There are some in our two country's and I thought we might explore some :wo: Lets start with the money. Yours is all one color except for the $10 bill which is a bit washed out. It would appear that your government has spent so much on bailouts and other goodies that they can only afford one color[must be cheaper to buy in bulk].
(http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh145/pitw75/Forum%20Pics/TriptoMontana043.jpg)
Ours on the other hand is more of wild flower bouquet of living colors that allows the user to be a mite blind and still tell what he/she has given to the cashier that isn't able to add 2+2 twice in a row successfully :doh2:[that is something common on both sides of the border].
(http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh145/pitw75/Forum%20Pics/TriptoMontana042.jpg)
Hey we wouldn't expect anything then a bunch of flowered colored money from a French country. :roflmao:
(Todd is running for the door) :biggrin:
Be happy your pastels are worth more. :innocentwhistle:
Enjoy it (the money) while ya can cause it is getting cheaper every day. The more they print, the cheaper the money gets. Its called hyper inflation. :argh:
Todd better be hiding well :madd: which brings up another difference. Camo, I just came up from breakfast where there were a hundred+ people and not one piece of camo clothing to be seen. Down south I think the ratio of people wearing camo to those not was 3 to 2. Kinda like you guys can displease the wife even more than me and need to blend in with a tree at a moments notice. Really I don't get it, is camo clothing cheaper than regular cloth :shrug:.
Lol, Barry if I want to hide from the wife, I go to the kitchen and disguise myself as a cooking utensil. :roflmao: She'll never find me. :nono:
Quote from: pitw on August 03, 2009, 09:57:04 AM
Camo, I just came up from breakfast where there were a hundred+ people and not one piece of camo clothing to be seen. Down south I think the ratio of people wearing camo to those not was 3 to 2. Kinda like you guys can displease the wife even more than me and need to blend in with a tree at a moments notice. Really I don't get it, is camo clothing cheaper than regular cloth :shrug:.
Actually, sometimes camo is the cheapest, and that will increase as the fad passes and the glut of camo clothing is dumped at discount. Stock up on whatcha want as it will eventually get scarce when the yuppies and teeny boppers quit wearing it. The black and white urban camo makes good snow camo, even if the images are celebrity faces and such rather than leaves.
FWIW I have made it sort of a personal rule to never wear camo in any public place, and never have except maybe a fleece jacket in a country store once or twice.
As to US money looking alike, the Chief of a remote northern village in Canada once told me in all seriousness that US paper money was deliberately designed to help clerks shortchange customers, especially foreigners. He'd just returned from Las Vegas. :eyebrownod:
Quote from: Okanagan on August 03, 2009, 11:09:57 AM
As to US money looking alike, the Chief of a remote northern village in Canada once told me in all seriousness that US paper money was deliberately designed to help clerks shortchange customers, especially foreigners. He'd just returned from Las Vegas. :eyebrownod:
Smart man that chief :laf:.
Why is it that it appears on both sides of the border that in order to have a job as a cashier that the prerequisite for the job is to be able to not be able to add :confused: If there is a power outage they are screwed.
Todd have you ever camo'd yourself as the skewer?
Nope, usually a wooden spoon or a spatula works. :biggrin:
Quote from: Todd Rahm on August 03, 2009, 11:05:26 AM
f I want to hide from the wife, I go to the kitchen and disguise myself as a cooking utensil. :roflmao: She'll never find me. :nono:
Now there is a quote from a man who has a wife that never logs in at FnF.
Jerry
Actually all our new bills have multiple colors in them now except the $1.00
They still arent as brilliant as yours though.
Our added colors were to deter counterfeiting.
Yeap sometimes I have to use that union money myself. :laf:
How far south did you go???
If you come down this far make sure you get rid of all your fives with Abe on them unless you are looking for trouble. :eyebrownod:
I think the new light red coloring of the ten is an attempt to confuse us southerners in attempting to get us to take union money. :roflmao:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v202/Plumbrich/confederate-money-1.jpg)
Yep Barry we still use Confederate money down here.(it seems to be worth alittle more now)
And last but not least if you have to ask way we wear camo down south then you wood knot understand. Its a Southern thang U Heer. :laf:
BTW I heard tell the rainbow money in canada came about from all the yellow hippies from San Fransisco in the 60's. :eyebrow:
colored money is OK......but i know some people who are color blind. :shrug: :roflmao: :roflmao:
5 the Australians thought of that and have different size bills as well :bowingsmilie: Kinda/sorta makes sense as our coins are a diiferent size :shrug:
CCP i didn't get near far enough south to see them but I'd probably have took them at face value :wink: I guess it's kinda/sorta like us wearing toques then EH.
