Current American Exchange Rate

[maiapapaya]

I have an American $ account and have been watching the exchange rate hoping to take advantage of the recent upswing with the dollar. The market report at noon described the Canadian dollar as surging - music to my ears! Any financial types on here willing to guess as to how long this rise might last?

How long does it usually take the banks to catch up with their exchange rates?

 

[trl1812]

I read today where an analyst said that the dollar would be at par with the US dollar by the end of the year. It's hard to decide what to do. Right now it is sitting just over 91 cents.

 

[maiapapaya]

I've heard that it would be close to par. You're right. It's hard to know what to do. It's tempting to exchange now, but since we're not travelling until next spring we can wait. I'll just be kicking myself if the predictions are wrong and the dollar takes a dive again.

 

[dis_guy]

You never know what it could do. We have a couple thousand left to pay by November for our Christmas trip. I'll probably throw $500 at it now just in case it gets worse again.

 

[fundy_dreamer]

As with many things financial...dollar cost averaging is a very powerful tool. Pick an amount you can afford each month (say $100 CDN) and put it into a $US account. Then you'll be buying more $US when its cheap and less when it's expensive. I've started doing this and it certainly eases the long term concern about guessing what's going to happen.

Good luck.

 

[monkeyknuckler]

Here's my prediction. Today the CAN dollar is .92 . Since we will pay off our DVC in the next 2 weeks, the dollar will skyrocket exactly after our last payment. But on the flipside, if we don't pay it off right away, the dollar will tank.
Keep in mind that our dollar fluctuates in unison with the price of oil, and oil is predicted to rise in the next little while, as it did in the last 2 days.

 

[stefanospops]

Here's my prediction. Today the CAN dollar is .92 . Since we will pay off our DVC in the next 2 weeks, the dollar will skyrocket exactly after our last payment. But on the flipside, if we don't pay it off right away, the dollar will tank.
Keep in mind that our dollar fluctuates in unison with the price of oil, and oil is predicted to rise in the next little while, as it did in the last 2 days.

Can you let me know when you decide if you pay off or not so I can do the opposite?

 

[a*lil*bit*goofy]

I bought $200 us for $224CAD the other day, (Wed I think?) I was happy with that!!! My mum works at the bank so she calls me everytime there is a drop. She called today, and said the feeling is that it will go down even lower again, so we are going to look at it again on Monday

 

[maiapapaya]

Thanks for the input everyone! My gut is telling me to wait a few days and see if it creeps up a bit more. Even if it has peaked for the time being, it's still a pretty good rate.

 

[alamode]

I just sent in a $500 US cheque as a down payment for my resale. If approved, I'll owe another $9K us in about 6 weeks. Lets hope the $$ goes up, up and away.

 

[TreesyB]

I just sent in a $500 US cheque as a down payment for my resale. If approved, I'll owe another $9K us in about 6 weeks. Lets hope the $$ goes up, up and away.

When I bought a resale, the Cdn$ was at 1.07 to the USD (after topping at 1.10). That day I bought a US bank draft in my own name until I could set up a USD account. That's another way of making sure you can protect yourself from fluctuations when you don't have a bank account.

 

[Goofy's apprentice]

We do the dollar cost averaging. We just picked a dollar amount we were comfortable with and have a regular transfer to a US account each week. We watch the exchange rates and throw a little extra in when it hits a good point. If it hits par we'll dump some more. Living near the border we use US$ fairly frequently.

Now if we could just get a Disney US credit card !!!

 

[iluvwesties]

We do the dollar cost averaging. We just picked a dollar amount we were comfortable with and have a regular transfer to a US account each week. We watch the exchange rates and throw a little extra in when it hits a good point. If it hits par we'll dump some more. Living near the border we use US$ fairly frequently.

Now if we could just get a Disney US credit card !!!

I'm still hoping for this

Did you know that Sears Canada's credit card is operated by CHASE bank in US? The same company that does the Disney Visa card

So If Sears can give us a card, why can't Disney?

 

[daver]

I'm still hoping for this

Did you know that Sears Canada's credit card is operated by CHASE bank in US? The same company that does the Disney Visa card

So If Sears can give us a card, why can't Disney?

I think the big reason is the perceived number of cardholders vs Sears cardholders. I am willing to bet that 1 in 3 households have a Sears card, so 5+ million cardholders vs maybe 1 million (generous) Disney Cardholders. Not enough money in it I am sure. If there was we would have it already.
Maybe someone should start an email campaign to Chase to get them interested?

 

[Shir Kahn]

I'm all for any campaign that gets us the Disney Visa!

 

[Debbie]

We do the dollar cost averaging. We just picked a dollar amount we were comfortable with and have a regular transfer to a US account each week. We watch the exchange rates and throw a little extra in when it hits a good point. If it hits par we'll dump some more. Living near the border we use US$ fairly frequently.

Now if we could just get a Disney US credit card !!!

Except for living near the border....we do everything that you mentioned. I discovered yesterday that I got a better rate through ING than BMO, so that's how I did my transfer. Good thing, too, since I booked my flights on my US Mastercard last night.

 

[Goofy's apprentice]

Thanks for the ING tip. We'll have to check it out.

We continuously ask about availability to Canadians of the Disney VISA. The last number of times we asked the answer was that they weren't sure about our banking system?!?! After the near collapse of the US system and the fact that the Canadian system is respected worldwide, i can't imagine this makes any sense.

 

[grace&philipsmom]

I am in on pestering chase to give us canadians the disney chase visa! I had been waiting for the $ to hit 0.90 to pay on our trip, I paid half of it yesterday. I heard on BNN one guy is saying par and later another analyst saying a 0.95 top out.

 

[CrystalS]

Hey everyone, quick question:

We have a cruise (3night) and WDW (4night) trip to pay for. We have paid the 200 deposit for both time 2 (for ours and my mom/brothers reservatons).

When we did it the dollar was at .86 I believe, and we charged it to our CDN credit card. When we got the CC statement it was calculated at about 1.20cad = 1us
So not as great of a rate as was posted online (I had expected that though).

My question is, what is the best method to pay for our trip? We are using Dreams Unlimited as our travel agent, so I think we have to use a credit card with them, never asked about US money order or anything like that, would that give me a better exchange rate do you think?

We don't have a US credit card, and I think it would take to long to get one.... we have to have the total amount for our trip paid by June 26th.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[chasbos]

I have an RBC e savings account and an RBC US account - I can transfer as many times as I want into my US account for free but can only withdraw $$ once for free.

I can go on line any time and initiate a transfer - it will then give me an exchange rate and then I can decide if I want to buy the US$ at that time.

I did break down and moved $1300 CAD into my US account at $1.11. Not bad, but not great either. It is a whole lot better then when we went in Feb and I paid $1.30 on my credit card!

I think a little bit at a time is the way to go if you have a US account.