How long did it take you to Stop converting

GBP to USD in your head?  Have you yet?  Obv. when i travel there i'm constantly converting if i'm going to buy a top or pants.  I just hope i'll be able to shake the habit once i'm living there, so i don't depress myself and start to hate shopping!

You know, I don't know! lol  But it's a really good question!  Maybe 6 months?  I know after a while once you begin to really grasp what's expensive, what's not, etc. then it falls by the wayside.  Something else that took me a bit to overcome - remembering I don't have to worry about added tax at the till.  If it says £1.99 then that's what you pay!

I swear it was like I had to hypnotize myself into NOT comparing prices.
I would go out to buy the kids clothes and shoes and come back with nothing...because AFTER I went to Marks and Spencer and saw the prices I about died.
NO WAY would I pay 50 US dollars for a baby outfit that might fit for 3 weeks tops.

Thankfully, I learned there are cheaper alternatives but sadly they don't always offer much in choice of colors.  I mean..if the "in" color is pink...then EVERYTHING is a shade of pink.
That drives me INSANE when shopping.
Its like total color obsession.

I often mail order from France...its cheaper, and more colorful : )

For me it was as soon as I started working over here and making money.  

That said I think now I've going completlely the other way.  Last time I was home I took all sorts to the counter at Wal-Mart and never once did it occur to me that I would have to add sales tax to the total!

 I mean..if the "in" color is pink...then EVERYTHING is a shade of pink.
That drives me INSANE when shopping.
Its like total color obsession.

Ugh!  Me too!  That drives me *crazy*.  I was at H&M Kids just yesterday and apparently the color of the month is pink and grey....every little girl thing was a variation on these two colors.  Grrrrrr!

I think I stopped doing the dollar/pounds thing after about six months or so.  Tho, I still do it some times...especially when I'm buying shoes.  I can't believe how expensive they are here!

I converted for about eight months, until my sister came to visit and drove me so crazy converting every little thing that I stopped there and then.  

I only started doing it about 8 months ago, when the dollar started dropping so badly in value compared to the pound,, I can't stop converting it now. I keep thinking to myself, "Do I need this now, or can I wait til April when I am in the states, and just get it there?".  

I stopped really shortly after I arrived, don't know why...
and thens tarted up the second we made the decision to move back to the States.
Now I can't stop!
*argh*

Reading this I've just realized I don't convert money anymore. (been here little over a year).

Now that I know what a good price would be I don't think about it anymore.

I mean..if the "in" color is pink...then EVERYTHING is a shade of pink.
That drives me INSANE when shopping.
Its like total color obsession.

The stuff in the shops is so disgusting nowadays. It's a mixture of 80's and 60's stuff. It was bad the first time, who'd want to wear it now? Why would you pay to have your clothes ripped? And I think I just might gag at the next girl I see wearing bright freaking yellow high heels.  

Its been almost a year and I still convert  

I only convert if I'm trying to figure if it's cheaper for my mother to pick something up AND post it to us.  Otherwise, I earn my money in £s, I pay my bills in £s, and $s don't really come into play in my day-to-day life.

My problem is I can't figure out what is a good buy.  I want to compare a pound to a dollar.  Is that the type of comparison that would work here? When something is a pound I think I am a getting a good deal. Will be glad when the time comes when I feel comfortable with spending money. If I can get a nice blouse for 10 pounds is that a good buy?  Some of you who have lived here help those of us who are new out. What do you consider a good buy?

Since I am still getting paid from the States, I am painfully aware of the conversion rates.  When I first got here, £100 out of the cash machine cost me $165 - now its over $190!!

Luckily, my whining about it to my US offices got me a pay increase, so here's hoping for a big dollar rebound!!

Until then, it still costs me $75 to fill my car with diesel

That stinks big ed!

My fiancee's comissions will be payed in USD.  I think we're going to squirrel as much as we can afford into a USD account for when we return in a few years.....i don't want to depress myself converting that to pounds.

Though you will see advice on the web that says something along the lines of "Think of 1 USD = 1 UKP", I don't think that's right.  As I write, the exchange rate is 1 USD = 0.5383 UKP, 1 UKP = 1.8576 USD.  In these terms, a dollar is worth a smidge over 50p, so think of the seven-sided 50 pence piece as the dollar coin.

But it's probably more complicated than that. Value Added Tax (currently 17.5%) is always included in the stated price here, whereas in the States I understand the tax is not.

There are excise taxes too, which are also included in the price - for example on fuel, booze, tobacco etc - these change with each Government Budget according to how much the Government wants to encourage/discourage us to buy things (among other arcane policy decisions involved).

Also your perception of what is good value will depend upon whether your income is paid in dollars or pounds.  My colleague Molly is going to the USA on holiday this summer and is rubbing her hands at how cheap things are going to be over there; someone coming in the opposite direction is going to be wringing their hands - the dollar in their pocket is not going to get them as much.

Other things that affect the cost of things is how many or much of them there is to go round.  A crude example:  there are 622 people per square mile in the UK, but only 80 per square mile in the States - so there is less land to go round here, therefore real property is more pricey. Also things are manufactured in greater variety and in greater numbers in the States, therefore you'd expect them to be cheaper there.  Then again, some things are manufactured in the US that are scarcely manufactured here - eg., DVDs and software.  So the producers can to some extent fix the price to their advantage, hence the 1 USD to 1 UKP equivalence in those commodities.

I've just asked Molly if a blouse would be good value for ten quid and she says, yes it would be!

I'm not a economic/fiscal/financial expert (bloody hell! I can scarcely balance my own household budget!) so the above stuff is probably not very well informed - it's just my way of working it out.