£ Sterling V Euro

[bfitzgerald]

Not far from parity now, the £ suffered another crash v the Euro..

This is great news for me, being in Eire..
Buying from the UK was a logical choice for many things anyway, lower VAT rate (it's a shocking 21.5% here), and better prices before the sterling crash. Now, your Euro buys a lot more than it did a year ago. Bargains galore. I know more than a few people who have pulled the trigger on some meaty stuff, and taken advantage of the exchange rate.
Irish retailers are going to suffer though, you would have to be insane to buy anything over here, in store, or online, with UK deals being so good. Not sure about the rest of the eurozone..but I bet they can bag some deals too. The Irish economy is in a dire way too, maybe even worse than the UK..
Also great, is that I now have less to pay back on my UK sterling credit card So as far as I am concerned, sterling can crash down even lower, to rock bottom, it's great news all round.

[David Kilpatrick]

Back in October I wrote to one of my suppliers that the pound would not stop falling until it had parity with the Euro, and that might enable the UK government to lock into the Euro painlessly then finally abandon Sterling. In fact, if they do not take this decision the pound is at risk. I'm not happy at all as I have two timeshare weeks where the annual maintenance has always been in Euros and one of them is now almost not worth having now (it would be worth having if we had a family to take on holiday, but we no longer do, and paying for a two-bed/two-bath/6-8 person apartment week is overkill). But I also had 300 Euros in cash I had forgotten to re-bank after our last trip, and it has been steadily getting worth more. In fact, my 300 Euros in cash has 'earned' about as much as £30,000 sterling deposit would have at the current interest rates!

Over the past few years I have been careful to balance long-term savings against long-term borrowings, so that in the event of a crash the actual values of each would cancel out. Right now, my (small) remaining mortgage is more than my business and personal deposits, so if the pound crashes I benefit in theory as I owe the bank rather than the other way round. I don't feel comfortable with that. But, I could easily have obtained an advanced in 2007 and purchased a small house in the South of France for €140,000 which was £90,000 at the time. I decided not to because of the 'not feeling comfortable' thing, more fool me! A village house in Provence would have been very welcome and so would a £50,000 rise in its value...

Next step could, of course, be the pound heading for dollar parity, along with the Euro.

David

[pakodominguez]

...
But, I could easily have obtained an advanced in 2007 and purchased a small house in the South of France for €140,000 which was £90,000 at the time. I decided not to because of the 'not feeling comfortable' thing, more fool me! A village house in Provence would have been very welcome and so would a £50,000 rise in its value...

If you don't need been so close to the sea, I'll reccomend you better to get a (cheaper) house/property in Burgundy. IMHO, wines are better by Auxerre...

[MFS]

Can anyone advise me some good and reliable Internet Stores in the UK who also ship to the mainland (Europe, the continent). It's getting very interesting in buying in the UK with PS going down and already is as low as it it, instead of Hong Kong (always a bit holding back from there after a bad experience). Thanks in advance.

John.