Seriously - the exchange rates are a joke!!!!!!

I have some money to change, the price of a holiday is all. I'd like to get the best for pound, do you guys in the know think I should wait a while until the pound picks up or am I going to be sitting in a rocking chair by that time??????

Advice warmly welcomed!

Mrs M x

New Labour, 'no more boom & bust Brown', and mistress Darling......

(I'm crying really....)

It's such a difficult one. Yes you could think it's scraping the bottom right now and will bounce back. And that could happen. But equally well it could drop another 5 cents and you'd be kicking yourself for not moving the money earlier.

A friend of mine needed to bring some money out when the rates had dropped from 1.85 to 1.70 quite quickly. I said the same thing and the rates did not bounce back but dropped to 1.60 and now practically 1.55.

I don't think there are any guys in the know. Anyone who claims to be would not be frequenting this forum but living on a yacht somewhere much warmer than most of us are living.

My philosophy is that you should only gamble if you can afford the loss. In many cases people are fixated by a best case scenario that they ignore the worst case ones. I exchanged at 2.06 thinking that the rate would be bounding back to $3/£, and although there was a slight turnaround in 2007, the trend has been strongly downward.

The best you can hope for is to catch it if it swings back momentarily. But there's no guarantees and you could well lose as much as you hoped to gain.

Sorry I cannot give you the assurance you need. Best of luck though and I'm afraid that's mostly what it will come down to.

see also:

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=657260

Now this could be just a dream, but was it hovering back up in the late 1.60s a few weeks ago......seriously, if that's all the pound is worth, thank God we are here, inflation is going to be a killer there!

Mrs M x

I'm loving it, first trip back to the UK in almost 3 yrs and the pound is finally on my side

It's great. Take your calculator and convert every time you buy anything. Its the first time I have actually bought CDs in the UK (apart from the much better choice) as they are cheaper. I still wouldn't try it with petrol though

It's really hard to say what's gonna happen in the short term. There's been a lot of bad news surrounding the pound again over the past few days and it could be a long time before we see it back near 1.90.

Sorry to say we might see it drop down a little bit further yet. If you can wait, it could be back at 1.70 in a few weeks but it's a risk and no one really knows how low it will go before it rises back up.

Fingers crossed for you and everyeone else who is affected.

I wonder how cneldred is these days?

And here.

He should be doing OK - money can me made out of volatility if you know what you are doing (and I always thought he did).

My view is that 1.70ish is about right. When and if it will get there is anybodies guess. I'd consider taking a punt if I thought whoever wins the election in the UK would turn off the printing press, but I doubt that any of them will. Who do you thinks going to print more; the UK to appease the public sector or Canada to stay competitive with the US?

Darling might be a knob, but lay off Brown, he's been our best Chancellor since Stafford Cripps.

I quite like Alastair darling; always thought he was relatively decent chap. He's certainly better than George Osbourne.

I had my salary transfer last week. It was the lowest amount since I started working for the company in mid-2005. During that time, my salary has gone up by about £10k.

Shoulda negotiated a currency adjustment factor.