To All My American Readers…Please Improve Your Economy

That title is tongue-in-cheek, but it underlines a severe problem: as someone who gets paid in US dollars for 95% of the work I do, the rising tide of the Canadian dollar against the US dollars is becoming increasingly painful. I remember getting 40% on the dollar around five years ago – those were awesome days to deposit $1000 USD and end up with $1400 CAD. How bad has it gotten now? I was moving some USD to CAD and this is the conversion rate I got:

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4.9 percent different…that’s just sad. Currency fluctuations are always based on more than just one economy – the Canadian economy is booming, and that only makes matters worse. Of course, the credit card companies seem to be immune to this problem, as they always charge an inflated fee – on the same day that the bank gave me a 4.9% difference going from USD to CAD, they charged me a 10% spread for a charge in USD on my credit card. What a bunch of crooks! The company charging the card is already paying a per-transaction fee to VISA, so VISA is getting their money, but they’re skimming more off the top – in this case a little more than double what the exchange rate should be. Why aren’t there laws against this sort of thing?

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