Transferring money from uk to Ireland

If you have assets in one currency and your spending in another you are taking on currency risk.

There are benefits of this - such as potentially higher investment returns in the other currency and currency appreciation. The opposite also applies.

I have a six-figure euro sum in savings right now for a potential house purchase in Ireland. If you told me to hold some or all of it in sterling I’d tell you to get your head examined.
 
I think they should recognise that if they defer making the exchange in the hope or expectation that the rate will get better, they are also accepting a risk that it will get worse. And, from where we are now, the expected probability of the rate getting better and the expected probability of the rate getting worse are the same. So, the question is, why would you run this risk, when the expected return is nil?

Suppose you put off making the exchange and, after 30 days, the rate has improved by 5%. It could have got worse by another 5%, but you've been lucky. You still face exactly the same dilemma, because you don't know what the rate is going to do in the next 30 days. So do you exchange after month 1, or defer in the hope/expectation of a better rate at the end of month 2?

OP lives in euroland and presumably intends to spend this money in euros. (If not, why are they looking to exchange it at all?) By deferring the exchange they are exposing themselves to a foreign exchange risk that they don't need to expose themselves to, and they shouldn't do this unless they are gettin some positive return for accepting this risk.

You're forecasting a positive return based on a '"norm" that you expect the exchange rate to return to that is better than today's rate. But I think that's a flawed approach; there is no reason to think that the rates that have prevailed in the past are a factor that affects the rates that will prevail in the future. The hypothetical FX traders that I mentioned with the villas and the champagne and the quails' eggs and such did not get to this position by trading on the basis of any theory of norms.

Suppose OP had €70k sitting in a deposit account right now with no plans to spend it in the next while. Would you suggest that he should consider converting it to GBP, holding it until the EUR/GBP rate reverts to a "norm", and then converting it back? If you're confident in your theory of norms, that is the advice you should give him, surely? And, if you're not advising him to consider buying GBP to profit from the expected reversion-to-norm, why would you consider advising him to hold GBP for that purpose?
 
"Suppose you put off making the exchange and, after 30 days, the rate has improved by 5%. It could have got worse by another 5%, but you've been lucky. You still face exactly the same dilemma, because you don't know what the rate is going to do in the next 30 days. So do you exchange after month 1, or defer in the hope/expectation of a better rate at the end of month 2?"

There is no indication from the OP that they need the money in 30, 60, 90 or 120 days.
If they do, they can ignore my suggestion.
Otherwise, and if they're happy to leave the sum in GBP for as long as is expedient, they can consider that option and whether it might suit them.
 
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