Strange currencies (Currency Converters in general)

Member Name: kingseany

Product:	Currency Converters in general
Date:	18/05/05 (322 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, fast, Accurate, Easy to use

Disadvantages: None whatsoever

Type the words "Currency Converter" into google and you'll end up with 17 million matches! Seriously! At the end of the day, you only really need one. At the top of the list you'll find XE.COM, supposedly the worlds favorite, however my favorite is the next in the list OANDA.COM

I've been using OANDA.COM for many years now, for various reasons.

It's free - and you don't need to register
It's fast
It's accurate
It's updated constantly
It's easy to use
It's got some really useful features
It's uncluttered and pretty much ad-free
It does what I want it to do

So get along to http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic

There's 164 currencies listed, from the Afghani to the Zimbabwe dollar, so no matter what you're looking for, it'll be here.

If English is not your first language, the site can be used in 6 other languages, including Swedish.

Basic operation is, well, basic! Type an amount into the "Convert Amount" box, select the currency to convert from, and to, and click the "Convert Now" button.

As an example, I entered 10,000 Swedish krona, and I want to convert to Jamaican Dollars. The answer very quickly is 84,396 ish. The result will obviously vary from one day to the next. As well as providing the answer I wanted, it will also show the reverse conversion, just in case I put them in back to front. Useful. You can also quickly see what the rate was the previous day, and step back a day at a time to see if today is a good day to convert or not. It's all a bit of a gamble really.

The rates used are typically Interbank, and you can modify by selecting +1%, +2% and so on. There are also typical credit card or cash rates. All in all it seems pretty accurate, and a good representation of what you'll actually get when converting money at an exchange bureau, on your credit card or at a bank.

If you need to study trends, the FXHistory is useful. You can enter 2 dates and all the previous rates will be displayed in table form, together with the highest and lowest rates, as well as the average for the period. This can be useful if you are deciding when to convert, especially for large amounts when it can make all the difference. From this, I can easily see I should have bought a few thousand US Dollars at the beginning of the year, rather than right now.

FXDaily can produce a table with multiple currencies listed at the same time, if you need to keep track. I do not normally need to look at this, but it's quick and easy to select and display a useful table.

FXCheatSheet - An great aid for when you are on holiday. This will produce a printable table of conversion between your chosen 2 currencies. An example, you are off to Egypt and aren't too familiar with the currency. Print out the sheet, and put it into your wallet. Do this as near to the time you go as possible, so the rate is still similar. When you look in your wallet to take out money to buy things, you can easily see that 10Egyptian pounds is about 95p, 100 is about £9.50, 1000 is about £95 and so on. It works well, and I've used it myself many times.

The site has lots of other content, more useful features, some business news and the like. If you need a currency converter for any reason, you'd be safe with this one.

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