I quietly lost ~1.7% of a year's pay to transfer fees. Here's the full breakdown.

For the past year I worked on a remote contract with a US tech company. Paid in USD, ultimately needing Korean won. Simple, right? Then a year in, I actually reconciled what landed in my account. The exchange rate had gone up — and yet my real received amount was lower than I'd expected. I traced it, and money was leaking at every step of the transfer path I hadn't been watching. This is what I learned switching routes over that year: from a direct bank wire to Wise, the real cost difference, and one right buried in my contract. If you're a freelancer or contractor in any country earning USD from abroad, this should save you something. Money leaks in more than one place Getting USD from overseas into local currency looks like one step. It's actually at least four: The wire fee from the US bank, through correspondent banks, to the receiving bank. The exchange rate the receiving bank applies — this is the big one. The receiving fee on the destination side. A hidden "lifting charge" some correspondent banks skim. The largest is the rate. Banks quote two rates, and the "buyer rate" applied when an individual sells dollars is worse than the mid-market reference — typically a 1.5–2% spread . On $1,000, that's $15–20 gone to the rate alone. That number looks small. Accumulated over a year, it stops looking small. Route A — receiving directly through a major US bank My first setup was the simplest: the company wired USD to my US bank account, and I wired it on to my Korean bank. I picked this at contract start without much thought, assuming the client would conventionally cover fees anyway. (Lesson one: specify the transfer method, route, and who pays in the contract. ) The problem was the bank's exchange rate. It applied the buyer rate straight up, with a wider-than-usual spread versus mid-market — plus a send fee, plus the Korean receiving bank's fee. I only noticed months in. Comparing statements, there was a steady 2–3% gap between the won I'd expect at mid-market and t