Plunging British Pound Saps Expat Pension Spending Power

[VBF]

55 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

There is no denying the value of GBP fell some 15% or more after the referendum, as others have said, the value fell from low 50's to around 43 today, the thread is therefore not a nonsense since USD also weakened around the same time which made THB look even more attractive. And the only people who have been shafted is those resident expats who would not or could not hedge into THB before the fall of the Pound, those who followed the age-old TVF rule of not bringing money into Thailand blah blah.

Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't! 

[sawadee1947]

1 hour ago, smedly said:

so sterling must have dropped 25-20% against the euro too..........right

 

wrong, the euro and therefore all those who use that currency are almost just as badly affected against the BAHT

 

euro - sterling is exactly in the range it was 2011-2014 .................way before a majority in the UK voted to leave the EU sinking debacle

you wish, statistic is against you

[sawadee1947]

3 hours ago, JayBangkok said:

You forgot to mention that British expats are being ripped off as their pensions are frozen and they do not get the yearly increases.

 

if you wanna have all benefits this little kingdom can offer.....GO HOME

[sawadee1947]

7 hours ago, halloween said:

The Pacific Peso/THB ratio has not dived TYVM. 1/1/17 to 1/1/18 it has dropped a massive 0.4 baht, and spent most of the year higher than start figure.

wow, do you have some more important currencies?????

[lovelomsak]

It is not rocket science to know if you have less money after exchange rate changes you have less money to spend. What a crappy article.

  So now the cheap charlies need to bring more money over to live the same so sad.

  My Canadian dollar went from 31 to 25 so I simple spend more Canadian money to get the same lifestyle. Maybe the brits should do the same

 

Edited January 2, 2018 by lovelomsak

[shackleton]

Cant get to worked up about the exchange rate just now

 if Brexit goes bad and the pound goes low 

Ie 35 baht or lower to the pound might have to adjust my spending 

will wait with bated breath 

[thaibry]

An am intrigued by the photo of the "old" notes in the original photo.

Sent from my ASUS_Z010D using Tapatalk

[Jonmarleesco]

Plunging pound? Someone needs to get their fact act together. The pound stopped plunging months ago, and has, in fact, been trending upwards.

[Jonmarleesco]

32 minutes ago, lovelomsak said:

It is not rocket science to know if you have less money after exchange rate changes you have less money to spend. What a crappy article.

  So now the cheap charlies need to bring more money over to live the same so sad.

  My Canadian dollar went from 31 to 25 so I simple spend more Canadian money to get the same lifestyle. Maybe the brits should do the same

 

Who says they're not? An article writer who needs to fact-check more accurately?

[Jonmarleesco]

1 hour ago, sawadee1947 said:

you wish, statistic is against you

You believe stats? 

[Jonmarleesco]

2 hours ago, ResandePohm said:

Only moronic Brexit voters.

Moronic? Because they elected to leave a bloc that the 1970s electorate never elected to go into in the first place? A bloc that is becoming ever more self-serving?

 

Moronic is making a comment without thinking it through - or without knowing what one is talking about. 

[halloween]

1 hour ago, sawadee1947 said:

wow, do you have some more important currencies?????

If you look at the post replied to, you might understand. Perhaps not.

Or you could try google.

[KhunMhee]

58 minutes ago, lovelomsak said:

It is not rocket science to know if you have less money after exchange rate changes you have less money to spend. What a crappy article.

  So now the cheap charlies need to bring more money over to live the same so sad.

  My Canadian dollar went from 31 to 25 so I simple spend more Canadian money to get the same lifestyle. Maybe the brits should do the same

 

Makes me miss when the CAD was at 34... Ahh well I guess accepting it and simply just paying more escapes some. Those types seem to cry a bit more and have not had the dollar jumps (both ways) that we have.

[sawadee1947]

2 minutes ago, halloween said:

If you look at the post replied to, you might understand. Perhaps not.

