Plunging British Pound Saps Expat Pension Spending Power

[Basil B]

8 hours ago, jamesmacleod said:

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...

Over the long term I doubt the pound will weaken unless things turn nasty, probably will strengthen over the long term, but we are talking decades.

 

 

[George FmplesdaCosteedback]

5 hours ago, dunroaming said:

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.

I sort of agree as you admit overall living in the UK is more expensive.

Alcohol (average) comparison: beer or spirit, or herbs and wine (Pim's), was the point but I asked as alcohol is heavily taxed in Thailand much the same as the UK. London was the question, and prices do not vary that much within the postal codes of central London, not Watford or Luton. Some places do discount, as they do here.

Commuting costs are much morein the UK, petrol is still cheap in Thailand*, and trains and buses are much less.

£20 a week in the winter for heating and power, unless you live in a 1 bed tiny flat that isn't realistic.

 

The difference in earnings and cost of living, well then you have to include housing too.

Cars are indeed expensive to buy in Thailand due to tax, but lose less money for some unknown reason when sold on than 2nd hand cars in the UK and cost less to run*.

On clothes, happy to hear you wife (and kids) don't insist on designer rip offs.

Food: eating in or out is cheaper.

 

Thanks for some interesting comments though.

Pim's and G&T?

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2018 by George FmplesdaCosteedback

[George FmplesdaCosteedback]

5 hours ago, bangrak said:

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!

"the majority of British citizens (pro-EU voters, and all the silly ones who didn't come out)"

You are wrong, the majority voted OUT.

 

And how much does Belgium contribute to the EU expenditure?

No worries about the next payment without the UK money?

Give me a better laugh if you can.

Case closed...

Edited January 2, 2018 by George FmplesdaCosteedback

[Watchful]

11 hours ago, jamesmacleod said:

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...

James, please help me here. With Brexit won't the UK government have a smaller deficit?

 

I mean, the UK government no longer would have to send all that money to Brussels to support the EU bureaucracy.

 

I must admit that I am most confused by present currency valuations. Trump wants a weak dollar to help US exports and make domestic producers competitive against imports. At the same time, he'd like interest rates to return to "historical" levels. Normally these two things would be mutually exclusive!

 

That is, higher interest rates increase a currency's value.  As crazy as it is, Trump is getting what he wants.  The Fed is raising interest rates to it's member banks, yet the 10 Treasuries remain, for the most part, unchanged!

 

The US government is certainty issuing debt, but who the hell is buying all of these Treasuries?  The equity markets in the US are booming so it can't be US investors.  All I can surmise is wealthy folks in Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Syria, Lybia etc are desperately seeking a safe haven. Possibly even European investors given German interest rates below 1%? (US 10 year = 2.46%  German 10 year = 0.47%)

Edited January 2, 2018 by Watchful

[George FmplesdaCosteedback]

2 minutes ago, Watchful said:

James, please help me here. With Brexit won't the UK government have a smaller deficit?

 

I mean, the UK government no longer would have to send all that money to Brussels to support the EU bureaucracy.

 

I must admit that I am most confused by present currency valuations. Trump wants a weak dollar to help US exports and make domestic producers competitive against imports. At the same time, he'd like interest rates to return to "historical" levels. Normally these two things would be mutually exclusive!

 

That is, higher interest rates increase a currency's value.  As crazy as it is, Trump is getting what he wants.  The Fed is raising interest rates to it's member banks, yet the 10 Treasuries remain, for the most part, unchanged!

U

The US government is certainty issuing debt, but who the hell is buying all of these Treasuries?  The equity markets in the US are booming so it can't be US investors.  All I can surmise is wealthy folks in Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Syria, Lybia etc are desperately seeking a safe haven. Possibly even European investors given German interest rates below 1%?

Good comment, but you forgot China.

 

[Watchful]

16 minutes ago, George FmplesdaCosteedback said:

Good comment, but you forgot China.

 

Good point, George!  I forgot the wealthy Chinese and I did read that recently China is implementing currency controls to stop the flow of money OUT of China.

 

Controls like this make people nervous and the very wealthy start doing just the opposite.  That is, they seek those "safe havens".

