For the average middle class person in Venezuela -- educated and still holding on to a good job -- he needs two years of wages to buy a single plane ticket in his own currency. He needs to work for two full years to buy one single plane ticket -- he's stuck there. The problem is that he waited too long to leave. That's something important that I write about often: You have to know when to leave. You needed to leave Venezuela at least three or four years ago; now you're getting to the point where you're stuck there. The official exchange rate between the USD and Bolivar is 1 to 10, but unofficially which is the real one you experience, is more like 1 to 1,000. So they basically are starving you to death through a completely devaluated currency which is what you're getting paid in.I hadn't thought of that. You used to have money enough to buy tickets out of the country. Now you've just got worthless paper. If you've got a family and a home, if you've got roots in the place, you're much less likely to make a run for it, so you stay, hoping things will get better until it's too late and leaving is no longer an option.
Ouch.
3 comments:
You also have to have someplace to go.
Always a good idea to hold some gold and property overseas.
Or if you can stand the Orwellian IRS FATCA reporting, some foreign bank accounts.
I'm not a fan of gold, but keeping some of your money in a foreign bank and a foreign currency would provide a backstop.
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