Or you could try google.

on halloween only

[jamesmacleod]

The UK political parties don't really understand economics and are advised by people who don't really understand economics, therefore long term if you're quite young expect to pay £44 for your 1 baht na!

[Mister Fixit]

9 hours ago, lovinglife said:

Prices are rising in Thailand so probably less. But £ is 44, same as Jan 2017

 

Yes, true, but in early June 2016, the baht was 52 to the pound.

So a tenner then got you 52 baht-ish, and now a tenner gets you 43.80 as of a few minutes ago.

 

What a difference that extra six months makes to your argument, eh?  (And I speak as one who voted for Brexit)

[Basil B]

6 hours ago, Grusa said:

The wanking bankers continue to screw us all.....they are the only ones who don't get poorer by the day.

The real issue is that so many shares in banks are held by institutions pension funds, etc. where the real investors do not have a say in how the fund managers vote at AGM's so the banks are run by "Fat Cat Old Boy Networks", until governments negate the voting rights of fund managers Banks will be run by the "Fat Cat Network".

[sammieuk1]

Brexit the gift that keeps on taking when the flat cap brexit north got led up the garden path to lala land by a bus Boris Gove and Faranatang. 

[jamesmacleod]

My father is an economist and he thinks once Brexit has been done and dusted and the UK is no longer in the EU, Britain will boom!

 

Not sure I see his view point, due to a big deficit and the fact the £ will weaken but still...

[Grumpy Duck]

I am no financial expert but I am capable of reading charts

£ 1/5/2017=฿44.1339

£ 1/2/2118=฿43.9841

= £-฿1498

€ 1/5/2017=฿37.6655

€ 1/2/2018=฿39.1028

= €+฿1.4373

$ 1/5/2017=฿35.8205

$ 1/2 2018=฿32.4433

=$-฿3.3772

taken of first trading day of each year from XE Currency app. I have not yet found a source for buying power stats. But I have seen an increase in consumer prices in BKK over the past year. I remember in 2016 I complained a small turkey at Villa Market was +/-$66 this year a similar bird was +/- $99 I averaged my purchasing power was cut from about $155 to $188 a month since 1 January 2017 due only to exchange rates not considering cpi. 

[dunroaming]

Currencies fluctuate and there are always reasons for the fluctuation.  With the pound it is mainly because of Brexit but the brexit fans will never accept that. 

 

The rate of exchange concerns me as it can mean the difference of me ending the financial year making a profit or a loss.  Consequently I take advise and the advice for me is to trade using different currencies rather than the pound sterling.  Where possible I do that and it is making a difference.  The pound hasn't exactly plunged as the headline says but rather it has weakened because of the uncertainty over brexit. As this uncertainty will continue for at least another year or so it is unlikely that the pound will regain any ground.

[lucjoker]

8 hours ago, smedly said:

bitcoin is highly speculative and extremely risky, if you have some spare money you won't miss then go ahead, it is the closest thing to a legal ponzi scheme I have ever seen, it has no intrinsic material value and demonstrates how something can be hyped based on absolutely nothing at all.

yes , true .....

same as money bills ,just paper ,not backed up by any value , is only worth what people believe it is . You put it in a bank , the bank gambles with it and in the end of the year it lost value .......worse than a ponzi scheme ? 

Now a have 4 times more money i dont realy need......

i would never do it with money a realy need for my family .....but if i would have done it .....i was a rich man now..........maybe,lol

[George FmplesdaCosteedback]

14 hours ago, darren1971 said:

another way to think of it is this, can you buy less or more with £10 in Thailand now than last year.... The £ has lost value.

Can you buy less or more with a Thai baht , a US dollar or a Euro?

That is inflation.

[George FmplesdaCosteedback]

12 hours ago, james1995 said:

I was just in London recently and found it surprisingly cheap(although not the houses).  Wasn't expensive at all.

How many pints of beer for a fiver?

What's the cost of gas/electricity?

