LandC

Yeah Brown has made a mess of it, though Clegg has really made a huge impression through the debates and its really looking like a race between Conservatives and Lib dem, there will also be life long labour supporters that will still vote for them so i would imagine they will still hold on to a fair share of the vote. In the end i do see it becoming a hung parliament or if conservatives win it won't be with a strong enough majority to have the influence they need to push through the bills they want and the finanical sector won't be happy. This in turn will cause less confidence in the pound and lower exchange rates for us.

Eaakkk i'm talking politics been around my partner too long. I'm tied into a fixed rate morgage just now and will be renting my flat to family for at least the next two years so hoping the exhange rate by then so i can sell up and move the money over. Hoping to move over in June so going to have to sort out enough funds for the initial move. Its all really scary.

lins and Stef McLachlan

Hi
History has a habit of sidestepping Lib Dem. lets face it their 'leaders' are always skulking around in the background and you only hear anything about them as a party when there is an election. Never been seen as a fore runner in my honest opinion. Never heard much about Clegg until the election campaign.

Yep...do think Gordon Brown has been busy cooking his own goose!
We shall have to wait and see.
lol
Stef

lins and Stef McLachlan

Yep Scary. We should have gone two years ago...before the troubles. We had to take CHC to Federal Court when they tallied our education up incorrectly...not only cost us time, but Lawyer fees and the money market crash...we have lost big time....and I mean big time.

It really bugs me that they can get things that spectacularly wrong and totally mess up our start to the new life in Canada. But we have to look to the future, which we still believe to be in Canada.
Good luck with the move over
lol
Stef

Flyingscottie

Just to clarify - we are talking about £10,000 not £100,000 so the margins are not so great.

I agree that the rate is not good, but I don't think it will get much better anytime soon so we need to PROTECT the money we have. If we get to December and the rate is so low, we might be in a position where we cannot meet the minimum landing requirement and THAT would be a disaster (even worse that Gordon Brown's!)

Thanks all x

Aviator

You can buy a forward contract at a fixed rate. It may not be as good as the rate you get today, as the FX house is taking a gamble on where the rate will go and build in a buffer. Once you buy a forward contract, you are committed to it, if you back out it can cost big time. At $1.50 my GBP are staying in GB and have been for a couple of years now. The rate was $2.11 when I got them and thought that was pretty bad and it steadily went down. Looks like I may be hanging on a few more years yet!

lins and Stef McLachlan

Even on 10k at 1.54 you would get $15400 but if it goes to 1.84 you would get $18400, thats still a $3000 difference. I always say, better in my pocket than in someone elses. You do have time here in UK to save more £'s though? $3000 would pay the rent for a couple of months or for a small car.
lol
Stef

Flyingscottie

I agree... however if the rate is 1.1 in December then £10k = only $11,000 dollers = less than we legally need to enter Canada.

Currently we have £6.5k, so will only manage to have £10k by December... no more! This is why we are very concerned. If the rate goes back up, life is good. If it goes down (can't even think about it!).

This is why we are thinking £6.5k at 1.5 = $9750 guaranteed no matter what. Then we only have to worry about the last $3000 and maybe by that time the rate will be letter meaning we can over achieve.

That said, it doesn't seem easy or straightforward to do any of this, so we may just have to keep the money in our ISA's, hope for the best and continue to save like mad!

scottymallo

The Weakness of the £ is already at rock bottom! The possibility of a hung pparliament has already been factored in to the exchange rate. Soon as conservatives get into power.The £ will rocket, I'm thinking back up to 1.75 by July-August.

Deva

You could open an account with Oanda which enables you to have multiple sub-accounts in a variety of currencies.

Convert the GBP to CAD whenever you want and the money can sit in your CAD sub-account until you have a Canadian bank account and are ready to make a transfer.

Mike Gas

It is very foolish to think the rate won’t go any lower, don’t see any guarantee of the conservatives gaining an outright majority.
And even if they do there are suggestions that they may call in the IMF to do an audit you watch the pound sink when they decide the UK is nearly insolvent.
The bond market seem to be picking off the country’s now with very large deficits Grease Spain Portugal Ireland and the UK

Alan2005

actually, this isn't how it works. forward contracts are based on interest rate differentials and not a gamble of where they think the rate is going. The FX house might price in the risk of you not being able to pay up when settlement is due as well as their own profit margin.

Pebblebeach

The trouble is in thinking that the rate is so bad, it can't keep going down.

We have been in that situation since last October and have had a rate locked in that we wanted. We are committed to exchange at that rate if the pound ever gets back up there (unless we cancel the order first). But is looks pretty unlikely, and we have had to take a hit at a horrible rate to transfer some money to buy our house.

I do believe there is a good chance the rate will go up if the Conservatives get in and a good chance it will plummet further if there is a hung parliament (though the fear of these seem to be getting the blame already for the recent lows). Personally I will wait for the election and see how that affects things.

However, whatever the rate is, noone know how it will move (even those who's job it is to study such things), so I would say if you are happy with the rate and the amount of dollars it will give you, then it makes sense to lock in and book a forward contract at that rate for the date you want.

The FX house will add on a small amount (supposedly to cover the lost interest of them buying for you now, but you only paying at the agreed date), but interest rates are obviously not very high, so it is not a big deal.

You will lose out if the rates start to go up again, but if the dollars you get at this rate will give you what you need, you know you will get that amount and be ok. If the rate goes down, you will be laughing. (But it is probably best just not to look once you have commited yourself!) At least you will know where you stand.

Martin99

Hi FS

If certainty is what you value most given the difficulty accumulating your landing funds then I would be looking to acquire $CADs now to avoid any downside risk. It would seem from your comments that any potential upside from a rising Pound is more that outweighed by the downside risk of having insufficient $CAD funds for landing in December.

Cheers

Martin

Flyingscottie

You hit the nail on the head Martin, always good advice!

Any thoughts on how to do this?

zednought

You're clearly not an economist. The value of the pound could still go lower. Should the Tories get into power (people of England make it so!) the pound may well rally. However, if whoever is in power doesn't make a BIG impact on the UK's current financial crisis I doubt the value of pound notes will increase by any significant factor. Everyone seems to have forgotten the "quantative easing" affect. Basically, we've de-valued the UK's currency so nothing sort of a miracle is going to see the sort of exchange rates we once saw.