move abroad cost? Add it up across banks and currencies

The short answer

A move has two costs, and they are worth keeping apart. The one-off cost is everything the move itself took: tickets, visas and documents, deposits, the first weeks in temporary housing, furniture. The monthly baseline is what ordinary life costs in the new place once the move is over. Mixing them makes the first months look impossibly expensive and hides whether the new life is affordable.

Both numbers come from the same statements: the account you left behind, the Revolut or Wise account you used in between, and the new local account. The work is putting them in one currency and leaving out the money that only moved between your own accounts.

Collect statements from both sides

Take every account that paid for anything from the first move expense (often a flight or a document fee, months before leaving) until about three months after arrival.

• The home bank account and card, which usually paid for the early costs.
• Revolut, Wise or another multi-currency account. These issue one statement per currency, so download each currency you used. The Revolut walkthrough shows where.
• The new local account, from the day it was opened.
• Cash. Deposits and the first month's rent are often paid in cash in the new country; write them down with the date and currency.

Take out what is not a cost

Relocation moves a lot of your own money around, and every move shows up twice: once leaving one account, once arriving in another.

• A transfer from your home account to Wise, and from Wise to the local account, is not spending. Neither is exchanging currency inside Revolut.
• The fee on those transfers is a cost of the move. Keep it.
• A deposit you expect back is not spent money yet. Note it separately, and count it as a cost only if you lose it.

Pick one currency and one rule for rates

Choose the currency you think in, usually the one you now earn in. Then convert every transaction at the rate for its own date, not at today's rate. A deposit paid in lira in March and a flight paid in euros in January each keep the value they had when you paid. If your bank charged a worse rate than the market rate, the difference is also a cost of the move, and it is easy to lose sight of when you convert at a single average rate.

Put the move in one place with Pulget

Pulget reads the statements from both countries and keeps each account in its own currency. It does not connect to any bank, so it makes no difference whether the bank is in Baku, Tbilisi or Lisbon.

1. Create an account for each bank account and each Revolut or Wise currency, and upload its statement: PDF, CSV, XLS or XLSX. Scanned PDFs are read with OCR.
2. Check the extracted rows and approve them. A row the account already holds is skipped, and possible duplicates across files go to Duplicates in the Review inbox.
3. Accept the transfer pairs Pulget suggests between your own accounts. It suggests pairs with the same amount in the same currency; a currency exchange, or a transfer that arrives in another currency, you group yourself on the Transactions page. A grouped pair counts as a transfer, not as spending.
4. In Moments, create a moment of the Relocation type with its dates and the places you moved between, then pick the transactions that belong to it. Pulget adds them up for you. A long move can hold submoments, such as a flat-hunting trip before the move itself.
5. Where your bank charged a different rate, enter that rate on the transaction. Pulget keeps the original amount either way and otherwise uses the published rate for the transaction's date, or the closest earlier one. The multi-currency guide explains where the rates come from.

The moment gives you the one-off cost. For the baseline, compare the months after the moment ends in Insights, by category: rent, groceries, transport, phone. Charges that start repeating in the new country, such as rent or a phone plan, are suggested as recurring bills once they have repeated on a steady schedule; you confirm each one.

What it cannot tell you

• It does not produce an official statement for a visa or residence permit. That still comes from your bank. It can help you check the history before you request one.
• It knows only the statements you upload, and shows no live balances.
• It does not give tax-residency or tax advice.
• During preview every workspace is on Standard, which counts up to 3 accounts; a move across several banks and currencies can go past that. Pricing lists the limits.

Start with the account you left

Upload the home account's statements for the months around the move, free during preview, then add the others one at a time. The walkthrough for Revolut, Wise and a local bank covers the setup in more detail.