Sorry, another money question... but maybe a different one!

OK, I was ready and braced for the abuse....

To clarify, I'm British, so yes home currency is £. I will have minimal cost in changing my £ to $ as I work for a travel company.

Thanks for the links to the currency exchange sites, I'll do 'the math'.....

Thanks :)

Thanks for the calcification, Sonia.

Since the USD has been taking a beating against GBP lately, and you're in a unique position to buy dollars cheaply, it'll be interesting to see what the math finally spits out.

I can't imagine anything beating taking GBP and buying CUC directly, but who knows.

Please let us know what your calculator finally tells you.

Have a nice trip.

Cheers,
Terry

Thank you very much Terry! :)

Right, here goes...

so according to that website,
1GBP = 1.79890 CUC
1US$ = 1.11341 CUC

My exchange rate is 1GBP = 1.94US$.

So, say we had 100GBP and took it to Cuba, we'd get 179.89 CUC.
If we converted that to US$ at home we'd have $194 which, when converted in Cuba, would become 216 CUC.

I haven't deducted another 10% as I didn't know if this was already accounted for on that site? With an extra 10% deducted from the dollar transaction, our $194 would cost $19.40 to exchange, leaving us with: $174.60 to convert which becomes (rather scarily) 194.4 CUC.

That's still 15 CUC better, about 8% or so...

How controversial!

Thanks

Sonia

Excellent work Sonia. So nice to see someone who isn't afraid to crunch numbers.

One small problem though... do you see the asterisk (*) beside GBP and EUR? That differentiates those two currencies from all others.

In other words..... 1 GBP = 1.79890 CUC and 1 EUR = 1.22112 CUC..... but it takes 1.11341 USD to buy 1 CUC, and 1.24979 CAN to buy 1 CUC, etc...

Sorry to screw up your day. :-)

Cheers,
Terry

Okay, so the exchange rate for $ is as follows:
$1.11341 = 1 CUC
We'd be changing $174.60 in CUC which would give us 156.8CUC compared with 179.89CUC from the same 100GBP.

Pounds win.

Thought there was something dodgy with that table!!

Thanks for all your help Terry!

Home currency (if it's accepted in Cuba) always wins, but it's nice to see it proven every now and then. The recent shit-kicking the USD has taken against GDP, and your ability to buy cheap USD, made this exercise interesting.

Have a great trip.

Cheers,
Terry

Good one #13 & 14

Sonia

I think you did one of the conversions backward in Post 12

Fidel insists the CUC is worth $1.08 USD. So the calculation below is wrong
"So, say we had 100GBP and took it to Cuba, we'd get 179.89 CUC.
If we converted that to US$ at home we'd have $194 which, when converted in Cuba, would become 216 CUC"
Should be:
If we converted that to US$ at home we'd have $194 which, when converted in Cuba, would become 179.62 CUC
Take 10% off of that and you get 161.70 CUC. which is a lot less than the 179.89 you would get if you went direct to Cuba with your pounds. This is because of the extra 10% - which is not an exchange - it is a penalty charged in Cuba for converting USD cash - because they have difficulty converting it to other currencies again because of US govt restrictions.
Regards
Donald

I have been following this thread with less and less interest as it proceeds and as soon as I go and find the release mechanism to get away from it, I won't be bothered with it anymore at all. You can continue your public math lesson all by yourself!

However, the statement:

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>This is because of the extra 10% - which is not an exchange - it is a penalty charged in Cuba for converting USD cash - because they have difficulty converting it to other currencies again because of US govt restrictions.<hr></blockquote>

Is total BULLSHIT !! I have NEVER seen anything so pathetically untrue posted here. The extra 10% is a specific, directed tax by Fido & Co directed at US currency! Most foreign visitors can avoid this by using a different currency. Cuban-Americans sending remittances to their families can not easily do so.

Wow, davfitz: what an outburst! LOL Can't fathom what got you so outraged - the word "penalty"? (Tax, surcharge, penalty: for practical purposes here, all the same. The "Dollar Tax" was actually called a "Dollar Ban" in the media, if quibbles get you so inflamed. Yikes!) But I'll follow your tangent, anyway.

According to researchers at the Mises Institute, the timing of the Dollar de-legalization followed a raft of new U.S. Treasury new measures to enforce the myriad of monetary regulations of the Embargo. <blockquote>Quote
<hr>Consistent with the intent of the embargo to "isolate the Cuban government economically and deprive it of U.S. dollars," the countless stipulations include prohibiting foreign commercial banks that deal in dollars to exchange Cuba's old U.S. dollars for new ones. UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, for instance, was fined $100m by the Federal Reserve for illegally transferring freshly printed dollar notes to Cuba, Libya, Iran and Yugoslavia-all of which are subject to U.S. sanctions. Exchanging worn dollars for crisp ones enables said countries to renew their stock of dollars in circulation, thus increasing the longevity of the dollar's durability and the stability of their economies.<hr></blockquote>
The falling Dollar, a long term trend ("colossal current account and budget deficits, rampant money creation," etc.) was extra incentive to de-legalize the dollar at that time, and "[using] hard currencies such as euros, sterling, Canadian dollars, and Swiss francs in lieu of dollars is much more advantageous to the Cuban government; better time than any for Castro to accumulate as many dollars as possible and convert them into a more stable currency." Rail against that opinion if you will, but that's what happened and what a fiscal conservative would conclude "why."

btw, since 4/02 the USD$ has lost 35% of its value against the Euro, 28% against the Pound and Cdn$, respectively. It made sense for the Cuban govt to convert USD stocks to other currencies, and tax "Dollar importers" for the extra burden, all those costs to Cuban financial institutions in moving & storing physical USD bills. Admittedly, that's something most US banks dont even worry about, most of our money is electronic, but all these little transactions do have costs & fees. Read the fine print.

US Treasury restrictions on USD cost Cuba; that is the goal, and Cuba admits it. US Customs spends more time quizzing me about currency than anything else, btw: that's practically all THEY care about, too! Its not just an obsession of 'Fido& Co.' as implied but yes, this particular currency tax is a nuisance. What tax isnt?!