Shrinking Canadian dollar

John&Joey wrote:
I think it might be wise to not have the loonie so closely linked to the price of a barrel of oil. Maybe a more diverse foundation would be a good thing. Just a few years ago you would have laughed at this, but not so much now.

This comes hand in hand with selling off our natural resources such as mining interest to Brazil and Nordic countries, oil interest to China, Quebec hydro power generation to America, forest harvesting to foreign interests, etc.

Executive wrote:

3oaks wrote:
Hang in the Canadians.
The way our Federal Reserve here in the U.S. is manipulating our currency, you will have the advantage over us and our funny money.

We'll all be in the same boat come October when the IMF removes the dollar as the reserve currency with the upcoming push of the Yuan....Dennis

When that happens we may find our money printing presses aren't as effective as they have been, our near zero interest rates aren't helping growth, our massive national debt isn't as funny as it was and that we're a lot closer to being like Greece than we'd like. We certainly live in interesting times and the term "snowbird" may take on the meaning of folks in the US going north over the border to escape the high costs of living down here.

I totally agree! It is nothing more than a ripoff and it has been going on for years. Most Mexican parks post their rates in US dollars but refuse to accept anything but pesos! One park I know of says it's to make it easier for NOB visitors to understand prices in their own currency. What a load of crap!!! Everything else I buy is priced in pesos and I manage to figure it out all by myself.

Tequila wrote:
Its more expensive in Mexico as well, despite the fact the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar against the peso is largely unchanged. RV parks down there have acquired a nasty habit of pricing themselves in US dollars. Its illegal so when you go to pay, they go on line look at the exchange rate and convert to pesos, in other words you pay 20% more than last year. If a park in Canada tried that it would be out of business in a week. I am acquiring the habit of only using parks who price themselves in Pesos. They pay their bills in Pesos, they pay their employees in pesos, they should not be charging US.

Dollar will only get stronger in the coming years. We will also see historic deflation and a serious pop in equity bubbles. China's exchange has already started the drop. Nothing the fed can do; we have a huge demographic change happening that is driving the drop in spending. Gov can't fix this.

"drop in spending"

Drop in who's spending? Certainly not our Federal government's spending.

Maybe the consumers spending. Can't spend what you don't have. Or should I say shouldn't spend what you don't have. I, for one, do not believe in living on credit. I will make do without first.

As a Canadian I remember several years ago when the exchange dropped from around $1.65 (roughly) to $1.30/1.25 and I thought it couldn't go down any further and it kept dropping after I'd bought a chunk of US dollars back then = DUH me! We've all got used to being on Par same as folks quickly got used to gasoline dropping back down to under a dollar a litre and even in the 80cent range, now it's back over and folks are complaining about it again. It's the way of the world, interest rates, gasoline prices, food, currency, they all fluctuate and change over time, some longer periods than others.

We like many have property in the USA since 2009, which would be great to sell now on the exchange but in the meantime is crippling with a combination of the exchange rate changes, non-resident huge increased property taxes, and insurance sky rocketing each year due to the payouts made on Hurricanes and now for non-resident flood insurance they are increasing our premiums even moreso by 25% I believe effective 1st April this year onwards. For Sale Sign has gone up, but market is slow - knowing our luck by the time it does sell, the dollar exchange will be below par (LOL).

Keeping on smiling. As for affecting our traveling to the USA, we'll still keep on going, we'll just trim our variable expenses and how we do things a little to help combat the strain on the budgets. Besides which when we purchased we did all our cost bases on the average over several decade periods, which whilst no guarantee (look at interest rates today compared to 20+ years backlong) has allowed for this increase which was in our eyes inevitable when looking back on averages. No crystal ball, and past performance isn't indicative of future performance as they say, but what else can one go by?

Not for everybody but...
We stay home, skip a Winter every five or six years.

Never did believe in pinching pennies.
Worry about the dollars, suck it up, cut out serious expences and enjoy it more next year.

her&I wrote:

John&Joey wrote:
I think it might be wise to not have the loonie so closely linked to the price of a barrel of oil. Maybe a more diverse foundation would be a good thing. Just a few years ago you would have laughed at this, but not so much now.

This comes hand in hand with selling off our natural resources such as mining interest to Brazil and Nordic countries, oil interest to China, Quebec hydro power generation to America, forest harvesting to foreign interests, etc.

Hang in there. It was only four years ago when a barrel of oil was over a $100 and the US snowbirds were all adding more water to the soup while our northern neighbors were enjoying the perks of a strong economy, national pride, and health care for all (still got 2 out of 3.) ;)

One thing is for sure, if you live long enough everything changes. The loony will come back, the dollar will slip, and the roller coaster ride will start all over again.

John&Joey wrote:
our northern neighbors were enjoying the perks of a strong economy, national pride, and health care for all (still got 2 out of 3.)

Uhhh, one out of three.

joebedford wrote:

John&Joey wrote:
our northern neighbors were enjoying the perks of a strong economy, national pride, and health care for all (still got 2 out of 3.)

Uhhh, one out of three.

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