Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

seven-day-weekend

Happychappy wrote: »

I think the rather condescending article by Ms Righter in the Times needs to be put into perspective, she is an acclaimed semi ex pat (part time?) and would imagine earns well in excess of £100k per annum, so her little hobby or pastime of visiting the poor people abroad really has no relevance to the ex pat who retired abroad after many years graft in the Uk.

From her two or possibly three holiday homes wherever, to moving lock, stock and barrel, and all possibly on a pension of between 1000 to 2000 euro per month, bares no resemblance to her lifestyle, so to her an additional 20% more on the Chablis or for the maid and gardners tip is of no consequence, however, the slow and steady decline of the pound from around the 1.50 euro not that long ago, to 1.05 euro means so much more and causes real hardship and stress

I suppose in essence it is a horses for courses article and one to be hung in the toilette or El Bano or Kloset ? depending upon where you live ; )

My husband's Teachers' Pension (which is the vast majority of our income at the moment and is what we have to live on) is slightly more than half of your lower figure. He also gets a bit (a small bit) of Incapacity benefit, but this could stop at any time.

And we are reasonably well off amongst the non-working expats here!

droopsnout

I don't know how you do it, s-d-w.

My pension WAS mid-way between Happychappy's figures, and is still above his lower one. When the direct debits and so on are accounted for, when I get my pension on 11 January, we'll have 386 euros to live on until 11 February (using today's exchange rate). That's for food, diesel, clothes, Christmas and birthday gifts, travel - anything that isn't insurance, mortgage, utilities, etc. (Can you imagine the panic caused by a failure of washing machine, car, etc?!)

So how do you possibly pay for everything with roughly 600-700 euros? Life must be much cheaper in España!

seven-day-weekend

droopsnout wrote: »

I don't know how you do it, s-d-w.

My pension WAS mid-way between Happychappy's figures, and is still above his lower one. When the direct debits and so on are accounted for, when I get my pension on 11 January, we'll have 386 euros to live on until 11 February (using today's exchange rate). That's for food, diesel, clothes, Christmas and birthday gifts, travel - anything that isn't insurance, mortgage, utilities, etc. (Can you imagine the panic caused by a failure of washing machine, car, etc?!)

So how do you possibly pay for everything with roughly 600-700 euros? Life must be much cheaper in España!

We don't have a mortgage or rent, droopsnout, and up until recently you could live quite comfortably in southern Spain, especially inland, on a British State Pension if you didn't have these expenses.

We don't buy Christmas or birthday presents, other than for our son and his girlfriend. Emergencies like you mention (car or washing machine breakdown) have to come from savings. So did the car insurance last year (I put it on a 0% credit card and am just about to pay the balance off from savings).

Some things are still cheaper here, our 'Council Tax' is less than 100 euros a year, our water rates are around twelve euros a year (as we have no land to water) and there are some other rates for refuse disposal and other things which are around ten euros a year.

Our road tax for the car is less than 100 euros a year.

So, our housing costs are cheap, which is why we will be able to lock our house up and leave it.

It's the day-to-day living that has gone up! Groceries etc. But we do make a roast chicken last four days (roast on day one, fry up with leftover veg on day two, curry with the legs on day three and stew with the carcase on day four).

We have stopped going out on the whole, other than to people's houses.

At the moment we can manage, but if the exchange rate goes any lower we won't be able to. I'm going to try to get some temping work when I go to the UK in June - at least it will pay for our stay in the UK and we won't have to use the pension, thereby giving us a 'buffer' for when we come back to Spain.

But our main saving is having no rent or mortgage and low housing taxes.

krisskross

We returned from Spain to the UK almost 3 years ago, mostly because of my husband's health issues.

We were able to sell our house in Spain. I don't think we would be affording to live very well if we were still there. Our heating costs alone in the winter were terrifying and friends tell me it is very cold this year.

We don't regret our time in Spain, but neither do we regret coming back.

magictom123

I know this thread after a quick look through seems to be leaning towards people moving to/living in Spain. My girlfriend and I are considering moving abroad in the next few years as we feel that we don't want to bring our child up in this country - get taxed through the nose to live in the cold 11 months of the year.

We are considering Italy as a prospective place to live. Has anyone here ever lived in Italy. I think we would like to look at living in the northern part of Italy. For the last year or so I have been learning Italian at home online. It is still only basic but it is something I would like to develop further - maybe to eventually tailor my work around it - I'm currently doing an office job that a monkey could do.

What do people think? Is Italy a good place to live. I don't know anything about the cost of living there or rates of unemployment, the level of healthcare etc (well, I've done some very basic research). I have found forums for people who live in Italy but replies are slow. Considering this site has millions of people logging on I thought someone would be able to give me a few answers here (hopefully).

