Hi everybody, Europe calling. What with the low US $ and all, there’s quite some American products that I’ve been buying more often than I normally would have, 'cause they’re cheap. For instance, it tends to be cheaper to have a book shipped from the US than from the UK, Germany or France. Also, I bought some really nice novelty T-shirts from theonion.com that in the end turned to be much less expensive than shirts in the stores here, in spite of the shipping.
Then I got this mail from Radio Free Europe. I subscribe to their Eastern European newsfeed, which they are now cancelling due to budgettary cutbacks they’re having to make because of the weak dollar. This reminded me of something i’ve been wondering about before: while i’m buying stuff overseas, at the same time people overseas are probably not buying a whole lot of stuff here. So my question to you is: how is this affecting you in your daily life, what are you not buying?
My wife and I are going to Germany in July. We will probably stay with friends or family more than we ordinarily would. We will probably not travel anyplace different, and just stay in southern Germany, where she is from. It’s a little bit annoying since the tickets were 1300$. Because it will be so expensive anyway, we are trying to save money now.
(reported this post just to suggest it be moved to IMHO)
Despite my location field, I live in California. The main effect on me is that the weakness of the dollar has eliminated any possibility of European travel.
It’s affecting all of us, I think because weak USD means higher cost to us for global goods like oil.
But, directly. . .I’ve no European trips planned (last time I went, it was like 1 Euro = 1.25 USD and that seemed expensive). I usually buy wine from California instead of France, so I don’t even how how the price of that has changed.
It sure doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to travel anywhere outside the U.S. anytime soon, especially with my boyfriend having been laid off because of the weak economy. Airfares are more expensive, too. Food prices are creeping up, and boy, am I glad that I don’t have to drive to work.
I’d love to go see my college roomie in England, for example, but U.K. prices are INSANE in dollar terms; even having somewhere to stay for free most of the time, just breathing in England for a few days isn’t in my budget. At least not unless and until my boyfriend gets a decent job, so that I’m not covering most of the major living expenses myself. This is why I’m glad I made sure the apartment we rented was at a price level that one of us could cover alone, even if the other was unemployed. And here’s to crossing my fingers that it doesn’t end up being both of us; work has been slower than usual lately.
I’m leaving for London tomorrow, so yeah. (I’ll be there for a week, then Paris for three days.)
Also, I’ve had to order a number of books from France in the past couple years for research, and I haven’t enjoyed watching it get increasingly painful to do so.
From a work standpoint, my business increased by about 100% over the last 2 years, due largely to the weaker dollar making me much more competitive. This has also led to enormous increases in profits for me.
Gas is the big one, with the price of oil tied to the dollar.
My wife and I were lucky enough to book our Italy honeymoon from last Sept in advance of the dollar’s plunge and had our prices locked in USD. But we spent very little while we were there. The whole “You can get a great leather purse in Florence for cheap!” thing doesn’t really exist when the dollar is at all time lows against the euro.
Good thing our next international trip is to Peru. The USD is still strong against the sol
We’re just being more conservative with our purchases in general. We had some credit card debt that we were aggressively paying off, and we’ve increased our payments on that by a large margin to get rid of it as fast as possible. We’re also kicking ourselves for not being in a good place to invest in…really anything beyond a basic retirement account. It seems that now would be a good time to buy stocks and ride it out, if we had the money. We’re also sadly putting off some international travel plans. We weren’t going to go for 3 to 5 years anyway, but at this rate, we’ll have to put off even saving for the trip for at least a year, because we need the money. We’ve also been contemplating a cross-country move, and we’re anxious to get that over with.
Gas isn’t that bad for us, honestly–we went from spending $30/10 days to $40/10 days. Of course, CNN suggests that if prices keep increasing at this rate, within a year, it’ll raise to around $7.00/gallon, which means we’d have to rearrange our budget. My family hasn’t been hit that hard, honestly, but we’re generally skittish. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
They cover the news in lots and lots of countries in eastern europe, central asia and the middle east, where there are no free media worth mentioning. I find it a worthwhile and reliable english language source of info on the countries of the former Soviet Union.
BTW, thanks everyone for responding and sorry for posting in the wrong forum.
Darn it, now I can’t find that video from CNN that said it, and I think I may be misremembering. It was something about gas prices raising $0.01/gallon/day, I think… Oh well. Nevermind about $7.00/gallon within a year.
When travelling to India, I used to live like a king, getting 56 rupees per dollar. Now I get somewhere near Rs.35 per U.S. dollar. It makes a big difference numerically, and also culturally, believe it or not.
Many Indians (actually ‘most’ now) won’t accept the U.S. dollar. If you had a small amount of U.S. cash a few years ago, you would be greeted with smiles and be very well taken care of. People reacted to your wants/needs. Pull out a dollar now and expect to hear that they want rupees.
People are invariably nice in India, but ‘something’ is missing when you are shelling out money now in rupees, instead of the dollar. The dollar had monetary and social clout. Seems to have faded in a big way.
I had planned a trip to Ireland in September that is not going to happen now. I will be traveling somewhere in the US instead and even then only because AA gave me a free ticket to make up for their shenannigans.
It hasn’t affected me at all. At least, not that I’ve noticed. If the media wasn’t telling me about it I would have no idea the dollar was weak right now.
