This might get long so I’m going to give you a breakdown of what I’ll be talking about: Today’s listed exchange rate, today’s Mastercard exchange rate, 2% currency conversion fee, adding this all up you’ll see my true conversion rate.

I know some people have been curious about the conversion rate when you withdrawal from an ATM using your Visa Debit Card or Mastercard Debit Card. MC and Visa are supposed to give you fair exchange rates from what I’ve heard. Today I used my Mastercard to withdrawl funds from my U.S. bank and here’s the breakdown of charges and rates.

Today’s USD to Yen rate from www.xe.com is
1 USD = 114. .735 JPY

The actual rate I received
1 USD = 114.23 JPY

Not bad! But then my bank charged me 1% to do the currency conversion and Mastercard (as well as Visa) charges a 1% fee. So if I withdrawal 11,000 Yen my account would reflect a $96.30 withdrawal amount, a bank fee of $0.96 and a Mastercard fee of $0.96. That means for 11,000 Yen I was actually hit for $98.22 and in reality if you include the 2% in fees my true exchange rate from the ATM resulted in 112Yen per $1 USD.

Is this a good deal? Read the rest of this entry »

Some people think that Japan is an expensive place to live. From my experience it’s not that bad. Sure some things are more expensive than other countries, but other things are more affordable. Only Tokyo and Osaka made the top 50 list for the highest cost of living in 2007. Not bad!

1) MOSCOW, Russia
2) LONDON, United Kingdom
3) SEOUL, South Korea
4) TOKYO, Japan
5) HONG KONG, Hong Kong
6) COPENHAGEN, Denmark
7) GENEVA, Switzerland
8 ) OSAKA, Japan
9) ZURICH, Switzerland
10) OSLO, Norway

(Source: Mercer Human Resource Consulting)

If you’re looking for more information on this, you might want to check out Japan’s Statistics Bureau
Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s currency conversion rate is at ï¿¥114 to $1. Good thing I converted some money when the rate was 116 Yen per 1 US Dollar, and I almost made the 117 mark! The dollar is getting weaker (of course) and now the Yen is on the rise. Thank God I don’t live in Canada right now with that type of conversion ($1 USD = 0.96 CAD). I’m no financial expert but if the US Dollar keeps declining in value at this rate and Japan’s economy improves… well… this could mean that 100 Yen to $1 USD might be happening in the next year. That sucks for people getting paid in US Dollars. On top of that conversion rate I’m getting nailed with a 2% transaction fee. 1% from MasterCard and 1% from my Bank to convert money at stores, restaurants, atms, etc. I’m waiting to get the debit card from Capital One all squared away to lessen the fees I’m getting hit with but it’s going to take forever. (Side note: in this case forever means about one month)

I just read about the Yen’s 6 week high at Bloomberg.com Read the rest of this entry »