Pitw, Just wondering when you came across the Border if the Merchant's in the US would accept the flower money?cc
Quote from: Carolina Coyote on August 04, 2009, 09:00:58 AM
Pitw, Just wondering when you came across the Border if the Merchant's in the US would accept the flower money?cc
Golly I never even tried :doh2: I took a bunch of money I bought at the bank with me cause I didn't know if they would and I guess I am still ignorant on the subject :wo:
You made a wise choice. Right now your dollar is worth $0.937 in the US. When you go to cash it in at a store you would get between $0.80 and $0.90 for your dollar. But to be fair, the same thing happened to me when I was in Canada. The best way to work around it is to use a credit card. The credit card company does the conversion for you and it doesn't cost you anything.
Jerry
My experience has been that US merchants will not take Canadian money, but you pull out Greenbacks in Canada and they will take them in a heartbeat, I still have a few bills from my trips to Canada but can't spend them here.? cc
If you want to unload them you should be able to take them to your bank and have them exchanged there. Or the other option is to just send them to Barry and have him spend them for you. :laf:
Jerry
Barry being the nice fellow he is , I just may do that. :laf: cc
Quote from: Carolina Coyote on August 04, 2009, 03:50:22 PM
Barry being the nice fellow he is , I just may do that. :laf: cc
Tooooo Cooooool :laf: Yep Canadians like taking the American money at face value :shrug: I have seen places that wouldn't take it and I did a quick conversion for a few fellers :innocentwhistle:
Well Barry my experience was the Canadian Merchants always gave a better exchange than the Bank, you arn't suggesting that you would take advantage of a unaware American are you? :rolleye: cc
Quote from: Carolina Coyote on August 04, 2009, 05:06:21 PM
Well Barry my experience was the Canadian Merchants always gave a better exchange than the Bank, you arn't suggesting that you would take advantage of a unaware American are you? :rolleye: cc
All depended on their attitude :shrug: I treated them the same as I would a Canadian and attitude makes all the difference. I have unhooked my chain from a couple trucks I was going to pull out because of poor 'tudes and they were Canucks :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
The bank down there [a credit union] wanted 5% and that was totally unacceptable especially when the grocery store would do it for free[travel cheques]. :puke:
Attitude goes a long way with me also and you find people with that on both sides of the border, I never had a bad experience in my travels to Canada, enjoyed ever trip and meeting the people, really hurt my feeling a few years ago when you had the anti - American Administration in power there. Most Americans consider Canada as friends. I hope it stays that way. cc
'tude knows no boundarys. I can say in all honesty that everyone I met and talked to treated me and mine great on our last little foray south :yoyo: :yoyo:. I will say that Canadians appear to have more knowledge of the States than vice versa :shrug: I had one lady ask if we had icebergs in our rivers while we were standing by a river that flowed down to where we were from Canada 65 miles away :doh2:
Quote from: pitw on August 04, 2009, 07:24:06 PM
I will say that Canadians appear to have more knowledge of the States than vice versa :shrug:
Unfortunately, there is too much truth in that statement.
Jerry
I live near the border and cross quite a bit. Have both kinds of currency in my pocket at this minute, as usual. Merchants close to the border will usually accept money from the other side but if you get just a little ways south of the border hardly anyone but a bank will take Canuck money. It's a little better on the other side, but as said, a credit card or exchange at a bank is your best bet. ATM's are my first choice to get money form the other side. They give you the going bank rate of exchange on that day and charge a bank percentage fee, not too bad with most banks.
1.5% is normally the lowest charge you can find anywhere to change money. So if you change US to Canuck, you lose 1.5% on top of the bank to bank exchange rate (whether it is 10% difference or 44%). To put it another way, the bank charges you 1.5% to exchange the money. Change it back and you lose another 1.5%, so you will wind up with your original less about 3%, and that is normally the best you can do. An exception noted by somebody in a post above is merchants creating good will business by taking money at par or at a rate better than the bank. They are eating a small loss when they do that. Money exchange places, often in airports, charge more.
