September 26th - As the pound falls, how to make the most of your holiday money
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After Friday's "mini" budget, Britain has found itself in the midst of a financial storm with markets spooked by the government's plans for tax cuts and borrowing. It has sent the pound crashing to historic lows against other currencies, which is causing all manner of headaches - not least making our holidays all the more expensive. But there is some things you can do to make that holiday money stretch as far as possible - I'll tell you how.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the first independent travel podcast of the week with me Simon Calder. |
| 0:08.1 | Coming to you on Monday afternoon from beautiful Heathrow Airport Terminal 5. |
| 0:13.2 | Very, very busy today. |
| 0:15.4 | But I've had a bit of a surprising time here. |
| 0:19.8 | I've just spoken to a very pleasant gentleman who runs |
| 0:23.5 | a bureau de chanche. I said, can you tell me please how much it's going to cost for me to |
| 0:29.4 | buy 100 euros from you? And he said, yes, I can. 115 pounds and 17 pence. |
| 0:39.3 | So I slightly gulped. |
| 0:41.3 | I did a bit of calculating, not in my head on my phone, |
| 0:46.3 | and it turned out that my pounds are worth slightly less than 87 pence. |
| 0:57.0 | Yes, that's where we are, today. |
| 1:01.5 | Now, obviously, that is about the worst deal you can get. |
| 1:03.3 | Not completely the worst deal you can get. I then tried an ATM. |
| 1:07.2 | And what with the charges for using the ATM, |
| 1:10.6 | I was looking at a price of 116 pounds and 16 |
| 1:15.2 | pence so extraordinary times clearly today uh the pound has uh reached unprecedentedly low levels |
| 1:25.1 | against the u s dollar now, of course, the causes are many, |
| 1:33.3 | but part of it might well be to do with the government's policies, |
| 1:38.3 | as well as, of course, as the strength of the dollar. |
| 1:42.3 | But whatever the cause, what is the solution for you, the traveller? |
| 1:48.3 | That's what people want to know. Well, a combination of things, obviously holiday money |
| 1:53.9 | do not waste a single penny. It's bad enough already. So that means generally paying with a credit card which is going to |
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