First, congratulations to local English blogger David Reid, whose spot of the Kiss-n-ride signs at the HSR station sparked an article by Reuters, which also featured Dan Bloom, a local expat. Prince Roy's thoughtful post on his trip to Guguan sparked a number of comments. Should he blog in Anglais or Chine? You make the call... Graeme at Taoyuan Nights has an absolutely fantastic post on how to get a little more interest on your hard earned cash. When you're done puzzling out Graeme's post, you can deal with Scott Sommers' massive essay on English teaching here. Another fantastic post. Jerome gives us bloggers a standing ovation. Battlepanda discovers that the java at McDee's is better than Starbucks. YouTube monster Mordeth13, who posts on his travels around Taiwan, had his account closed by YouTube, according to the emKid. Joseph Chen travels around Taiwan by GPS.
[Taiwan]
My bank at home ROCKS! I was going to start an HSBC account here but my own bank at home will give me 6%. 1 months interest covers the cost to send my money back. They also give me a VISA debit card I can use anywhere and their cut out of overseas purchase is pretty small. Cash advances are bad though and the Aussie dollar dropped a whole $NT since I did it.
ReplyDelete:/
Mordeth13 STOLE MY IDEA. (Just kidding. Wish I had a ninja.)
Hey, Mu here.
ReplyDeleteIt's all very well moving your currency to somewhere that is currently offering high interest rates, but the laws of supply and demand say that you will pay extra for that privelege. So that in the future, when interest rates in Taiwan are higher, it will be more expensive to buy back your NTD.
Currency is usually six and half-a-dozen. The smart currency flows are already priced into the exchange rate. Hence, you might be better off taking 1.5% in Taiwan just now and hoping for the exchange rate going in your favour by more than 4.5% over the next year....
It might not be an unreasonable bet given that the central bank here has committed to further interest rate rises.
Particularly though, given that the NTD is currently almost 50% more expensive than it was a few years ago, relative to some currencies, personally, I'll take the chance for a year or two and accept a crappy rate of interest in the meantime - and focus on instead getting the best rate I can, within Taiwan.
Mu