Banking/Moving Money

Why not try an electronic transfer once you have the account established on the island. Most banks will have the on line banking transfer option available to you.

At the very least, you could have the funds wired.

Bring enough cash to get you through the first two weeks. Including enough to open an account. Then write a check from your stateside account to deposit into your new account. It will take ten days for that check to clear. I tried several times to wire money from the States to my bank here and no one could get the routing right it kept failing. I gave up and went the check route and saved the wire fees.
Jay

Do not bring cash. That is always asking for trouble. Keep your bank open stateside, open a bank here and wire the money, then close your account stateside. Meanwhile your credit cards and atms from stateside will work on stt. Again do not bring large sums of cash.

Wire the money from your "old" account to your "new" account on St. Thomas. I wire money to my Caribbean Bank all the time. It's easy and fast. The money is transferred "out" of my US bank one day and is available for my use in the Caribbean bank account the next day.

FYI - you can even set up automatic "repetative transfers" - i.e. have the same amount of money transferred to the same account at regular intervals (daily, weekly, monthly).

Talk to your banker at home and open your account in VI. Best ways: on-line electronic transfer or wire bank-tobank. You just need to get the information from the receiving bank (ABA code, swift code, etc.). I just went through the process. Piece of cake. They do it all the time.