How Long Your Money Has to Sit: Proof of Funds Seasoning and the Six Months Before You Apply

Proof-of-funds money generally has to sit in your account for at least 28 consecutive days on the shortest routes, and for three to six months on the routes that read your statement history. UKVI sets the clearest short rule: for the Skilled Worker and Student routes it publishes a 28 consecutive day holding period for the maintenance funds, with the closing balance dated within a set number of days of the application. IRCC does not publish a single day count for Express Entry settlement funds and instead asks for official bank letters and statements that let an officer see the balance was genuinely available, which in practice means six months of history is the safe planning assumption. German missions approving a blocked account, Immigration New Zealand and most student routes sit somewhere between those two positions. Every one of those figures is a planning range checked in August 2026 and each authority revises its own guidance on its own schedule, so reconfirm the current rule on the issuing authority's page before you move a single transfer.

The practical consequence is a calendar, not a number. If your statement window is six months and you file in March, an officer is reading September through February. A property sale that completes in November, a bonus that lands in December or a gift from a parent that arrives in January all appear inside that window as unexplained credits, and each one invites a source-of-funds request that adds weeks. Money that landed before September is simply an opening balance nobody asks about. That is the whole of the seasoning problem: the difference between a clean file and a queried one is often four to eight weeks of timing on a transfer you controlled. This is general information, and a licensed or registered adviser should confirm how it applies to your case.

What seasoning actually means to an officer

Seasoning is a word applicants use more than authorities do. The guidance describes a requirement that funds be available, unencumbered and traceable, evidenced across a defined period of statements. The holding period exists to stop three things: a loan taken out for the week of the application, a balance borrowed from a relative and returned afterwards, and money whose lawful origin nobody can establish.

There are two separate rules bundled inside what people call seasoning, and mixing them up is where the planning goes wrong.

The holding period. How long the money must have been continuously in the account. UKVI's published 28 consecutive days is the clearest example.

The statement window. How much history you must supply. Six months of statements is a common ask across settlement, student and blocked-account routes, and it is much longer than the holding period.

The holding period tells you when you can file. The statement window tells you which of your past transactions an officer will see. Most avoidable trouble comes from planning around the first and ignoring the second.

Who this article is for

This applies to you if you are heading toward a route that tests savings instead of salary: Express Entry with no Canadian job offer, a UK Student or Skilled Worker application where the sponsor is not certifying maintenance, a German Job Seeker visa or Chancenkarte funded through a blocked account, a New Zealand or Irish study route, or any programme where a consulate asks for six months of bank statements. It applies with particular force if the money you intend to show has not been in your account the whole time: proceeds from selling a flat, an annual bonus, a maturing fixed deposit, an inheritance, a business distribution, or a transfer from a parent or sibling.

It matters less if your route waives the funds test. IRCC waives Express Entry settlement funds for candidates with a valid job offer and authorisation to work in Canada, and Canadian Experience Class applicants already working in Canada are generally exempt. A UK sponsor can certify maintenance on the certificate of sponsorship, which removes the cash test. Employer-sponsored routes such as the Netherlands highly skilled migrant scheme test the salary the employer pays rather than what you have saved. Confirm which bucket your route falls into before you build a savings calendar you may not need, and read our guide to what actually counts as proof of funds alongside it.

The windows, by route

The table below is a planning aid, checked in August 2026. Every row needs reconfirming on the named authority's own page in the month you file, because holding periods and thresholds are revised on schedules the authorities set themselves.

Working backwards from your filing month

Pick your target filing month, then count backwards.

Step one: name the filing month. Not a season, a month. If you are aiming to be in the Express Entry pool with a complete file in March 2027, March 2027 is your anchor.

Step two: open the statement window. Subtract six months. For a March 2027 filing, the window opens in September 2026. Anything that lands from September onward is inside the frame an officer will read.

Step three: set the money-in-place date. Aim for the full amount to be in the account before the window opens, so the threshold balance appears as an opening figure. For a March 2027 filing, that is August 2026. If the money cannot be there that early, the next best position is early inside the window with complete documentation attached, which is a queried file you can answer rather than a queried file you cannot.

Step four: back up the source event. Add the buyer's financing time, the conveyancing, the registration and the bank's clearance on a large inbound credit. Working backwards from an August 2026 money-in-place date, a property sale needs to be agreed in roughly March to May 2026 in most markets. A gift needs its deed signed and the giver's statements collected at the time of the transfer.

Step five: leave a currency margin. Where the threshold is set in a destination currency and your money is in naira, rupees, pesos, taka or dirhams, the conversion happens at the assessment date. Hold a visible margin above the published figure, in the region of ten to fifteen per cent.

A worked calendar, written out:

If you are reading this and the money moved last month, you are not out of options. You are in a different plan: either push the filing month back so the credit falls outside the window, or file inside the window with the source documentation prepared in advance so a request is answered in days instead of weeks. The choice between those two depends on what else is on your clock, which is the next section.