[oldwelshman]

20 hours ago, bkk_mike said:

I'd agree with you if, 21 years ago, I hadn't been in a meeting with the head FX trader in London at Chase (this was shortly after the merger with Chemical Bank, a few years before the merger with JPMorgan) where they discussed (in late 1996), about how they thought that they were overexposed to the THB and would look to reduce their positions.

 

The interesting thing - the reason given at the meeting for the decision to reduce their positions was that although Thailand had been stable for a few years and, at the time had a fixed exchange rate with the dollar, it was historically prone to political unrest and coups, so they thought the political risk wasn't effectively priced into the positions.

 

And what happened in 1997 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis

 

I'm just an IT developer (at the time, I was working on the migration from the old Chase FX system to the Chemical one - which is how I was in the meeting). But it definitely made me realise that actual experts (intelligent people who work full-time on something, rather than politicians or pundits or TV presenters) are far more likely to be correct than the average person on the street.

But your forgetting that it was the same large banks who's experts caused the global recession. In UK the public had to bail out the major banks !!!

[oldwelshman]

8 hours ago, dunroaming said:

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.

Av salary of £40k pa and many on double this? Really? I think that is way over the actual average for UK is £30 480 https://www.monster.co.uk/career-advice/article/uk-average-salary-graphs and £28 584 for north east, https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/salaries/north-east-england maybe your figure is for payment n THB? lol I have no idea where you think these high slaries are but if you know please let the thousands of graduates earning sub £25k where they are. By the eay, ask your wife to let me know where the hight quality food is in the UK and these cheap clothes.

 

[simoh1490]

On 02/01/2018 at 7:16 AM, KarenBravo said:

It used to in the 90's, but, not any more. It now tracks a basket of currencies that represent their 10 largest trading partners.

If what you say was true, the Baht would never go up, or down against the dollar.

Let's come back to this and paint a more complete picture and dispell some myths since nobody else can be bothered to do the research!

 

Firstly, THB does not really track a basket of currencies, that would be almost impossible since all currencies move in different directions at different times, plus the amount of money required to manage against all of them on a daily basis, even within a broad range, would be substantial - it's probably more accurate to say that BOT maintains an awareness of those currencies and acts on differences when it's in their best interests to do so. The value of THB is determined primarily by the supply and demand of the FOREX market. Thailands Central Bank (BOT) operates a managed peg which BOT does intervene in FOREX markets (directly and indirectly, verbally and actually, mostly it uses designated banks), whenever the value of THB exceeds a range set by BOT and by ASEAN.

 

The value of THB is however managed against, USD to a greater degree (managed NOT pegged to), because USD is a reserve currency, over 60% of Thai. export bills are settled in USD and because foreign currency reserves are denominated in USD. (Note: the value of USD is indicated by the Dollar Index (DI) which fluctuates, as it does so the value of currencies that track USD in any way, adjust accordingly - the DI is currently at about 90% which is quite low, 100% being the norm.).

 

BOT holds foreign currency in its foreign currency reserves: it primarily holds USD resulting from export payments but is also required to hold other currencies according to IMF SDR rules, these include USD (42%), Euro (32%), RMB (11%), YEN (8%) & GBP (8%) - all percentages rounded. Note: since USD is the largest holding it is important that BOT maintains the value of USD/THB within an acceptable range otherwise it could violate IMF rules.

 

 

BOT also holds the foreign currencies of major trading partners in order to expedite trade bill settlement and these include the SDR countries (5), ASEAN+3 countries (12)  plus other trading partners such as India, Switzerland, Russia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and others - it is understood that BOT holds around 25 different foreign currencies in its foreign currency reserves, the purpose of which is to facilitate overseas trade. But BOT can also use those foreign currency reserves to influence the exchange rate of THB against the currencies of major trading partners, that is done primarily by buying or selling a particular currency which causes the value of that currency to rise or fall, based on the value and timing of the transactions.

 

Finally, BOT has amassed foreign currency reserves in excess of USD 220 billion, one of the largest such holdings of any country in the world. This has been achieved by a series of means, including:

 

BOT regulations which require exporters to convert foreign currency into THB within short timescales;

Tourism receipts;

Capital inflows (overseas money chasing yield).

