Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

gallygirl

Depressing to hear of people's problems.

Whilst no-one should have (and on here obviously hadn't) assumed the exchange rate would stay the same the drop has been totally irrational and hopefully will be corrected. Not that I think the UK economy is strong :rolleyes:, but within the Eurozone economies are diverging even more than before - e.g. Greece is having to offer 2% more interest on govt debt than Germany. This has to be addressed somehow & hopefully will have a positive impact on the exchange rate.

There is also a set of younger people affected - those who bought holiday homes with a euro mortgage are being crippled and cannot rely on bookings to help out due to the recession. We bought a home in Spain a few years ago, fortunately with no mortgage, and so far have no bookings for this year as opposed to 3 at this stage last year. Our neighbours are all retired early, so exchange rate will be decimating their pensions, or (hopefully, still) working with vastly increased costs.

Here's hoping things pick up so no-one is forced into making life-changing decisions.

krisskross

droopsnout wrote: »

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

Hi. He is getting the treatment he needs. We couldn't get it in Spain without a very long wait so we did pay for private treatment. Very expensive when you are self funding.

I think we both feel more secure here in England. Although I did learn Spanish I was never fluent and this can create difficulties. Crime was also an issue, never had so many locks on doors, plus alarms and door and window grilles. Think that was the bit I really disliked, never being sure if the house would still be intact when you returned home.

droopsnout

gallygirl wrote: »

Greece is having to offer 2% more interest on govt debt than Germany. This has to be addressed somehow & hopefully will have a positive impact on the exchange rate.

Hi, gallygirl.

Thanks for joining in. I don't remember seeing your name here before, so allow me to welcome you to this thread.

Your comments above are very interesting, so please do stay with us and post some more!

The whole thing is extremely complicated (unless you write for The Times, lol!) and the more input we get, the better we'll understand.

Savvy_Sue

magictom123 wrote: »

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.

Welcome to the thread, Tom. It's by no means exclusively Spain, we have both French and Dutch connections that I can think of instantly, and we had another lady not so long ago who was getting to grips with Italy.

If it's the cold you object to, you need to check climates carefully. If you remember any geography, you might recall that we actually have quite a temperate climate in the UK because we are a small island with a warm current down one side. Whereas large blocks of land tend to get very cold in winter, and very hot in summer, which I think is a continental climate. And yes, I know it's perishing right now, but it's not a lot warmer for sdw and droopsnout!

Also taxes: you need to fully investigate these. You will normally have to pay tax somewhere, and what you are taxed on can vary quite widely. I don't know how the tax system in Italy works: I know my friends in France would have paid less if they'd had more children. But the healthcare system also needs careful investigation because it works completely differently in each country, and AFAIK nowhere else is 'free at the point of delivery'.

Finally, on to Italy. I have friends there too who are about to leave. One thing they have found is that because they have no extended family to rely on, childcare is extremely difficult, and things like parents evenings at school are arranged in such a way that getting there if you don't have family to look after the children is very difficult. Finding jobs hasn't been easy: she's been teaching English and he's been fixing computers. Without very good Italian, you would be at a serious disadvantage, and I would question how well you can learn any language without face to face tuition.

Wherever you live, you have to get your head round the fact that it's foreign. They do things differently, not necessarily wrong, but different. And you won't always know what it is that you don't know, so you can't easily find out what you need to know.

I could waffle on, but others know better than I do ...

donny-gal

Hi everyone, a late twopenth from me.

We are coping, with keeping both homes running. Luckily I worked full time as well as DH so we have two private pensions coming in, which we need to live on and supplement with savings until 2013 and 2014 respectively. Then with an approx £200 a week extra it should be fine, unless they find a way to avoid giving us OAP. I knew we could not live just on the pensions and saved/budgetted for the make up accordingly, and so far so good.

