Brexit budgeting decisions

Your question seems to be about what the exchange rate will be 7 months from now.

Anyone who purports to know is either a) divinely inspired or b) a snake oil salesman.

After you assess the source, make your decision about the offered advice.

I would suggest contacting the hotels directly rather than using hotels.com. Many hotels will give you some type of discount or extra if you book directly.

The decision to pre-pay should not be based on an exchange rate guess. You need to be sure you are prepared to lose the money should you not make your reservation. Most pre-paid hotel reservations are less expensive as they are not refundable. If you choose that route be sure you have adequate trip insurance.

Some hotels offer substantial discounts for prepaid, non-refundable reservations. (Premier Inns tend to do this.) Those discounts, which can be up to about 20% or a bit higher, would probably swamp any change in the exchange rate. However, you should take advantage of such deals only if you are absolutely prepared to lose all your money if something happens to prevent you from taking the trip as planned (or if you have trip insurance and are confident it will cover lost hotel expenses).

The risk that something will go wrong is too great for me to book non-refundable rooms very far in advance, but you may have a greater tolerance for that risk.

Learn from my mistake.

I usually never prepay a reservation, but I thought I would save with the exchange rate so low and committed for a stay in April. Since that time, the rate has gone down 70 pounds if I made a reservation for the same stay at the same hotel. Looks like I’m paying another “stupid fee” which is our family’s name for a poor financial decision.

On the other hand, I will be in London and won’t let this slow me down at all!

You can find "experts" with their own good reasons for forecasting the exchange rate at the end of 2019 will be £1=$1, or that it will be £1=$1.60. All I will say is that the pound is already very undervalued on a purchasing parity point of view.

I agree with others that travelers like us are lousy currency speculators and it's not worth trying to dope out which way it will go. That said, does anyone really think that the pound will rise in the wake of a "hard Brexit" three months from now?

I usually reserve well ahead at a rate that lets me change or cancel if my plans change. That may cost me if nothing changes, but I really don't notice then. It can save me a lot if something does change, which happens often enough that I'm comfortable paying for the flexibility.

Trying to forecast exchange rate is no different than playing the stock market. Look at our recent stock market history. The swings are not that significant day to day but can be very unpredictable. Nobody knows.