It’s fair to say that the post-Brexit financial landscape has been rocky at best.
PM Theresa May has said that she’ll trigger Article 50 before March next year, so as far as the Government is concerned, Brexit is happening, but it’s everything else that no one is sure about.
The pound has been on a bit of a ride since the EU referendum result came in, on one of those rollercoasters that mainly just goes down.
Statistics and data can be twisted and obfuscated, but a tweet from BuzzFeed’s political editor Jim Waterson seems to have laid it out clear, and it’s given people going to America on holiday (or ‘vacation’, if you will) something to think about.
$100 on 22 June = £67.59
$100 now = £80.40
Good luck to anyone hoping to go to the US anytime soon.— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) October 7, 2016
Yep, basically it’s going to cost you about £13 more to buy $100 now than it did before the referendum. That doesn’t sound like a huge amount, but as a percentage increase that’s 19% – almost a fifth more than before.
Obviously it would be foolish to believe everything you read on Twitter, so we did some research to check if Jim’s claim is valid.
According to XE.com, $100 is currently worth £80.92
Photo: XE.com
If we take a look back in XE.com’s exchange rate history for the date 22nd June 2016, $1 was worth £0.6812
Multiply by 100 and we find that $100 cost £68.12. There’s approximately 50p difference between XE.com and Jim Waterson’s figures, but one thing is for sure: US money costs nearly 20% more than it did four months ago.
What does that mean for us? Essentially that everything in America will cost about 20% more than it did before Brexit. Food, drinks, hotels, car rentals, shows, movies, attractions – basically the cost of your holiday has gone up by a fifth.
Good job everything is cheaper in America anyway, eh?
