Comment by shoobiedoo
9 hours ago
I live in Japan and five years ago my drinking buddy at the time only had USD and was about to get on the shinkansen. He needed Yen ASAP. So he said, "dude I'll trade you a 100USD for 10000YEN." At the time it was an easy fifteen bucks or something profit after exchange, so I said, sure, here ya go.
I put it in a drawer and forgot about it until a few weeks ago. I'm going to the moon with this, ladies and gentlemen
It used to be the rule of thumb - 1 dollar - 100 yen.
I guess it still is - it just went from 1 USD to 1 AUD to now 1 NZD :-D
I still do that in my head-- minus two zeros. But nope, not even close now. It was a habit for so long, it's hard to correct...
Diamond hands pays off at last, congrats on the windfall!
Who charges their buddy 15 USD exchange fees on 100 USD? :(
He literally put 100USD in front of me, said he forgot to get more yen before his trip, and asked for a favor. Am I really in the wrong from your perspective?
I did something similar for a US tourist who was making me ashamed of being a US tourist. Got on a boat tour, bar is cash only, he only has dollars. I traded him something like $100 worth of yen, I told him the exchange rate, and that he was paying above it. He didn't care, he just wanted to buy some drinks
It would be more weird if you or your friend insisted on nickel and diming each other over a favour that would undoubtably be returned in the future.
Yes, the move to do was to take a pair of scissors to cut down the 100 dollar bill to fair market value, and give the remainder back to your friend.
/s
Yes
You could have given him the bill for his immediate expenses and later give him the difference. Or pay him a beer or a lunch to make up for it. I'd never take advantage of a friend in need like that.
And as you said, "it was an easy 15 bucks". You were very aware of what you were doing: easy money off your "friend", instead of friends not minding a few dollars missing here or there.
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If I was in that situation and I’d help my friend not try to make a buck off them when they are down.
Between electronic transfer and just settle the debt later, isn’t really an excuse…
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That's the wrong read. It's more that it's easy to understand. "I will give you a 100 dollar bill, please give me a 10,000 yen bill."
Does seem within the range of “hit me back when I see you next week, buddy” though.
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He must have been a very itchy man.
It might have been a gift by his friend. You don't know the details, maybe the friend is more affluent, maybe op had already let him stay in his apartment and given him food and this was the friends covert attempt to even the scale without directly offering money.
In 2021, USD to JPY exchange rate ranged from ~102 to ~115, and the average was ~109. The actual exchange rate could be a bit less depending on where you make the exchange, so 100 USD to 10000 JPY doesn't seem like that much off.
(For example, I noticed that if I buy something from Amazon or try to pay for something using Paypal, the exchange rate they offered me is consistently worse than the market rate if I elect to pay with USD instead of JPY. The difference often adds up to a few dollars, even accounting for foreign transaction fees that my bank might charge.)
This is the kind of handwringing over $100 ethics I come to HN for!
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You mean the cost of a couple of beers at the end of the day?
OP clearly stated the situation was of a mutual benefit - friend got their Y now and don't need to bother with doing an exchange, OP got a few spare bucks which was a such big sum what it literally sat in the drawer for 5 (five) years.