I whined about mentioned the yen and its happy little adventure up in the clouds in an earlier post roughly a month ago (Oct 28th) and figured I’d post an update. Or rather, today was “a first” — and not a happy first, either — so I wanted to whine about mention it again. If you remember the graph, it described the yen per swedish crown (“Yen/SEK”) and the curve slowly but surely fell downwards. This means that, when I posted that, I was paying 40% more than I was when the yen/SEK was at its peak (17.8), back in ~July. The following graph shows how things have gone since the day of that post and until today:
Now, the hilarious part about this…
“As soon as it jumps above 13.0, I’m going to withdraw money.” — I decided on this back after posting the previous post. If you look at the graph, it more or less rubs its genitals against the 13.0 line but it just never takes the stride. So frustrating. My thinking here is in any case that I am going to gradually withdraw money even at “low” exchange rates, as soon as the yen is increasing. My thinking is that if I do this, I will not end up having to withdraw money when it’s at a super-low rate, like now. Unfortunately for me it just never went above 13.0, so I now have 2,000 yen in total, and rent payment day is this Monday — and the rent is nearly 40,000 yen.
As for “the first” mentioned above, the yen per crown is now for the first time below 11.0, down at 10.93 yen/crown.
At this point, I’m no longer paying 40% more than I used to. I’m paying 64% more than I used to. So if your rent is, say, $400 a month and this happened to you, you’d suddenly look at the bill and read “$656″ and wonder whatever happened to your vacation plans. Or, to your savings, for that matter. Your electricity bill? Let’s say $50 normally; now? $82. And so on and so forth. Can you see the reason for my whining about mentioning the yen now?
I wish I hadn’t picked the one country in the world which would “miraculously” stay afloat while the rest of the economies in the world started tumbling.
*imagines KB stubbornly waiting for 13 – as an old man with half-japanese, half-swede children, admonishing them for their urging him to just do it already*
I feel yer pain, brother.
*laughs* Yeh. That’ll be how it turns out in the end, no doubt. Unless I starve to death first because I end up having to pay $500 for a sammich.
For one of my projects I get paid in Euros, currently. Have you seen how the Euro/USD exchange rate has changed since April?
Hm… all I know is that lately, the USD has grown stronger, and I know that the Euro grew weaker alongside the swedish crown (just by listening to the complaints of my fellow italian classmates)… I guess that’s bad news for you.
It was kind of similar for me back when I got paid in USD though. The USD kept growing weaker against the swedish crown for some reason so my wages kept being lower and lower. I wish we’d all just get along and use one currency throughout the world.
…and boy do I have a similar story of the dropping of the sterling. Now my previous 6-man rent is costing me the equivalent of over 10-man! And it’s not looking like it’s going to get any better either, as today it dropped to 138 (last summer it was 250!)
Yes, that sound you hear is me crying…
I keep telling myself, the only way out is to get a damn baito. I have one already but it’s only 3 hours a week so it’s not like it’s covering my daily expenses really (though it does help). And finding private students (in English) isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be, or I’m not doing it right. *grin*