A bank or financial institution charging 5% was deliberately gouging (if that was their fee and not the exchange rate). Exchange rates change daily, even hourly, so I don't blame merchants for hedging. Banks should not. They can check exchange rates nearly up to the minute.
Merchants offering better than bank rates are a good deal. So when a top hotel in Spokane one time offered a low price come on deal, plus advertised that they took Canuck money at par, my sister's family and ours all walked in with Canuck money and stayed the weekend.
Correct that most Canadians know a LOT more about the USA than vice versa. Elephant and Shetland pony. Canadians cannot escape US news, TV, music, advertising, etc. but the reverse is not true. Not good or bad, just how it is with a country of small population next to a huge one.
If you travel though several countries on one trip, keeping track of money and expenditures in all those currencies can get plumb confusing if you have to turn in an expense account. :doh2:
Quote from: Okanagan on August 04, 2009, 08:18:26 PM
Correct that most Canadians know a LOT more about the USA than vice versa. Elephant and Shetland pony. Canadians cannot escape US news, TV, music, advertising, etc. but the reverse is not true. Not good or bad, just how it is with a country of small population next to a huge one.
Up here in school the youngun's take social studies and are taught about different countries. At one time I knew every state and it's capital. I found that the young people I asked questions of down south knew little of areas not near them[not just Canada]. Knowledge is power someone said, so why not teach some of it?
We used to teach it, but all of that has changed. Part of it was the society and the "need to make everyone equal" which translates to the top and middle being pulled down so that everyone can be equal near the bottom. Then there are the state and national tests. If you want your school district to look good you teach what is on the test. You can get former tests and some of the questions will be the same so they are used to "practice" for the big test. If it is not on the test it is not looked upon by many districts as worth wasting their teaching time to go over. Since all the districts and states are graded on the test results they do become high stake tests. The federal mandated tests are becoming a little more in line. Ohio's former state superintendent (who I was not a big fan of) chose to set the passage rate high on the state/federal tests. What this did is put more pressure on the schools in Ohio, but it finally has paid off now that the passage guidelines are a little more uniform nationwide. The passage percentage has changed over the years, but it started higher than many other states. Lets say that a student in Ohio needed a score of 75% to pass the federal/state tests while another state set the passage rate at 60%. The other state started out looking much better than Ohio, but when the feds said that all states needed a 75% to pass there was no change in Ohio. Other states had many that had been passing the tests at 60% that were no longer passing - something that you don't want to have happen. We are well on our way to a national curriculum, similar to some other countries, where on October 6 every student in the US will be on page 46 of their book. This will also cause all schools to start at the same time of the year so that this can happen. :sad: This is one of the things that i DO NOT now that I am out of the education profession.
Jerry
Quote from: pitw on August 04, 2009, 11:35:24 AM
Quote from: Carolina Coyote on August 04, 2009, 09:00:58 AM
Pitw, Just wondering when you came across the Border if the Merchant's in the US would accept the flower money?cc
Golly I never even tried :doh2: I took a bunch of money I bought at the bank with me cause I didn't know if they would and I guess I am still ignorant on the subject :wo:
As far as I know they will take canadian money everywhere here.....but a few will most likely gouge you.
Another little difference I noticed was the driver's in Montana are far superior to ours up here :highclap:. I do live by Saskatchewan :wo:. Also can you buy choclate milk in a store? Everytime I would order choclate milk in a restaurant I'd get white milk with a choclate mix of some kind. Up here we get it out of the carton. :shrug:
:laf: Yeah you can buy it in a store, in anywhere from a half a pint to a gallon.
I think the reason the restaurants mix it on the fly is because they cant sell enough of it to keep it fresh if they bought it bulk.
Quote from: FinsnFur on August 06, 2009, 09:22:02 PM
:laf: Yeah you can buy it in a store, in anywhere from a half a pint to a gallon.
I think the reason the restaurants mix it on the fly is because they cant sell enough of it to keep it fresh if they bought it bulk.
Kinda /sorta what I had figured. Up here we must drink more cause it is always there for me. [unless they don't carry it and some don't for your reasons stated before]