When I was packing up to leave Japan at the end of the summer, I checked the forward rates to see if it would be worth it to change my leftover yen (a pretty big chunk of money) back into dollars. The 6-month forward was pretty stable back then, so I took my Japanese cash home with me and stashed it away.
Well, that was one hell of a mistake. The yen is now down from 110 to 120 to the dollar, with not much sign of coming back up, and Finance Minister Tanigaki and BoJ President Fukui don’t seem to have a problem with the situation. Bastards.
Not to gloat, but that’s a mistake I didn’t make.
Not to criticize you, but your words at the time were something like “WHY would you want to change your money? The exchange fees will eat you ALIVE!”
That is indeed another, equally important consideration. But certainly Mr. J. Miyazaki and I discussed the issue at some length at the time and concurred it would be way better to keep yen.
I kept yen too. Woo hoo!
Um, guys, read again. The yen is going DOWN in value relative to the dollar. So by keeping our yen, we’ve all lost…
Um, I didn’t keep that much! I still win!
This yen raise/drop wreaks havoc on my bank account, since our military COLA (Cost Of Living Allowance) goes down drastically when the yen is up. Yet it seems to take months for them to raise it back whenever the yen goes back down….
Oh well, less Pepper Lunch and ramen out in town, more pizza and commissary stuffs on base.
Sorry you lost a good deal of money though…