Moving to Eurozone

Greezmunki

My wife and I have been planning for some time to move to Slovenia in the middle of next year. Our savings are now worth 30% less (thanks bankers!!) when it comes to moving money from here to Slovenia to buy a house. What was affordable last year now seems out of reach, has anyone else successfully tried to get a mortgage recently in Slovenia or Austria to fund a new build? We realise that we should have moved our money two years ago when the rate was much better and with sterling sinking lower every day are very worried how we are going to do this without losing even more. We are thinking of splitting the house in two and selling/renting out the upper floors/appartment as a holiday home/let, but our initial fund won't stretch now. Anyone got any workable ideas? Better yet, anyone looking for an appartment in one of the best hiking, skiing, fishing, hang-gliding, cycling areas of Europe?

carefullycautious

I think by the middle of next year we will all be lucky to have a weeks break in Bogna the way the economy is looking. If you havent got enough to see you through this with a tidy sum to fall back on and a well thought out plan for when times are lean, how will it work long term?

Greezmunki

We have been saving hard for years to do this and we felt that as we have a house here to rent out/sell we would be able to do this and have a safety net. Saddly, the banks/government have cut the net away!!! If we sell our house here and buy there, it is not the cost but the exchange rate that screws us

_bankrupted

Can you wait 12 months or more?

The currency situation is only temporary, I follow it probably more closely than you having a rather substantial financial interest in Spain, funded by sterling.

But that's the beauty of having of our own currency. Both the Dollar and Sterling have fallen considerably against the Euro. This is not some expression about the "soundness" of the respective economies, it's government intervention to lessen the economic crisis in our country. The long term suffering is/will be felt by Euro economies.

If ever you needed proof about deliberate engineering by the UK Goverment to devalue the currency look at the last minutes of the BOE.

They put out a statement about considering a cut larger than 1.5% but decided not to as this may send out a poor message about the strength of the economy and the effect it might have on sterling. Now releasing that information 2 weeks later had the very same effect. Sterling fell around 5% against the Euro over a day of so.

That was the final evidence I needed to confirm the manipulation by Brown and Darling. And the bonus for them was that this has been achieved without a reduction in interest rates so savers are not hit.

Technically the UK is not in recession. That's a very interesting point.

Germany the economic power of Europe -- In recession
Spain -- Highest unemployment in Europe, massive housing bubble
Greece -- Riots due to corrupt society
Italy -- Bankrupt
Portugal --- Almost as bad as the others.

Add into all those Med countries a massive fall in tourism next summer, due to recession. 20% of Spains GDP is from construction, that has been turned off overnight. Not sure what % is from toursim but it has 6 million brits visting every year. That's going to reduce by 30% at least.

People hark on about the UK doesn't export anything? They forget that it's a global economy and work moves to where it is cheap. The UK is now 30% cheaper than Euroland.

If you're a rich Arab going to restore a piece of fine art, do you do it in Rome or London now? 20 years ago work did not move around the world to the extent it does now and especially so if we go back to the 30's depression.

From my own experience I have seen a 1 milion euro contract (already running) cancelled and the work moved in house to the UK. Multiple that by all the other business decisions that are being taken and you find a considerable movement of work from Euroland to the UK. Or Euroland to US.

That in essence is why we see the German finance minister critisise the UK goverment fiscal policy. Why it concerns Germany I don't know, we are not part of the Euro and if we want to bankrupt the UK why would they care. It's really beacuse he knows that what we are doing is forcing work out of Euroland to UK and obviously he's not happy and he can't do anything about it.

So my predicition is that as this recession gets far worse, globally we will all fall, but Euroland is going to suffer a lot more. Then the Euro rate will fall to below that of BOE and sterling will strengthen.

Even though I am hit financially by the fall of sterling, working in the murky world of contract work I am likely to gain more than suffer as my chances are riding out the storm whilst still in employment are higher now that we are so much cheaper.

So for those that moan about the fall in sterling whilst working in the UK, they probably don't appreciate the benefit to UK Plc..