 

BOT has recently relaxed the rules regarding foreign currency ownership plus capital inflows have been subdued of late, both of which should go some way to relaxing the value of THB, without intervention in the markets.

 

http://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2016/08/01/14/51/Special-Drawing-Right-SDR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Association_of_Southeast_Asian_Nations

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by simoh1490

[simoh1490]

1 hour ago, oldwelshman said:

But your forgetting that it was the same large banks who's experts caused the global recession. In UK the public had to bail out the major banks !!!

Not true and not really relevant to the thread but since you raised it:

 

It is said there are good bankers and bad bankers and historically, in the context of the financial crisis, that is largely true.

 

Many Banks are now being split between their investment and retail banking divisions in order to protect retail banking customers from actions taken by the investment division. What happened in the financial crisis is that investment bankers packaged unstable investment products and sold them, that was only a small activity within the overall bank but it had ramifications bank and economy-wide, splitting the two arms of the bank is seen as a way to prevent that problem from occurring again. There would have been many capable expert economists and bankers who could have prevented the financial crisis had they not been a part of the same organisation that issued the investments in the first place. 

[Wullie Mercer]

On 1/2/2018 at 6:52 AM, oldwelshman said:

Basically, no one, so called experts or not, can predict what will happen in the future with currencies, its like playing roulette lol. The experts were so good in last few years they were the ones who caused the global recession.

 

On 1/2/2018 at 6:52 AM, oldwelshman said:

Basically, no one, so called experts or not, can predict what will happen in the future with currencies, its like playing roulette lol. The experts were so good in last few years they were the ones who caused the global recession.

Will things improve if Bitcoin really takes off??? Or are we stuck with the old system of America effecting every ones financial situation.

[billd766]

11 hours ago, Hupaponics said:

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

 

I am 73, don't go to bars in tourist areas, live in rural Thailand and I am staying.

 

Now where did I leave my English national flag, the one with the red cross of St George on a white background.

[colinneil]

9 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

I am 73, don't go to bars in tourist areas, live in rural Thailand and I am staying.

 

Now where did I leave my English national flag, the one with the red cross of St George on a white background.

Well i am 70,live in the sticks,wife will not allow me go to bars. If things get to tight for me i will tap up the wife for a few baht.

Shes got more money than me, so i should be ok.

I fly my St Georges cross at the house.

Yes i believe once the UK is free from the money grabbers of Europe things will be better, and the pound will rise.

[PattayaAngel]

5 hours ago, Wullie Mercer said:

 

Will things improve if Bitcoin really takes off??? Or are we stuck with the old system of America effecting every ones financial situation.

 

If you think of Cryptocurrency (not just Bitcoin) as a peer-2-peer exchange it's obvious it will surge in the future

[oldwelshman]

7 hours ago, simoh1490 said:

Not true and not really relevant to the thread but since you raised it:

 

It is said there are good bankers and bad bankers and historically, in the context of the financial crisis, that is largely true.

 

Many Banks are now being split between their investment and retail banking divisions in order to protect retail banking customers from actions taken by the investment division. What happened in the financial crisis is that investment bankers packaged unstable investment products and sold them, that was only a small activity within the overall bank but it had ramifications bank and economy-wide, splitting the two arms of the bank is seen as a way to prevent that problem from occurring again. There would have been many capable expert economists and bankers who could have prevented the financial crisis had they not been a part of the same organisation that issued the investments in the first place. 

It is true this is why the banks are no being split, did you not know about how many of the banks were bailed out to prevent them totally collapsing? What about the large banks such as BArclays that were fined large amunts due to illegal price fixing and dealing?

[Basil B]

22 hours ago, jamesmacleod said:

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...

Over the long term I doubt the pound will weaken unless things turn nasty, probably will strengthen over the long term, but we are talking decades.

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Basil B

[CG1 Blue]

On ‎02‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 1:23 AM, bkk_mike said:

I'd agree with you if, 21 years ago, I hadn't been in a meeting with the head FX trader in London at Chase (this was shortly after the merger with Chemical Bank, a few years before the merger with JPMorgan) where they discussed (in late 1996), about how they thought that they were overexposed to the THB and would look to reduce their positions.

