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Travel Advice - How much does this cost in
dollars?Converting the value of a foreign currency into US dollars is easy if
you are carrying a calculator, but most of us travel without one.
- If you do
not have a calculator handy, set a counting number that approximates the
conversion rate to perform your currency calculation.
- For example, let’s assume that the conversion
rate for one Euro is $1.197 (i.e. how much you would have to pay in
U.S. dollars to buy one Euro).
- To create a counting number you would round
$1.197 to $1.20 to calculate costs.
- Conversion rates can be
found at currency exchanges, banks or in local and international
newspapers.
Examples
A vase in a country shop in England is priced at ₤15 (English Pound
Sterling). If the exchange rate was $1.475 dollars to buy
£1 Pound Sterling, use of a calculator would
help you to compute the cost of the vase in dollars as $22.12 [15 x
$1.475].
- If you established a counting number to approximate the cost, you would
estimate the cost to be 15 x 1.50 or approximately $22.50.
- Remember, you
are merely using the method to understand approximate cost.
- The actual
cost will be different since it will use the actual exchange rate and
added taxes.
- In addition, if you purchase items using a credit card, your
credit card issuer will assign a conversion rate based on the date and
time the transactions was credited to the vendor’s account.
- It has been our experience that the conversion
rates set by Visa and MasterCard are quite fair, but these companies
have also added a new currency conversion fee that you will see only
when you receive your monthly bill, if you have used your card
abroad.
Another way of calculating cost conversion is to consider (using the
same details provided in the example above) that one dollar is the
equivalent of a fraction of a Pound Sterling (1/1.475 = 0.678 of a Pound
Sterling). If the vase was priced at £15, then the cost in dollars would
be calculated as 15 divided by 0.678 or $22.12.
If you are traveling to Europe in countries
participating in the Economic Union, the changeover to the Euro made currency conversion much easier, since you only need to know the
relationship between the Dollar and the Euro (see our article on
the Euro).
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