Money Woes

The fun part of studying abroad is paying for it. As you may deduce, it is quite expensive to study overseas. I am lucky in that my program is only one year in duration, otherwise I doubt I would be able to afford it.

The easiest way for me to pay my tuition is by visa, and, given that my student status doesn't exactly make the bank want to give me a very high limit, I set up a six-payment plan for my tuition, just enough that each payment would be less than my payment limit. 

Alas, tragedy! The first of the month revealed a pending charge on my visa greater than my limit. Panicking, I attempted to raise my limit. No go. I then transferred the money onto my visa pre-emptively, hoping that if the payment was already there, the charge would go through. 

To my great relief, a check on my account this morning showed that it had gone through. However, this still left the question of why I got charged so much more than I had calculated. I prepared to go to the school and inquire, or to call the bank and see if they perhaps had charged me some mystery fee. 

The mystery was solved this afternoon, however, when I realized that they day the charge had been processed, the conversion rate had been up from the 1.5 CAD to 1 GPB it had been holding at fairly steadily all summer to 1.7 (it's now back down to 1.6). 

Lesson learned: the conversion rate is definitely something to keep my eye on.