Edited January 2, 2018 by George FmplesdaCosteedback

[dunroaming]

11 minutes ago, George FmplesdaCosteedback said:

How many pints of beer for a fiver?

What's the cost of gas/electricity?

Depends on the type of beer, area and type of establishment in that area.  Where I live a pint of proper beer is about £4.00 a pint I think, but we all drink gin and tonic or Pims so wouldn't really know 

 

My gas/electricity works out at twenty pounds a week in total.  Average wage in this area is north of £40,000 per annum though many are on double that plus.

 

My wife travels back and forth to Thailand more than me and she says that food is cheaper in the UK and the food standard is higher. Clothes are also cheaper if you stay away from designer labels.  (She buys clothes in the UK to take to relatives in Thailand). Houses are ludicrously expensive and so are hotels and of course with houses you have to pay council tax.  However cars are considerably cheaper as they don't hold their value like they do in Thailand.

 

It definitely costs more to live in Britain than Thailand but then again the wages are seriously higher.

[bangrak]

To the British posters here, this old Belgian guy remembers getting special classes, a little over 50 years ago, to learn converting our little BEF into UK £ and vice -versa, with the complication of your insular medieval intricacies of the time. Then, with 1 UK £ one could buy 240 BEF. The BEF entered the € at 40.33 BEF for 1 € (the DM at 2 DM for 1 €), what would have been 6 € to 1 £... After that came the fast slippery slope 180, 140, 120, 90, 80 (still to the BEF), and nowadays about 1.20 € (~49 BEF) will get you 1 £. When that's not a 'Titanic', historic, devaluation (for an industrialised country, a former World Power), well, erm...

I'm not some monetary 'guru' but I'd bet my best Borsalino (nothing more, mind you), that the Brexit fans, alas together with the majority of British citizens (pro-EU voters, and all the silly ones who didn't come out), will not even be able to sit, so big the blisters will be... When so, sadly, it will be well deserved.

To your credit comes that you are a special kind of insular, imperial, ostriches, with the, genetically programmed, wrong habit to stick your head in your backdoor and then complain not to see the light...

Enjoy your Theresa May and other loonies à-la Farage and his UKIP lies. It's alas long ago good English oaktrees' branches were used to hang wrongdoers...

And a happy new year!

Edited January 2, 2018 by bangrak

[moe666]

16 hours ago, lovinglife said:

$ has weakened against THB and £ in 2017. That's not a bad thing for US economy, helps exports, same as £ weakening against euro has boosted UK exports

 

Shut up do you realize what that does for your exchange rate, what are you exporting that you are making big money on. I would think nothing

[dunroaming]

1 hour ago, bangrak said:

To your credit comes that you are a special kind of insular, imperial, ostriches, with the, genetically programmed, wrong habit to stick your head in your backdoor and then complain not to see the light...

Enjoy your Theresa May and other loonies à-la Farage and his UKIP lies. It's alas long ago good English oaktrees' branches were used to hang wrongdoers...

And a happy new year!

You paint a wonderful picture of us brits.  Us imperial ostriches with our heads in our backdoors (rather than buried in the sand).  Clearly you know us too well 

[Hupaponics]

Unfortunately it seems that good Britts out, and bad Britts stays. 

B4 you give me a hard time you'll have to admit that Britts don't have the best reputation regarding behaviour in bars...

However, I found that the older generation have higher class in behaviour. Pitty that those gentlemen have to go, leaving the flag behind with the trash

Edited January 2, 2018 by Hupaponics

[CG1 Blue]

16 hours ago, simoh1490 said:

That's easy, if Brexit is a success the Pound will increase in value, if it is not it will fall.

It's not that simple.  Yes a successful Brexit outcome will have a positive effect on the pound, but it only takes another negative (or positive) event to move the pound another way. 

 

You cannot predict currency movements. You can only make educated guesses based on your opinions. Sometimes you will get it right. But a stopped clock is right twice a day.