Many thanks to all those people from the UK who offered me food parcels after reading about the plight of my pension! Please don't bother sending oranges or lemons - we've got loads of them!
You'll have noticed that the pound rallied against the euro yesterday amid speculation that the European Central Bank may cut interest rates next week. Just a pity that my pension was transferred to my Spanish account the day before when the rate of exchange was at its lowest - that cost me dearly.
Why on earth didn't the Bank of New York, who handle the transfer on behalf of Capita, wait a day. I would have been a lot better off and not quite so depressed. Damn it, we could have had meat on the table at least once this month.
The wise ones amongst you will say, "but Keith, why don't you have your pension paid into a UK account and make the transfers yourself?" That is what I did to start with. The Nat West, who we bank with, gave me what was akin to a tourist rate and charged me a fee whenever I made a transfer.
After we'd been here awhile, Teacher's Pensions cottoned on to the fact that a lot of retired teachers live abroad and decided to offer their clients a commercial rate via the Bank of New York. Their offer seemed like a good idea - a few cents more to the pound equals a lot of money over the period of a year.
The problem is that the transfer is made on about the same day each month and doesn't take account of when the best time might be to exchange currency. For three years that hasn't mattered a great deal because the exchange rate was reasonably stable - there were good months and bad months but no disastrous ones; until now!
I can hear you say, "ah but next month Keith you will be so much better off." Knowing my luck the pound will keep on rallying until the time when my pension is due and then plummet the day before just in time to make me miserable again.
As my old Deputy Head used to say, "does anybody want to buy a watch?"
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