The deadlines that make pushing a filing month expensive

Delaying to season funds is often the right call. It is only cheap if nothing else on your calendar is moving.

Age points bands. IRCC's Comprehensive Ranking System awards age points that step down as you get older, and the Australian points test awards its highest age points to a band that ends at a birthday. Those are fixed, published, personal dates. Pushing a filing month from March to September to season a deposit is free if your birthday is in November and costly if it is in July. Our guide to the age points cliff and when to apply sets out where the bands sit and how to check yours against your own date of birth.

Annual fee and threshold revisions. IRCC republishes its settlement-funds table by family size against the low income cut-off on an annual cycle, and UKVI revises application fees and the Immigration Health Surcharge through published fee regulations. A file pushed across a revision date can cost more and can require a larger balance than the one you built. Language tests, police certificates and medical examinations also expire, so a long delay can force a paid retake.

Weigh those three against the cost of a source-of-funds request, which is typically weeks of delay and a request for documents you either have or do not. Where your documentation is complete, filing inside the window is often the better trade. Where the money came from a relative with no deed and no trail, seasoning is worth the delay.

If you want the whole sequence written down with your own dates in it, our free quiz matches your occupation, your documents and your savings position against the routes that fit, and it shows where your birthday and your funds calendar collide. If you would rather someone own the calendar, NextMigrate's personal migration roadmap is $499, down from $999, started with a $99 deposit with the balance settled afterwards (see pricing), and it lays out the order and the dates for the transfer, the statements, the assessment and the filing window so nothing in the chain is discovered late.

Timing a property sale, a bonus or a family transfer

Three source events cause most of the trouble. A bonus or severance payment is the easiest to document, because the employer can put it on letterhead and it appears on a payslip, though a bonus worth several months of salary still looks like an anomaly against eleven months of ordinary credits, so attach the payslip and the employment letter. The other two need more lead time.

A property sale. The money is not yours until completion, and the credit is large, single and unusual against your normal account activity. Officers rarely object to a property sale as a source. They object to one with no paperwork. Keep the sale deed or agreement, the buyer's payment evidence, the registration document and any capital gains filing, and keep them together in one folder from day one. If the sale is still in progress when you want to file, remember that property equity itself does not count as funds on most routes until it has been sold and the proceeds are sitting in a bank account, and the route guidance from the issuing authority is where to confirm that. Our guide to what to do with property back home covers the decision of whether to sell at all.

A family transfer. This is the highest-risk source and the most common one for applicants from South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa and the Gulf. A gift is acceptable on several routes when it is documented as a gift: a signed gift deed stating the money is given with no expectation of repayment, evidence of the relationship, the giver's own bank statements showing where their money came from, and the transfer record. Collect all of that at the moment of the transfer. A gift deed signed a year later, after an officer asks, is worth much less than one dated the week the money moved. And the money must land early enough to season, because a gift that arrives four weeks before filing carries both the seasoning problem and the source problem at once.

Across all three, consolidate. Money spread across four accounts in two countries is four sets of statements, four bank letters and four chances for a discrepancy. Move it into one account in your own legal name early, then leave it alone. Bank compliance holds on large inbound transfers are routine and can run for days or weeks, so price the corridor and the timing properly. Our guide to transferring money and remittances abroad covers how.

When seasoning does not solve the problem

Seasoning fixes timing. It does not fix the other three tests an officer applies.

Borrowed money stays borrowed. A personal loan that has sat in your account for eight months is still a repayable obligation, and it fails the unencumbered test however long it has been there. Declaring it as savings risks a misrepresentation finding. IRCC publishes a five year bar for misrepresentation, and Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand each publish their own exclusion periods for false or misleading information, so check the length that applies on the authority's own page.

Unexplainable money stays unexplainable. Time does not create a record. Build your declared total from the portion you can evidence.

Locked assets stay locked. A retirement fund you cannot draw without a qualifying event, or a five-year fixed deposit with a heavy break penalty, does not become liquid by ageing. Cryptocurrency generally has to be sold on a regulated exchange, withdrawn to a bank account in your own name, and then seasoned as fiat, which is a conversion to start early.

A dip inside the holding period resets it. Where a route publishes a holding period, the balance must stay at or above the required figure for every day of it. Automatic debits, a standing order, a card payment or a bank fee taking you a few units under the line on one day can restart the count. Move standing instructions off the account you are showing.

Common mistakes

1. Planning around the holding period and ignoring the statement window. Twenty-eight days is when you may file. Six months is what the officer reads.
2. Moving the money in the month before filing because the threshold was finally met. This is the classic self-inflicted refusal.
3. Letting the balance dip below the line for a single day inside a published holding period.
4. Sitting exactly on the threshold with no currency margin, then falling under it during assessment because of an exchange-rate move.
5. Documenting a gift after the officer asks instead of at the moment of transfer.
6. Spreading funds across several accounts and countries, which produces inconsistent letters.
7. Forgetting the family multiplier. Settlement-funds figures rise with each accompanying person, so a threshold you seasoned for one may be short for three.
8. Paying an agent who offers to "show funds" in your account for a fee. This is a service that manufactures a refusal and, potentially, a ban.

