I think this is such a personal choice. When I was in a similar situation, getting paid in USD living in Europe, I would always take the transfer fee because it's a fixed cost. I would rather be able to receive USD in USD without converting, because everyone who touches that conversion takes their cut. Then I exchanged if the market reached a certain price, or if I really needed to release the funds. I don't have the stomach for market trading and it was always really stressful 😨