The exchange rate today is 1 USD to 31.75 TWD. I’m fortunate to have money to send to the US and I’m wondering if today’s exchange rate looks good to Foumosans. I suppose waiting time is offset by not earning a bit of interest income. I know there are sending fees. Anyone with experience at this who knows the trends? What do you think?
If you Google it, you can find lots of historical exchange rate data, including charts, graphs and tables. One site reported that over the past year, the high for the USD/TWD was 32.99 and the low was 31.01. The BBR today is 31.72. Does that help?
It’s kind of a crap shoot, like the stock market. The only reliable signals I’ve found were reports of planned government intervention in the exchange rate. I also noticed that just before Chinese New Year, as local companies are settling overseas accounts and families are getting their US$ for their overseas vacations, the NT$ tanks.
Unless you are transferring vast amounts of coin, the few tenths of a percent just don’t justify the time spent in tracking and planning.
About ten years ago, I was in Oz and having to transfer money back and forth for an international corp. I watched it carefully and often saved several hundred U.S. becuase the fluctuations were for very high back then. In Taiwan, a few tenths just isn’t worth the bother.
Thanks for your replies. Yes, on Monday I’ll send a once-in-a-lifetime bundle of money.
I’ve heard others talk about timing their deposits to take advantage of a good exchange rate, but I haven’t done it myself.
I sent the bundle of money yesterday. Yesterday 31.7385 NT to 1 USD, today it’s 31.77. Not much difference but, by my calculations, it would have taken about 1,000NT more to send the same amount of USD today. So I’m pleased to think I did okay and sad as I doubt I’ll ever be in a position to do this again.
That’s roughly a million NT? Once, on a dollar amount like that, I actually asked the bank teller if I could get a better exchange rate. The teller said he’d do what he could, but there was a very limited range that he could work in. In the end, I was happy that he knocked one one-hundredth off of the exchange rate. So instead of exchanging at 31.02, I could exchange at 31.01, for example. I know this information is a little late, but it never hurts to try. If they don’t want to budge, there’s other banks that might.
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Don’t forget to declare the transfer with the IRS.
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Even for amounts as little as US$5K, First Bank has improved on the exchange rate for me in the past. But I don’t get too excited about a couple dollars here and there.
I’ve found over the years that the value of the NT$ seems to hit annual peaks of strength against the US$ around late March and early April. May have something to do with big spending around CNY. Since I return to Taiwan every year in April, I always change my money around that time.
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