I need advice! I will be converting a somewhat large sum of USD (approx. $5,000) to Euros in the very near future to fund my living expenses starting in September before my first pay-check is expected to arrive in early December. I will be getting paid in Euros so after this first conversion, I should be good.

However, my question is: Does anyone recommend a certain time of the month, day of the week, time of the day that you can get the best return on your USD for Euros. Currently, my bank (Chase) has told me that they can convert ANY sum of USD for $3.00 plus the exchange rate. I want to try to get the most out of my USD so, any suggestions on a good time (within the next month/month and a half at the most) when I should convert?

Hi,

Dont really know the answer to this one.

It’s rock and a hard place time…

My wife runs a small internet operation here in Spain and is paid in USD.
We pay these cheques in once a month into our Spanish bank and each completed transaction costs us 12 Euros; we also have to wait 20 days for the cheques to clear; we do however get the rate quoted on the day of deposit rather than the day of clearance.

The exchange rate you can’t really do much about; its been hovering around the 1.3:1 mark for a while but the dollar appears to be strengthening, at the moment it’s at 1.42:1 so we are getting somewhat less euros…

At 1.3:1,  $4 got you 3 Euros,  but now it will only get you 2.81.

So the effective loss on $5000 is quite a lot, especially with prices rising fairly dramatically over here. I would suggest you watch the exchange rate closely and if Chase will do the deal for just $3 then go for it when the exchange rate is optimal. I haven’t seen any trends toward increasing or decreasing exchange rate coincident with the time of the month.

We suffer twice over in this respect; our normal income is paid in ? sterling and over the last year we have suffered an effective drop in income of over 25%.

Just my 2 cents worth…

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I have quite a few Ben’s in the States, and have been for some time looking at the exchange rate, it’s always between .69 and .71 max.
I’ve read up on Bloomberg and all the remainders, from what I can gather is that the current rate is going to stay the same thru ‘till Christmas at least.

I would love to see .81 back again, but alas I feel .70 is the typical - at least in your time frame of you needing the money sometime soon.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=anTj.FRS3gIU

DSB.