Well, it’s happened. According to xe.com as of 10:08am PST this morning, the Canadian dollar is officially worth more than the American dollar. Sure, the loonie only out-values the greenback by 3/4 of a penny, but it’s a momentous day for the Canadian dollar, because only a few years ago, the exchange rate was closer to 40%. It used to be that if you took an American dollar into a bank and asked for Canadian funds, that buck turned into a buck-forty of our “funny money.”
As a Canadian, some may assume that this is a happy day for me. It’s not. While taking a vacation to the United States has suddenly gotten a heck of a lot cheaper, you also have to realize that I’m taking a rather heavy pay cut as well.
All of the major advertising networks pay in US funds — Adsense, Text Link Ads, ReviewMe, and so on — as do a few of my freelance writing clients. Logging into my PayPal account, I find that the US money, sure enough, is worth less than Canadian. Instead of the US dollar number getting bigger when translated to Canadian, it gets smaller by about $100.
And it sucks that PayPal doesn’t let me extract those US funds as US funds into a Canadian bank account, even if it’s a US dollar account. I need to open an American bank account… anyone know what the process would be for a non-US resident?
This is absolutely crazy…I would never have thought that. You know what this means? iPhone time baby!! 🙂
Oh darn, I totally forgot about my Paypal balance. I guess I should have cashed it a while ago 🙁
Paypal is never accurate, but it is good to see that the canadian dollars goes higher than the US dollar!
time to buy some stuff on ebay lol
I sure hope you’re not going to start complaining about the exchange rate like John Chow…
This news is sweet! I hope the Canadian dollar keeps rising. It’ll sure make buying stuff in US dollars a lot cheaper (like domains). It’s too bad I didn’t pay in USD when I signed up for BlueFur, I’d be saving money…
I want to complain. You have to start thinking about the bigger picture. With the exchange rate being what it is, you’re correct that you want to buy more stuff in the US. What does this really mean, though? It means that you’re not spending that money in Canada and the Canadian economy suffers. Also consider it from a tourism standpoint: American tourists are less likely to visit Canadian destinations. The trickle-down effect is huge.
See, this is a much bigger issue than just me and John (and everyone earning money online) losing income.
I’d rather buy in Canada, and not the US. But you can’t compare some things. Domains, for example. In the US, at GoDaddy, you can get a .com for about $9. In Canada, a .com is anywhere from around $10-20. You can’t compare somethings. Yes, I know it’s only a couple of dollars of difference usually, but when you don’t have a job and you’re in high school, saving a couple of dollars is a good thing…
You’re not losing any money. Lets say you made exactly $20 USD from Adsense. That’s still $20 USD no matter what the exchange rate is. No matter if you exchange it for CAD when the exchange rate is 0.99 or 0.50, it’s still $20 USD. You haven’t lost anything. Understand?
You’re wrong, Matt. I am still losing money and the reason is that I am living in Canada. If I were living in the States, then the lower exchange rate would make less of a difference to me.
The reason is that most things that I have to pay for are in Canadian. When I go for lunch, buy clothes, pay my cell phone bills, etc., I pay in Canadian.
In this way, if I earned $100 from an American client who paid via Paypal, I would have received $114 Canadian if I cashed it out last year. The same $100 today is worth $98 Canadian. That $16 is very much real. By contrast, if I lived in the US, I could continue to purchase everything in US dollars.