Currency exchange rates:For...

by Michael Tayler
1 min read Jan 29, 2015
Currency exchange rates: For those of you who are hosted within Marie Curie fellowships outside the EU, what is the deal with major exchange rate fluctuations? E.G. Your EU-based host institute holds the grant with fixed denomination of EUR, but makes salary payments in US dollars. The USD is my particular concern as the EUR->into->USD rate has fallen about 20% in the past year. What provisions do MC actions make for major exchange rate changes like this?

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Christoph Haug
Apr 23, 2015

Hi Michael (and anyone else struggling with exchange rates),

I'm glad you raise this question. I'm in Canada and so far I've been lucky that the Candadian Dollar is appreciating as fast as the USD, but I have lost more than five percent of my income in the past few months so that I am now also wondering what to do.

I'm considering transferring most of my savings to Canada in order to avoid further losses, at least in the next couple of months. But the risk with that is, that the CAD might lose again (though that seems unlikely from what I can tell). 

Another possibility is to find a forex specialist who will give you a fixed rate for a define period of time. I saw an ad for that some time ago but I don't remember where. The idea is, of course to give people like us (or pensioners in Florida) a fixed income rather than worrying about exchange rates all the time. Of course, you are likely to pay for them taking the exchange rate risk for you in that they offer you a rate slightly (?) worse than what they expect the actual rate to be over time. But it might be worth checking out.

One thing I can definitely recommend without any doubt for transfering money internationally is transferwise (see https://transferwise.com/u/ccdd6). It does not protect you against forex fluctuation but it does save you a pile of money in comparison with banks because they actually give you the exact interbank rate minus 0.5% fee. No bank gives you that. I have already transferred several months salary using transferwise and it works just fine. If you use this link, you first transfer will be entirely free (no fee at all).

Regards,

Christoph