aries

My pension comes from Australia, and because of the poor exchange rate, I'm receiving about £200 a month less than a year ago. Thus you can see why I'm not too happy. This sum would have covered my service fee which is rising faster than I anticipated.

Before I came I had also not researched interest rates on savings, stupidly believing they would be much the same. I then found that my initial interest rate with Barclays was a shocking one twentieth as it was with the Commonwealth Bank. I kept an account in Oz, thankful that I was keeping a decent interest rate, only to find that the exchange rate has eroded it faster!

Grayling

Tough....now you know what it has been like for those of us with our income in sterling and living in Australia for the past few years

Swings and roundabouts

chris955

Exchange rates are swings and roundabouts, noone will whinge when the rate is in their favour which it has been for a few years now for people converting $'s. We would have lost 10's of £1000's if we had made our move now but we didn't. If we had made the move when it was $2.50 and higher to the £ we would have been stuffed.
As for interest rates why would you think they would be the same in both countries when Australia has a much higher base rate ? Again swings and roundabouts, if you have a mortgage in Australia you would be paying a higher rate. You cant have low mortgage rates AND high bank savings rates.

chris955

Great minds. Exactly right, as I said no-one complains when the rate is in their favour.

Grayling

Indeed

not2old

its getting better all the time

http://www.futurecurrencyforecast.co...s-to-7-1/23954

The Pound has leapt against its peers to push beyond a one-year high against the Euro and US Dollar after data showed that the unemployment rate in the UK fell more than forecast to 7.1%, just off the Bank of England’s target of 7%.

According to the Office for National Statistics the UK’s jobless rate fell from 7.4% to 7.1% in November, beating economist forecasts for a figure of 7.3%. Upon hearing the news the Pound lurched higher as investors increased their bets that the Bank of England will review its monetary policy.

Unemployment in dropped by 167,000 to 2.32 million in the three months through November compared with the previous figure. The decline is the biggest drop recorded since October 1997 and is the second largest fall since records began in 1971.

The data piles the pressure onto Bank of England governor Mark Carney to change his guidance policy and raise interest rates. With the 7% target now expected to be achieved far earlier than expected economists now forecast that the BoE will alter its policy when it publishes its quarterly inflation report on the 12th of February. Currently interest rates in the UK are at a record low of 0.5%.

The Pound also found support from data which showed that the nation’s public sector burrowing fell more than expected. In December burrowing fell to £10.400 billion compared to the previous month’s figure of £14.799 billion. Economists had been forecasting a fall to £12.300 billion. The figure is good news for Chancellor George Osborne and Prime Minister David Cameron as the Conservative Party will use the nation’s economic recovery as a key focus for upcoming elections.

bigglesworth

Aries, I sympathise with the difficulty. Having spent much of the last five years in Spain and France, watching Sterling's continual collapses, I know how that feels.

Unfortunately for you, this is around Sterling's long-run average against the dollar (1.65-1.70) and below the average against the Euro - 1,25 to 1.30. Although that last is against the old EU core, and it is difficult to get a real value against the Eastern members.
It is also way below the basket value represented in the trade weighted figures. Which last is of course in itself a moveable feast.
I think you have to accept that as the UK recovers, a fixed foreign income was always likely to purchase less. I would love to be able to say that the increase in sterling's value would lead to lower prices, but I stopped believing in flying pigs many years ago. It might however lead to a slower pace of increase.
Anyway, the strength is a reflection of the increasing strength of the UK economy, which has all sorts of ancillary benefits. I am sure you would not want the reverse to happen.

aries

Re interest rates, it is entirely my fault that I didn't check, but the difference certainly shocked me.

Thankfully my mortgage in Australia was fully paid by 1980, so I enjoyed more than 30 years of financial ease

not2old

On those interest rates back in the early 1980's when you could buy a house in the Perth suburbs for next to nothing

http://www.loansense.com.au/historical-rates.html

chris955

Late 80's early 90's definitely not a good time to be paying a mortgage.

not2old

but the house prices in OZ in the early 80's were just amazing

Page 8 in the following

http://www.econ.mq.edu.au/Econ_docs/...elson_9_04.pdf

aries

So I remember, the rates went really high making it difficult for many home buyers. I was fortunate not to get caught in the upward spiral.

chris955

Yeah but they were everywhere, we contemplated a move to the UK around then and a really nice place would cost us about £30,000-40,000 and it was a solid house that would be there 300 years from now.

chris955

Lots of people lost everything back then, it wasnt pretty.

Lothianlad

Thursday 23 January 2014:

FALLING CRIME RATE IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Largest yearly fall in all round crime since 1981 announced today.

Also appreciably down are the statistics for alcohol and drugs addiction as reported by the NHS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25858421

However......no change in the weather!

At the present time at least and another great dollop of wind and rain is due on Sunday leading to yet more flooding problems....but there is a change due next week in this very prolonged period of wet and windy weather......

....apparently it is going to get a whole lot colder in much of the UK as the bitterly cold weather affecting Russia and Eastern Europe heads this way leading to bloody snow instead of rain!

We can't win weatherwise but economic prospects?

Not so bad at all - but how very, very disappointed are all the luvvy lefty Champage Socialists at the BBC........

...now doing their level best to pick holes and negate and downplay all of this very positive news about...

....sharply falling unemployment....

....sharply rising full time employment.......

....steadily falling inflation rate now down to just over 2%.....

....the steady reduction in borrowing and the colossal debt burden left behind by the last wasteful and irresponsibly profligate Labour Government 1997-2019....

.....the Bank of England being left to decide the right and economically appropriate time in which to raise interest rates...good for savers, not so good for mortgage holders...

....and this latest announcement from the IMF that the UK will secure the fastest growing economy in Europe in 2014....

...dismal performances by Messrs Miliband and Balls (such an appropriate name for this clueless disaster area! ) at each weekly PMQs in the Commons....deprived of meaningful ammunition to aim across the Mace at David Cameron and his troops.

Who cares about the sodding weather!