Doesn’t seem like this rising Canadian dollar bit is ever slowing down news wise as today there was a lot of buzz of it reaching to about 1.05 US. This made me curious in seeing what the trend has been like overall. I quickly went to Yahoo Finance and saw this quick chart which shows the Canadian dollar rising in comparison to the US one:

Just for perspective sake, I also saw the chart as if you were from the other side:

One person told me that staring at these charts make it look like a stock market. The main positive that I see is that products have definitely become less expensive.

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I was reading the news lately on how retailers here are beginning to re-adjust prices for the items to reflect a price that is closer to ones found in US stores as a result of the Canadian dollar. Feels like one of those “What is taking so long?” type of situations.

From what I see, a lot of items at some larger retails stores are about $5 to $20 less than normal. It does seem like it was mostly on electronic and entertainment products. I guess this will definitely make people spend more.

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The Canadian dollar still seems to be a hot topic here and it looks like people are simply flocking south of the border to take advantage of it. For myself, the benefit I have seen is that I use certain vendors that are US based for particular services and now that the dollar is on an even scale the overall cost is less.

One thing that I have always wondered about though are people who travel south to fill up their gas tanks as it is suppose to be a lot cheaper. I personally question if you are truly saving that much money with you having to actually drive all the way down there and back which eats up fuel. On top of that, having to line up at the border crossing probably eats up a lot of gas as well.

Normally from what I have seen, items are usually about 10% - 15% more expensive here and that is not including the tax. Some people say even after paying duty charges on the product it still ends up being less than trying to purchase the item here. Too bad shipping charges are still pretty high for people who are thinking of simply purchasing them from a US online store.

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It seems like every news that I see and hear in regards to business and finance issues today are revolving around how the Canadian Dollar is virtually even with the US dollar at this point. The general thoughts are basically how it is great for consumers who want to head down to the US to purchase items while it has its negative affects on certain businesses such as tourism.

For myself this doesn’t really impact me too much. For some people that I have talked to it seems like there are a lot of jokes going around in retaliation over the years on how the Canadian dollar has been subject to a lot of ridicule as not being real money compared to US money. Almost sounds like a school yard. It’s going to be an interesting journey.

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