By the way I have been to Italy 3 times and my girlfriend lived abroad for a number of months when she was a youngster.

grazie e' a presto!

droopsnout

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

our main saving is having no rent or mortgage and low housing taxes.

Wow!

For interest, here are my monthly expenses:

Electricity 80€
Telephone 16€
Internet 30€
Heating oil 100€ (difficult to estimate, given the yoyo-ing!)
House insurance 44€
Health Insurance 97€
Car insurance 36€
Life insurance 19€ (for mortgage)
Water 24€
Local taxes 114€
Boiler maintenance contract 14€
Bank charges 5€

Total: 579€

Plus the mortgage!

Amounts rounded to nearest euro. There is no road tax in France.

We do the same as you with a chicken, near enough. And we have had to stop going out, too, which is very depressing: it has taken away the joy of being here. If you're stuck inside four walls, it could be anywhere. We did buy a bike each a month ago, and we hope that bike rides and walks will provide us with nearly free trips out. However, we are not young and live on top of a hill, so we have to take the bikes to flatter places in the car!!

In general, we don't go anywhere in the car unless there are at least two reasons for going, e.g., shopping plus post office; shopping plus my voluntary work at the tourist office, etc.

Many Christmas presents this year were vouchers earned from doing surveys on the web. (I also had £50 of Kingfisher vouchers which I was going to use for paint from B&Q on our February trip to the UK, but they're useless now, as they were issued via a subsidiary of Woolworths).

The heating has been turned down, and the cooler night-time setting extended further into daytime.

I don't know what else I can cut down,except that the telephone rental can be done away with if I transfer it to the internet company, but I don't trust them enough!

Our Feb trip will be paid for from savings, which are diminishing rather alarmingly.

seven-day-weekend

krisskross wrote: »

We returned from Spain to the UK almost 3 years ago, mostly because of my husband's health issues.

We were able to sell our house in Spain. I don't think we would be affording to live very well if we were still there. Our heating costs alone in the winter were terrifying and friends tell me it is very cold this year.

We don't regret our time in Spain, but neither do we regret coming back.

Krisskross, last week we spent nearly 80 euros on gas bottles! We have three gas fires; this time of the year the bottles only last a fortnight in the fires and they are nearly 15 euros each. We had to get five gas bottles as all the fires, the water and the cooker had all gone at once (we do have spares , we have nine bottles altogether).The ones for the hot water and cooking last a lot longer, but heating is EXPENSIVE, especially when you consider we have electric fires as well. These old village houses have no insulation to speak of and are COLD in the winter (built to keep the heat out). Being in the mountains it is much colder than on the coast and we need heating from about late October until April. (not all day though, apart from December-January, usually, as the sun warms the house - even if it is cold it is usually sunny!:T

Luckily we have a woodburner in one of the rooms (the only one with a decent chimney) and so far we have been lucky enough not to have to buy any wood (had loads donated), but this is also expensive and I know someone who only has wood for heating and has had to have two loads this winter costing nearly 500 euros.

Like the Spanish in this village, we don't have central heating and only heat the room we are in and at night keep warm in bed.

Spain is no longer the cheap option.

droopsnout

krisskross wrote: »

We returned from Spain to the UK almost 3 years ago, mostly because of my husband's health issues.

Hi, krisskross. Hope you're happy and that your husband is progressing.

droopsnout

Heating oil in France is following the price of energy in general, of course. In May I had to pay 97 cents a litre. A few days ago I paid 56 cents. Since then I believe it's come down to 54 cents.

We get through about 1500 litres a year.

seven-day-weekend

Our Monthly Expenses:

Telephone/Internet 50
Mobiles 20
Electricity 30
Gas 30
Insurance (House) 20
Insurance (Car) 30
Tax (Car) 6
Rates and Taxes (other) 25
Diesel 50

Total 512 euros without food costs - we get about 568 at today's exchange rate which is why I paid the car insurance from savings!

oh! forgot there is another 50 euros a month income.

Don't need health insurance (covered on Spanish NHS) or Life Insurance (no mortgage).

And of course we have to try to find the fare to go to England - usually by drive/ferry as we don't like flying. Usually I manage to save odds and sods from the rent on our UK house to do this (vast majority of rent money pays bills/expenses for this house)- both the people who live in it (son and lodger) work at Matalan and are on short time- let's hope they don't lose their jobs!

I also save any 2-euro coins i get in my change and have about 130 euros worth - which will more than pay the fuel and accommodation when we drive across Spain to Bilbao in June.