Monatary Exchange Rates & Living In Another Country

L

Lon

Well-known Member
Location
Central California
I have spent the equivalent of 12 years of the last 24 years living in New Zealand and in the beginning the exchange rate was so favorable to the U.S. dollar that the round trip air fare for both my wife and I was paid for by the difference in living costs NZ vs. California. My income was all U.S. based. Retail prices were fairly similar but the fact I was using U.S. dollars to live on made all the difference. The exchange over the past 24 years has become considerably less favorable to the U.S. Dollar. Still good, but not as good as 1992.

What have you Americans that are living abroad discovered?
 

I believe the same applies to Australia. I have never lived outside the US, but have traveled a bit and seen the exchange rates change significantly. We see that with the Canadian snowbirds that winter here.
 
I'm an American who has lived in Scotland since 2000. Since my husband is a Scot and I had several jobs here, our income was all in pounds.

I got an inheritance in 2008 which was in dollars and that stays in a US account. Also began getting a US pension in 2012 and SS in 2014. This money is never used in the UK as fortunately it is not needed for living expenses. It is used for visits in the US and holidays in Thailand, Uganda, and Australia. And this winter when we spend 3 months in Thailand we will use only $$ because of the ££ taking a nosedive due to Brexit.

Our UK pensions are used for living expenses in Scotland.

I have some friends who retired to Scotland about 9 years ago. He is a Scot and lived nearly his entire adult life in California. She is American. So their pensions are all in $$. When they moved the £ was worth $2. So the house they bought for £200k cost them about $400k.
 

The 2 1/2 years we lived in Turkey, we saw the Lira go from 8 to the dollar to 12 to the dollar to 20 to the dollar. A few years later, it was up in the 200's to the dollar. Sort of like the Italian Lire in the 60's. You'd have a coffee and a pastry at a sidewalk café and your bill would be 36,000 lire. After you got over the sticker shock and realized that it was ...what...75 cents or something...you'd need a drink. There would go another 30,000 lire. You needed a suitcase to carry the money.

Interesting thing about Ecuadoran currency.....it's American currency. They no longer have their own money; they just use American bills and coins. So if you see "15" on a price tag, no need to get the calculator out - it's $15. I'm not sure about the logistics of another country using American money, but it sure makes things easier.
 
We lived in Uganda for two years when my husband volunteered to train teachers. We lived on the college campus where he taught, our house was provided for us as was the electricity. We were given a small monthly allowance to live on. It would have been tough if we didn't have a UK pension, and my US account to use for extras. The money was difficult to figure out for a while. When we arrived we were given 1.5 million shillings to set up our household on campus. Sounds like a lot, but it cost 1,000 shillings for a bottle of coke. When we bought a used car it was 12 million shillings (about $5,000). A meal at a decent restaurant cost about 10,000 shillings. The exchange rate fluctuated a lot so we needed cash out of the ATM (you only used cash!) we'd use UK or US depending on which had the best rate at the time.
 
An eon ago when I went to Panama, they used Panamanian coins and US paper money. There was still a Canal Zone then.
 
I lived in Ireland for ten years starting in 1997. The exchange rate at that time was very favorable to the U.S. dollar. The Euro took affect in 2002 and if I was exchanging Euro for U.S., I would get $200 to $300 more in U.S. money. For the first few years we still had the Irish pound.
 

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