A Dong for your thoughts: worthless currencies of the world

Buying a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe :)

A little over two years ago, Bill Gates was listed as the world's richest man with a fortune of $40 billion. If he was having trouble counting his zeros, spare a thought for the typical person in Zimbabwe in the same year if they nipped to the corner shop for bread and milk (which of course they wouldn't). They had to face the fact that even one of their new 100000000000000 notes would not be enough to buy a loaf of bread. It's a case where people were pushing around wheelbarrows full of bank notes and a thief would have his eye on the wheelbarrow itself and not its contents. 

The fact is that not all currencies are born equal, and even those that are once strong can soon get watered down to worthlessness. I am still a proud owner of a few Yugoslav Dinar coins, picked up when I travelled through the country in 1987 on my way to Istanbul. When I returned to the region a few months later, the currency was worth 10% of its value on my earlier trip. 

When currencies hit a downward spiral the instinctive remedy for governments is to issue a new set of bank notes, first adding and then removing a string of zeros from the original currency. In the last twenty years this has happened in Europe to Yugoslavia, Turkey and Romania. Needless to say the change in the number of noughts does nothing by itself to deal with whatever the issue it is that's causing the problem and just creates confusion for those who have to use these paper symbols of failure.

So what are the current basket cases in the world's currency markets? Here are five countries where you'll become an instant millionaire after an ATM visit.

5. Guinea - $1 buys 6675 Guinean Francs

4. Laos - $1 buys 8135 Lao Kip

3. Iran - $1 buys 10671 Iranian Rial

2. Sao Tome and Principe - $1 gets you 17244 Dobra

And in number 1 place is the good old Vietnamese Dong - for $1 you can get 20876 Dong

So what does it mean for those of use travelling through these countries? Well, above all else you need to become familiar with the money very quickly. It's very hard to count multiple zeros quickly in the back of a taxi or when getting change from a street vendor. The best advice is to learn the colour of the different notes as this will be the quickest way to distinguish a 100000 from a 1000000 note without making an expensive mistake. 

And as for saving any leftover money for your next visit? If you're one of those who likes to keep a few notes or coins from each place you visit then consider your stash a collector's item. The chances are that when you return to that country again, the money literally won't be worth the paper it is printed on. 

Decisions...

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