 

The interesting thing - the reason given at the meeting for the decision to reduce their positions was that although Thailand had been stable for a few years and, at the time had a fixed exchange rate with the dollar, it was historically prone to political unrest and coups, so they thought the political risk wasn't effectively priced into the positions.

 

And what happened in 1997 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis

 

I'm just an IT developer (at the time, I was working on the migration from the old Chase FX system to the Chemical one - which is how I was in the meeting). But it definitely made me realise that actual experts (intelligent people who work full-time on something, rather than politicians or pundits or TV presenters) are far more likely to be correct than the average person on the street.

Hang on, you say the FX traders gave the reason for reducing THB exposure as being the risk of a coup. The THB crashed for a completely different reason.  So the FX traders got lucky. Right?

As I said earlier, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

[simoh1490]

5 minutes ago, CG1 Blue said:

Hang on, you say the FX traders gave the reason for reducing THB exposure as being the risk of a coup. The THB crashed for a completely different reason.  So the FX traders got lucky. Right?

As I said earlier, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

 

I disagree very much, the FX guy took a sensible view of his THB position, he believed he was overweight in light of all circumstances, historical, political and economical. The fact that the'97 crash resulted from offshore loans in USD is not really relevant to that trader's viewpoint although he may well have been able to have sight of some of those loans, despite the unenforced Chinese walls that existed at the time - investment and trading guys were not supposed to talk to each other but after 5pm they were all down the Magpie and Stump exchanging stories every night.

[CG1 Blue]

4 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

 

I disagree very much, the FX guy took a sensible view of his THB position, he believed he was overweight in light of all circumstances, historical, political and economical. The fact that the'97 crash resulted from offshore loans in USD is not really relevant to that trader's viewpoint although he may well have been able to have sight of some of those loans, despite the unenforced Chinese walls that existed at the time - investment and trading guys were not supposed to talk to each other but after 5pm they were all down the Magpie and Stump exchanging stories every night.

I'm sorry, but despite you seeming to know your stuff I disagree with your POV on this.

 

To me this is like a builder advising me my wall is going to fall down due to poor pointing, then saying 'I told you so' after a car ploughs through the wall.

 

 

[CG1 Blue]

18 hours ago, bangrak said:

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!

We Brits value independence and self-determination. I'm not ashamed of that.

 

Furthermore, Belgians are more used to living under German rule than we are.

 

I sense a lot of panic in your words my friend. What are you frightened of - lack of funding for Brussels perhaps?

 

 

[simoh1490]

35 minutes ago, CG1 Blue said:

I'm sorry, but despite you seeming to know your stuff I disagree with your POV on this.

 

To me this is like a builder advising me my wall is going to fall down due to poor pointing, then saying 'I told you so' after a car ploughs through the wall.

 

 

When investment and retail bankers all work for the same boss there's no incentive to tell people making money within either division to stop because what they are doing is dangerous, ring-fencing helps solve that problem. The problem is that today, people look at bankers and assume they are all bad, they lose sight of the fact that very capable and very risk averse economists and similar exist in the retail side and it's simply not appropriate to label those people as bad bankers.

[CG1 Blue]

5 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

When investment and retail bankers all work for the same boss there's no incentive to tell people making money within either division to stop because what they are doing is dangerous, ring-fencing helps solve that problem. The problem is that today, people look at bankers and assume they are all bad, they lose sight of the fact that very capable and very risk averse economists and similar exist in the retail side and it's simply not appropriate to label those people as bad bankers.

On this we agree. Having worked 30 years in the City I'm well aware the bad bankers are the minority.

 

My overarching point though is that even great economists can only make educated guesses, given all the forces at play. And the example given here wasn't a good one, because the contributor was very specific about the reason for the FX trader's decision.

 

If a risk manager decides a bank's THB exposure is too great (concentration risk) and needs to be reduced, and the THB subsequently crashes - that's good risk management.

If an FX trader sells THB because he believes there will be a coup, and there is no coup, but the THB collpases - then the FX trader got lucky.

