Transferring money abroad

[babybythesea]

I have no idea where to start with this one and could use some ideas to get me started.

We inherited a little bit of money recently, not a huge amount, but enough to pay for a plane ticket for my mother in law to come and visit. My father in law wasn't well enough at the time but has picked up and is desperate to come too - they will pay for him. Neither them nor us can afford to pay for both outright. They haven't been since our wedding 10 years ago and would love the chance to come and see their grandchildren here, where they go to school, see our house, etc etc. They've looked into flights and we've found some that work with timings of holidays/term time etc. They need to pay from their end so they can guarantee both tickets on the same booking.
How best to do this? Do we transfer money? If so, what's the cheapest way of doing this as we can't really afford mahhosive bank charges? Or do we pay and then have them bring a cheque or something to cash to pay it back, or travellers cheques to the value of.... We can just about manage to do the payments in the short term so this might be a solution.

What are my options here? I will talk to my bank as well but this is something I've never had to think about before so I'm all at sea and could do with advice to set me off.
Thanks.

Western union?

Just chat to your bank, the charges may not be that bad. My bank charges me £4 to send money abroad if I do it myself through online banking. The exchange rate might not be fantastic so if it's a very large amount of money it might be worth investigating alternatives.

I've used this to pay for holiday accommodation abroad, payment in euros into owners bank account in France. My bank wanted to charge about £30 !!!

transferwise.com/

Transferwise - we use it at work all the time for overseas transfers

Give your parents your credit card number and let them book two flights. They can give you cash in local currency when they arrive and you can pay CC before the bill comes in

We have used Oanda before and it's been fine

Give your parents your credit card number and let them book two flights.
or book it yourself using the credit card.

Think it has to be booked in the country where the DPs are.

I send my inlaws money through hsbc when they book flights. It's only about £4 I think, though they didn't even charge that last time. Alternatively you could post them a cheque.