The agents to avoid on this specific topic

Proof of funds attracts a particular scam because the problem looks solvable with cash. Treat as a hard stop any provider who offers to park money in your account for the seasoning period for a fee, who offers a "funds certificate" from a bank you have no relationship with, who asks you to pay into a personal account rather than a registered business account, or who guarantees a visa outcome. Guaranteed outcomes are not something any adviser can sell, because no adviser decides the file.

Verify anyone you pay against the relevant regulator: in Canada, the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants register and the provincial law societies; in Australia, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority register; in the United Kingdom, the statutory regulator of immigration advice (the body has been renamed in recent years, so search GOV.UK for the current register) and the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Our guide to avoiding immigration scams sets out the checks in order.

What to do next

Do these five things in order, this week.

1. Name your target filing month and write it down.
2. Subtract six months to find when your statement window opens, and mark that date.
3. List every credit above one month of your salary that has landed since that date or is expected before filing, and next to each one name the document that explains it.
4. Confirm the current threshold for your route and family size on the issuing authority's own page, and note the date you checked it.
5. Decide whether to file inside the window with documentation prepared or to push the filing month, checking that against your birthday, your test expiry dates and any published fee revision.

For the underlying figures by country, read our guide to how much money you need to migrate, and read it alongside the source-by-source verdict in what actually counts as proof of funds.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does money need to be in an account for proof of funds?

The shortest published rule among the major destinations is UKVI's 28 consecutive days for maintenance funds on the Skilled Worker and Student routes, with the closing balance dated within a set number of days of the application. Routes that ask for statement history instead of a fixed day count, including IRCC's Express Entry settlement funds, are safer planned at three to six months of untouched balance. Both figures are planning ranges checked in August 2026. Confirm the rule for your route on the issuing authority's own page before you move money.

Does a large deposit automatically cause a refusal?

No. A large deposit causes a question. Officers are trained to ask where unexplained credits came from, and a documented answer usually closes it: a sale deed for a property sale, a payslip and employer letter for a bonus, a gift deed plus the giver's statements for a family transfer. The refusals happen when the applicant has no answer, or offers one that the statements contradict. The cost of a query is typically weeks of delay, so prepare the documents before you file, ahead of the request.

What happens if my balance dips below the threshold for one day?

Where the route publishes a holding period, a dip below the required figure generally restarts the count, and the practical effect is that your earliest filing date moves. Automatic debits, standing orders, subscription payments and bank charges are the usual culprits. Move standing instructions to a different account, keep a margin above the figure, and check the statement line by line before you rely on it.

I already moved the money last month. What are my options?

Two. File inside the window with the source documentation assembled in advance, accepting that a query is likely and that a complete answer usually resolves it. Or push the filing month so the credit falls before the statement window opens, which for a six month window means waiting until the deposit is more than six months old. Choose using your other deadlines: an age points band that steps down on your birthday, a language test or police certificate that expires, or a published fee revision can all make waiting the more expensive option.

Do blocked-account countries have a seasoning rule?

The mechanism is different. For a German Job Seeker visa or Chancenkarte, the money is deposited into a blocked account and confirmed as blocked before the visa is issued, so the test is the blocking confirmation rather than a holding period in your own account. Missions commonly ask for recent statements alongside it, and the origin of the deposited money can still be questioned. Blocked-account opening and verification take time, so start the process weeks before you need the confirmation. Check the requirements with the German mission for your country.

Does the threshold figure change while I am saving?

Yes, and this is a real planning risk on a long calendar. IRCC republishes settlement funds against the low income cut-off on an annual cycle, German blocked-account benchmarks are reviewed periodically, and UKVI revises maintenance and fee figures through published rule changes. Exchange rates move your home-currency target continuously. Re-check the number in the month you file and write down the date you checked.

The bottom line

Proof-of-funds seasoning is a calendar problem with four fixed inputs: your filing month, the statement window your route reads, the day the money lands, and the documents that explain it. Get the money in place before the window opens and the balance is an opening figure nobody queries. Get it in place afterwards and the paperwork has to be ready on the day you file. Only one of those works without notice.

Take the free quiz to see which routes fit your occupation and your savings position, and where your own dates create pressure. If the calendar is already tight, NextMigrate's personal migration roadmap is $499, down from $999, with a $99 deposit to start and the balance settled afterwards, and it exists for exactly this case: a fixed filing date, money that moved at the wrong time, and a sequence that has to be right the first time. If your funds turn out to be a footnote on the routes that suit you, we would rather tell you that before you delay a year for no reason.