[simoh1490]

1 minute ago, CG1 Blue said:

On this we agree. Having worked 30 years in the City I'm well aware the bad bankers are the minority.

 

My overarching point though is that even great economists can only make educated guesses, given all the forces at play. And the example given here wasn't a good one, because the contributor was very specific about the reason for the FX trader's decision.

 

If a risk manager decides a bank's THB exposure is too great (concentration risk) and needs to be reduced, and the THB subsequently crashes - that's good risk management.

If an FX trader sells THB because he believes there will be a coup, and there is no coup, but the THB collpases - then the FX trader got lucky.

We agree on all points, I also spent time in The City in the 80's.

 

Although thirty years ago the role of Risk Manager in The City was nowhere what it is today, risk was often a distributed function so who knows in the case of the example.

 

I'm a big fan of educated guesses and modelling in economics and I'll back any decent economics model over a WAG (wild ass guess) any day, even if the probability of being right is very similar. People like to say that Equity Trackers have a higher probability of making money than do managed funds where humans intervene, what they fail to also say is that well-managed funds exceed the index (and the trackers) by a significant margin, if you see the parallel.

[CG1 Blue]

32 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

We agree on all points, I also spent time in The City in the 80's.

 

Although thirty years ago the role of Risk Manager in The City was nowhere what it is today, risk was often a distributed function so who knows in the case of the example.

 

I'm a big fan of educated guesses and modelling in economics and I'll back any decent economics model over a WAG (wild ass guess) any day, even if the probability of being right is very similar. People like to say that Equity Trackers have a higher probability of making money than do managed funds where humans intervene, what they fail to also say is that well-managed funds exceed the index (and the trackers) by a significant margin, if you see the parallel.

I do, and that's a valid point. As was your point about the role of Risk Manager.

[Jai Dee]

An off-topic troll post has been removed from this thread.

[Hupaponics]

On 2018-01-03 at 12:07 PM, billd766 said:

 

I am 73, don't go to bars in tourist areas, live in rural Thailand and I am staying.

 

Now where did I leave my English national flag, the one with the red cross of St George on a white background.

I'm happy for you mate, my concern was to those who can not fulfill the requirements to their extension of stay, based on retirement as the article was about. 

[simoh1490]

12 minutes ago, Hupaponics said:

I'm happy for you mate, my concern was to those who can not fulfill the requirements to their extension of stay, based on retirement as the article was about. 

There's no good option in that scenario, been here for years, old, no family left back home and all bridges burned, no cost of living increase on the state pension and an exchange rate that doesn't make 800k per year - it's either stay under the radar and hope for the best or worse.......very sad indeed.

[Hupaponics]

6 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

There's no good option in that scenario, been here for years, old, no family left back home and all bridges burned, no cost of living increase on the state pension and an exchange rate that doesn't make 800k per year - it's either stay under the radar and hope for the best or worse.......very sad indeed.

I'm sorry to hear that. 

Nothing we should further discuss here, but I just want to pass on an idea that might help. If you arrange a wedding (legal), that would sort the visa issues. 

Cheers and best of luck!

[simoh1490]

1 minute ago, Hupaponics said:

I'm sorry to hear that. 

Nothing we should further discuss here, but I just want to pass on an idea that might help. If you arrange a wedding (legal), that would sort the visa issues. 

Cheers and best of luck!

Not me, I'm fine....I was generalising!

[bangrak]

Allow me to come back on my #146.

I'm sorry, I was wrong: nowadays, it's not even 1.20 € to 1 UK £, in fact it is below 1.12 € for 1 UK £...

When I had 'commercial arithmetics', over 50 years ago, the exchange rate was 240 BEF for 1 UK £, while it was 12 BEF for 1 DM. At the introduction of the €, the conversion rate was: 2 DM =1 € = 40.33 BEF.

Meaning that in all these years the BEF had lost nearly 70% of it's value towards the strong DM, huge, very bad for the BEF I'd say.

But, what to say about the UK £: when then 12 DM, in present currency 6 €, were needed for 1 UK £, compared to nowadays 1.12 €  ( = ~2.25 old DM) for 1 UK £, that's more than 500% loss of value for the UK £ ...!