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Forex Watch: Best Places For Singaporeans To Travel To In July


We love travelling. Well, who don’t?

In Dollarsandsense.sg, we believed in travelling smartly. As much as we like to show you all the nice places that we have travelled to and to fill this page with amazing pictures from places like Santorini or Maldives, we won’t. We know you have a budget to adhere to.

Instead, what we will do, once a month, is to let you know the “best places to travel to for Singaporeans” based on the exchange rate between the Singapore Dollar and other foreign currencies. This will ensure that you will get the best value for your Singapore Dollar, as you will be spending foreign currencies at a favorable exchange rate.

Of course, we are going to use our common sense when recommending travel destinations. We are not going to recommend for you to travel to Nigeria just because the exchange rate is now 1 SGD to 150NGN, compared to 143NGN earlier this year.

At the very least, this monthly column will serve as an excuse for all of us to justify the holiday trips that are taking.

Recommendations For July: MALAYSIA 

No prices for guessing. Neighbouring Malaysia would be the best place in our opinion to travel to for the month of July.

The Ringgit has once again continued its decline and is currently sitting at a 5-year low against the Singapore Dollar with an exchange rate of 2.78. What that means is that almost everything that you can get in Malaysia is now even cheaper, including the petrol. Last we checked, the price is about RM2.10 RM per litre, or about S$0.75. Pretty tempting isn’t it?

With plunging crude oil prices coupled with Singapore’s central bank’s expectation of inflation picking up, the performance of the Ringgit against the Singapore Dollar is expected to continue declining.

Graph showing the Singapore Dollar against the Ringgit over the past 5 years

Forex Body

(Source: Bloomberg as of 19 June 2015)

So go on and plan your short getaway, be it at the vibrant night life of Kuala Lumpur or a closer to nature diving trip at Tioman Island, Malaysia is our country of choice to be travelling to based on the exchange rate. Just be reminded to ensure that your car fuel gauge is at least ¾ full before driving across the immigration, as we know that the authority is pretty strict now in checking all vehicles passing through.

We leave you with our very own quote to ponder about.

“We know that not all who wander are lost, but extra money lost in the exchange rate is considered lost.“

 

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