Jaweed Kaleem is a national correspondent at the Los Angeles Times. will be more like a Second World country.” “Maybe by the end of my lifetime the U.K. I think we are probably well past ‘peak U.K.,’” said Ahmed. “It’s not just the economic downfall and Boris Johnson getting kicked out, but the queen dying, it hitting 104 degrees over the past summer. in favor of shorter-haul trips on a tighter budget.Īhmed, 34, said he and his wife sometimes joke “that we came to the U.K. Not anymore.”Īfeef Ahmed, an Amazon worker who moved from the Bay Area to London last year and who also earns in pounds, is now rethinking travel back to the U.S. Maxx, Marshalls and Macy’s because the selection was better than in London, and it would seem like a steal with the conversion rate since I’d get paid in pounds. used to always be about two things for me: seeing family and shopping,” said Fuller, 50, who has lived abroad for much of her adult life. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. “But what is happening is that the chickens are coming home to roost because of economic decisions over the years.”Īhead of the busy travel season including Thanksgiving and Christmas, the pinched pound is already on the mind of Suki Fuller, an American whose job in London as an intelligence advisor pays her in pounds. “The pound has been part of a wider understanding of Britain’s power and sense of self,” said David Cobham, an economics professor at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland who studies monetary policy. But the currency’s poor performance of late has dented the sense of British superiority. The pound is inextricably bound up in British identity when the country belonged to the EU, it demanded - and received - an exemption from having to adopt the euro. The plunging pound is a blow to the U.K.’s prestige as well as its pocketbook. “At least I have an academic editing job that pays me in dollars, so I can get by.” “I feel bad for British people, who are the ones really struggling,” Yoo added. Will that matter?īarring tragedy or revolution, Britain is set to have a man instead of a woman on the throne for the next 75 years at least. World & Nation After Queen Elizabeth II, it’s a long line of kings. “Students coming in today, meanwhile, are getting a deal, and I’m happy for them. “I’ve been in multiple graduate programs in London, and it’s always felt like it costs so much to pay your student loans as an American because the tuition would sometimes be twice the amount when you converted it to dollars,” said Yoo, a doctoral candidate in Egyptology at University College London. Justin Yoo, an American who has lived off and on in London since first arriving as a student in 1994 - when the pound was around $1.50 - said its drop in value made him feel “almost a little ripped off.” So I changed my booking to the Holiday Inn.” “I do not anticipate the pound going anywhere positive. “I booked a boutique hotel in Tribeca, which is something I can afford for a few days when the pound is doing better,” said Gonzalez, who works in finance. The situation is reversed for her British friend Beatriz Gonzalez, who will be touring New York and the West Coast in January and is already dreading the costs. Now, instead of one drink out at a restaurant, I can get two.” “But that was a few months ago when I was planning, and the pound was worth more. “I had budgeted $2,000 for a few days between the hotel, eating out and shopping,” said Ashleigh, 27, who traveled from Arizona with friends and strolled last week along Oxford Street, a major shopping destination lined with souvenir shops, department stores and global outlets like Uniqlo, the Disney Store and Adidas. He considers himself lucky: Many of his clients pay in dollars, and he owns an investment property in the San Francisco Bay Area that he rents out in dollars.įor Emily Ashleigh, an American visiting the British capital, the incredibly shrinking pound has also been a boon. “It’s a rare chance to actually be on the better side of the money equation as an American in London,” said Asher, 48, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and today runs a luxury travel company. home, along with the 4 million who visit each year, the switch in currency fortunes has changed the calculus of life and travel abroad in a positive direction. The British government has dropped plans to cut income tax for top earners after defending the proposal for days.īut for many of the 166,000 Americans who call the U.K. World & Nation In striking U-turn, Britain scraps tax cut for wealthy that helped spark market turmoil
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