Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

Merrywidow

DS - Am I mistaken or is the pound at its lowest to date? Can't keep track of it.

droopsnout

At time of my reply here:

1 GBP = 1.10609 EUR
1 EUR = 0.904082 GBP

But no, the pound is not at its lowest. It is the lowest it has been for a little while, but when it really dropped, it went down to 0.98€. Tourist rates were worse than parity.

Here's a graph I've done of the movement of the two currencies over the last three years:



You can see on the right that the value when I did the graph was £1=0.9054€.

If you look back to January of this year, you can see the euro was at its strongest against the pound, at around £1=0.975€.

And for roughly the first year of the graph, the pound was hovering around 0.67€.

Hope that's interesting for you, MW.

Francophile

droopsnout wrote: »

Aww, sorry! But the point is that I bet you had to work harder to entertain your guest than we did. It's always so much easier when the weather smiles on you. So it's you who deserves a word or two of praise. And it was a lovely gesture to your neighbour.

So maybe I'm not the only "glutton for punishment"?

Anyway, it was a real pleasure.

Actually we had a great time despite the weather but it was very exhausting as we were on the go every day trying to pack as much as possible into her visit. Did you see the photos on facebook?

droopsnout

I have now!

Funny ... Nothing of yours has appeared on my Facebook page. Wonder why? Do you get alerts when I add photos? I used to get them for you, and as far as I know, I've changed nothing.

Anyway, it looks like you had a great time. Lovely places you visited. To my shame, I've never set foot on the island at all. But then, I've only ever been in Scotland for one week's holiday.

Nice to see Mr Francophile in your album, too!

Merrywidow

Thanks DS

You are so clever! In my 'holiday' drawer I found a spread sheet I made years ago when the Euro first came into being - 1.7 to the pound and another from a few years ago 1.40 to the pound. I wonder why its so low now when the UK is supposed to be showing the 'green shoots' of recovery. Or am I just thick?

droopsnout

Well, I'm definitely no economist. But it seems to me that when you have twenty-odd countries all using and supporting one currency, it's likely to be stronger than a currency used by only one country.

Plus, of course, personal debt levels in the UK were astronomical, and now national (i.e. government) debt levels are terrible. The UK government borrowed £16.1 billion during August alone - approximately £268 for every man, woman and child in the UK. Now I would suggest to you that if every family of four borrowed £1073 per month they would be heading for trouble. Well, that's the UK economy.

Hence the pound cannot be strong. To strengthen the pound, the UK has to earn much more money from overseas. Another way of strengthening the pound would be to increase interest rates, but that would probably cripple industry and reduce what's left of the retail trade to dust.

donny-gal

Cripple what Industry? Manufacturing is not the big employer it once was, we seem to be going back to being a nation of shopkeepers!! They just keep building shopping centres, but without folk earning who can spend - apart from the skiers of course.

I am no economist either, but do not see a way forward, the way we are going our Spanish home will soon be worth more than our UK one!
DG

droopsnout

Whilst the decline of British manufacturing industry since the 1970s is clear to all of us (mining, shipbuilding, steel, etc), other sectors have progressed, until the present crisis.

I refer the honourable lady to the share price pages of the FT!

But here I would suggest that pharmaceuticals, chemicals, scientific research, financial (mis)management, defence, brewers, telecoms and builders figure highly in the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250. Some may not be manufacturing industries, but they are industries nonetheless, I think.

Of course, I agree that retail therapy seems to have become the national pastime. On my visits to the UK, the town centres are always busier than over here - sometimes unpleasantly so. (And Christmas shopping soon to come ...).

On that basis, there are still plenty of people with money to burn. On the other hand I read a forecast the other week that unemployment in the UK is to reach four million.

Successive governments since the Heath/Wilson era have encouraged spending, as a means to secure employment for those manufacturing, importing, distributing and selling goods. The "buy now, pay later" philosophy is mainly a post-war phenomenon. Prior to that, people saved up for major purchases. In the UK, the credit card really began in 1967 with the issue of Barclaycards.

It's been downhill ever since.

Interestingly, although in France there is a sort of rolling credit system for those who wish to borrow, there are no credit cards in the British sense. There are bank cards which act like the UK debit cards, and there are charge cards, where each month's balance has to be paid monthly in full. But it's difficult here to amass, say, £20000-worth of debt, only to find that it will take the rest of your life to pay it all back.

A way forward would be to restrict the power of the financial institutions, legislate for maximum debt levels, restore the nation's stock of council houses (to bring down house prices by reducing demand), halt the waste of public money in waging wars in other people's countries, allow public services to function with far fewer backroom boys pushing paper ... I could go on. (Yes, and I usually do, I know!)

Sorry that this wouldn't push up the value of UK properties, but they were never worth those inflated values anyway, and young people were completely priced out of the market, yet had no rented accommodation at reasonable rates. (And yes, I do have a property in the UK).

If the Spanish economy strengthens and the UK economy weakens, it is very likely that homes in Spain will be more valuable than their equivalents in the UK.

It's well past time that Brits realised that they don't actually live in the best country in the world and that they have no God-given right to have a strong currency. The xenophobes and scaremongers have prevented the country from joining the euro, and the price is being paid by some sections of the population for that. All imported goods now cost more.

When I was a young teenager, there were 16 French francs to a pound. Over the years, that has dropped until we are at the equivalent of approx 7 francs.

Will the rot ever stop? It doesn't look like it. And although the Labour government may well stand accused of messing up the economy, I see little from the other side to inspire confidence.

Which should make for a very interesting General Election next year.

droopsnout

More gloom if you want it!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8266266.stm

The government's overall debt amounts to approx £13400 per head of population.

donny-gal

droopsnout wrote: »

Will the rot ever stop? It doesn't look like it. And although the Labour government may well stand accused of messing up the economy, I see little from the other side to inspire confidence.

Which should make for a very interesting General Election next year.

Quite agree, that no one inspires me at the moment, the only fact I can recall is one my Dad used to make was that when Labour take over from the Tories the country was not in major debt, when the Tories take over from labour, they always have to get us out of debt!

I am not politically interested enough to prove or disprove the theory, but know the country is once again in major debt, and where we live our vote is immaterial.
DG