I've been thinking about this for a while, but it just recently hit home enough to blog about it: the pounds-to-dollars exchange rate. When I first started tracking all of our debts and assets--NT's UK stuff included--the exchange rate was something like 1 British pound = 2 U.S. dollars. It fluctuated a lot, but it stayed close enough to that, and that was a handy ratio to make calculations easy.

NT just deposited a check into our U.S. account from a UK CC company for GBP 5.26. When the deposit went through, it came to $6.67. I knew the exchange rate had changed a lot, but I didn't realize it was now 1 pound = $1.26!

It makes me wonder if I should change my debt and net income sheets to reflect this. It would mean a lot less debt and a lot less assets when converted to U.S. dollars. On the other hand, if I switch everything over, in effect I lose the satisfaction of steady progress, and being able to see where I came from. The same thing happened when I used some excess student loan money that was refunded, and put it toward a personal loan instead of toward student loan debt. It was slightly beneficial financially, saving me a few bucks a month in interest and getting me months closer to paying off my higher-interest loan. But at the same time, it wiped away some of the joy I was taking in the progress on my "Big-Picture Goal," because it got artificially much closer to success, something my OCD brain can't keep from mentioning every time I talk about it now.

So I guess I will keep all my spreadsheet data as is, but maybe I will do a side calculation just to satisfy my curiosity about what our debt and net worth totals are at today's exchange rate.