I don’t know how many of you are in a similar situation, but in my own case my income is entirely derived from abroad (United Kingdom) through freelance work for companies back home. Every now and then I move a large lump sum of cash for living expenses from my UK account to my Taiwan bank. The way my bank here in Taiwan works, this lump sum remains UK currency until as and when I choose to convert it to Taiwan currency either all at once or in chunks.
Because the exchange rate between the pound and Taiwan dollar is so abysmal, I’ve got in the habit of waiting until the exchange rate improves minutely, and then exchanging enough to live on for a month into Taiwan currency. I do this because I have a fear the value of the pound might suddenly jump the next day, but I also have the fear it might equally drop, making things even worse. This is, naturally, somewhat stressful.
I’m far from being equipped with any great financial acumen, but I did get to wondering if there was a less stressful way of doing this without necessarily risking losing money to abysmal exchange rates at any one particular time and without simply having to cross my fingers and hope things might get better in the future. I’m sure I’m not the only person here whose freelance income comes entirely from outside Taiwan, although I suspect there are perhaps not many of us, but if you’re one of them and there’s a better way of going about this than obsessing daily over the exchange rate and shifting tiny amounts of money from one to the other in the hopes of sunnier days, let me know.