What's your prediction on the Australian Dollar?

[anat0l]

Why wouldn't you leave your accounts open and your money there, pull it across as you need it or use your Swiss credit cards to buy stuff locally ?

The account keeping fees for account holders who are not domiciled in Switzerland or the EU (or EEA) are higher and cannot be escaped. For example, I have my accounts with Postfinance (the banking arm of Swiss Post). It costs CHF 5 per month for Swiss residents, but it is waived if you have assets totalling CHF 7,500 or greater with the bank. For non-residents it is CHF 15 per month and cannot be escaped.

One might argue you could keep enough CHF in the account to pay off the account keeping fees. So that would be CHF 180 per year. The current accounts earn an annual interest rate of 0.01% (seems to have gone up slightly since last time, as it was about half that).

I guess at CHF 180 a year, it is a small impost for the benefit of keeping the accounts open.

Once I leave Switzerland, there is nearly no point in keeping the CHF credit cards. They cost CHF 50 per year (mine, anyway) and only benefit if I spend in CH. Besides, they don't earn any points; just a 0.5% rebate paid semi-annually.


I should probably mention that I'm not sitting on a huge Swiss gold mine here. My total assets would be lucky to amount to enough to buy 1-2 cars in Australia. Certainly nowhere near enough to trigger the negative interest in Switzerland. I'm also not some despot trying to squirrel money away from the government.

 

[cove]

Let's try to do dinner in Perth then. We don't tend to socialise with despots.

 

[drsmithy]

The account keeping fees for account holders who are not domiciled in Switzerland or the EU (or EEA) are higher and cannot be escaped. For example, I have my accounts with Postfinance (the banking arm of Swiss Post). It costs CHF 5 per month for Swiss residents, but it is waived if you have assets totalling CHF 7,500 or greater with the bank. For non-residents it is CHF 15 per month and cannot be escaped.

While true, you arguably make this up easily as the AUD depreciates.

We left Switzerland a few years ago and left our accounts open. Indeed, I've subsequently transferred a decent amount of money back there since.

The currency appreciation against the AUD in the intervening years has more than covered any account fees.

Depends on your objective as well. I keep these accounts open - much like my US accounts - as escape plans in case Australia goes properly cough-up.

 

[Mumfreqflyer]

I actually just cancelled a trip to the states next year.

I got the $1000 return tix via virgin a month or so ago so the flights were attractive vs paying around $1800 normally.

However, when I told my husband I had booked (yep booked without saying anything to him) he stuck his nose up and said he isn't flying that far in economy - see what this forum has done to him!!!!!!

Anyway, with the falling dollar I can just see our trip getting more and more $$$ and really I can't justify the extra expense of paying $350US to go to Disneyland for 3 days (with our 4 & 2yo) as it would make it around $1550 at today's rate which we all know by March next year could be worse

Whoever my villa in Bali at Xmas is priced on US dollars so I might just pay the remaining balance this week as the rate is getting worse!

Can't believe I was complaining last Nov about only getting 92c! The time before we went it was 1.06 sighhhh.....at least I spent up big those 2 times!

 

[Flashback]

Pound has been falling against the USD also (4c or so over the past week) - so not the only ones suffering!
UKForex News - Euro sold off as ECB signal they are prepared to do more

 

[JohnK]

Pound has been falling against the USD also (4c or so over the past week) - so not the only ones suffering!

This madness makes no sense.

 

[cove]

Foreign currencies are going every which way based on sentiments of buyers and sellers. Australia is heavily tied to China for trade and they are experiencing a slowdown in world demand for their exports. Now that our currency has a 6 in it against the U.S. Dollar our trade deficits are growing alarmingly.
This has happened before and the drop in our currency will help our exporters but hurt our overseas travellers.

 

[drron]

The problem though is that our major exporters have had the price of their products in $US go down dramatically.
As we are a nett importer of credit the falling dollar is not really helping.

 

[Foreigner]

Exports include services (not the illegal ones) as well so educational and tourism receipts will benefit the country.

 

[drron]

Exports include services (not the illegal ones) as well so educational and tourism receipts will benefit the country.

But according to DFAT they make up only 17.3% of our exports.
Minerals,fuel and gold make up 54%

 

[feezable]

Can someone in the know please explain the JPY to me. The cost of our trip is spiralling upwards at an alarming rate. We depart on Oz 30 Sept and I have watched the exchange rate drop from high 91s to low 82s in the last two weeks.

 

[flying_duck]

Timely thread. Does anyone have any advice? I'm looking to move to the USA Feb next year and estimate ill need about 40K USD. I currently have ~ 36K AUD and will have the other 10-15 within the next 2 months. Should I just be transferring every cent I have as soon as humanly possible? Or is there possibility of an upswing before June next year? My gut feel is its going to 60 or lower, so I wont be losing any money by moving it but I'm really new to this sort of thing.

 

[Foreigner]

The commentaries I have read so far suggest a weaker Aussie dollar is a necessary part of the adjustment to a post-mining economy. Maybe a necessary evil, if I may call it that.

 

[JohnM]

I don't know why many people seem surprised at the fall in the AUD. This was always going to happen; the only question was when. I'm surprised that it held up so long.

I made sure I did my really expensive travel that had its underlying denomination in USD (eg. Antarctica, two high-end aerial safaris in Kenya and E Africa) in the last couple of years.

The boom years were the aberration, not this.

BTW, I'm in the U.S. now and the mental arithmetic yields answers considerably different from my regular travels to here about this time in each of the last few years - but just have to suck it up .

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Can someone in the know please explain the JPY to me. The cost of our trip is spiralling upwards at an alarming rate. We depart on Oz 30 Sept and I have watched the exchange rate drop from high 91s to low 82s in the last two weeks.

I wouldn't worry too much! Japan is fairly 'cheap' these days - even when the Yen was about 77-80 to the AUD in 2011/12 the prices were comparable to what you'd pay in Australia.

 

[Dr Ralph]

Timely thread. Does anyone have any advice? I'm looking to move to the USA Feb next year and estimate ill need about 40K USD. I currently have ~ 36K AUD and will have the other 10-15 within the next 2 months. Should I just be transferring every cent I have as soon as humanly possible? Or is there possibility of an upswing before June next year? My gut feel is its going to 60 or lower, so I wont be losing any money by moving it but I'm really new to this sort of thing.

Doubt you'll find many people on this thread that have suggested in movement upwards.

 

[JohnK]

The commentaries I have read so far suggest a weaker Aussie dollar is a necessary part of the adjustment to a post-mining economy. Maybe a necessary evil, if I may call it that.

A minor adjustment I can understand.

A major adjustment such as this one makes no sense.

 

[dajop]

A major adjustment such as this one makes no sense.

Some would argue it is merely a return to its "natural" level... indeed if you look at chart showing value since floating in Dec 1983 that seems to make sense.

 

[JohnK]

Some would argue it is merely a return to its "natural" level... indeed if you look at chart showing value since floating in Dec 1983 that seems to make sense.

It hasn't been in the 60s that often.

The other strange one is SGD vs AUD. How would the Singapore economy be stronger?

 

[drron]

Because the economic rent of the land goes to the Government.