In Spain we have two windows in the lounge area, and in winter as soon as it starts to get dark/colder then the shutters go down and I have full length lined curtains, supplemented with seperate thermal linings, it is unbelieveable how much difference that makes. We will be putting a curtain across the upstairs door when we go back too. OUr heating is the hot/cold aircon in the lounge and our bedrooms, an electric radiator in the downstairs bathroom and a wall electric heater on the upstairs ensuite. We use Gas for hot water and electricity for cooking, hence a combination microwave and a slow cooker is in place. We are lucky as our places faces south east, so we get sun from when it gets up in the morning to around 3pm in the winter later inthe summer, and it makes a massive difference. The ones opposite me are perishing, though not always sympathetic, as they sit their with their shutters up and fancy voiles at the windows.:rolleyes:

I will pull my Spanish bills together and report back later.

Tom - about Italy, and not wanting cold - I think you need to do some more homework - Northern Italy can be very cold and wet. The biggest problem is getting work, if you can do that and earn enough to live well then you will cope, if however, you do not have a decent paying job stay where you are. Life is very different on the continent and younger children adjust better than teenagers.

Sorry to be blunt, but most people fail if they have no work.

Take care
DG

droopsnout

magictom123 wrote: »

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.

Morning, magictom123, and everyone.

I didn't reply last night as I thought that this post required a detailed and thoughtful reply, and I was a bit tired to do that last night. Since then, Savvy_Sue and donny-gal have said a lot of what I think.

I can sympathise with your thoughts about bringing up a child in a country which I find is now struggling with itself, has become unbelievably materialistic, and which I find to be turning very much into a police state. (The latest proposals for monitoring email, text and phone traffic are nothing less than intolerable).

On the other hand, don't diss the climate quite so much. You can find good micro-climates around the UK (my mum lives in one!), and you can find bad micro-climates around the continent, and I expect that in the north of Italy, within range of many a mountain, there are areas of poor weather.

Someone earlier mentioned the myth of foggy Britain that persists on the continent. It certainly is a widely held view in our little corner of France. And yet, there is far more fog here than I ever experienced in the UK!

magictom123 wrote: »

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.

Why?

I'm not being rude. I'm sure there are dozens of reasons. But what are YOUR reasons? Your experience of the country is very limited. Have you stayed there in the winter? Have you ever been on your own talking to a builder, an electrician, a hairstylist? Do you know just how difficult it can be to communicate when conducting anything but the most basic of tourist transactions?

magictom123 wrote: »

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.

That's great, but you have a long way to go. Of course, the best way of learning is be inside the culture, but you'd almost certainly need private or public lessons to make sense of everything, or it can become overwhelming.

An office job in Milan or Turin is a very different proposition from one in London or Birmingham. And in any case, why on earth should any business take you on when you can't communicate fluently with your colleagues/clients/suppliers/etc? Unfortunately, I have seen tragedies here when young families have moved over, optimistic and bright-eyed, only to find that there are no jobs, and never will be for those linguistically challenged. Remember that the immigrant population in France is largely from North Africa, where the second language is French anyway. They get by very easily. I'm not sure of the position in Italy. Those young families left a secure world in the UK for the great adventure, only to have to slink back, tails between legs, thousands of pounds worse off - if not broke completely.

magictom123 wrote: »

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).

As Sue said, you need to do an enormous amount of research before you do anything to commit your family.

Approach companies you think may be interested in your abilities in Italy. Learn about the housing market. Read about the climate. Take all your holidays there.

Consider the implications of leaving your families behind - how will your mum and your girlfriend's mum feel? Do you have potential future duties in the care of your parents?

How will it feel to leave perhaps lifelong friends? Are you prepared for a sense of loneliness, even isolation? (You WILL experience this!)

Check out the situation with regard to travel, especially the low-cost airlines. No route is guaranteed to continue. Will you be able to afford to nip back to the UK when required?

Investigate tax (including local taxes) and healthcare systems. ("Taxed through the nose"? VAT is 19.6% on most things in France! There is no PAYE and you, not your employer, are responsible for settling your own tax bills, and you are paid gross).

Have you considered what your girlfriend would do? Housewife? Work? What later, when your child is more grown up?

magictom123 wrote: »

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).

Keep looking! You may find help here (if you haven't already come across this site): http://expattalk.com/eve?cdra=Y&s=7600090262

magictom123 wrote: »

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.

I think three visits is way too little experience on which to uproot your family and risk their futures. I wanted to move in the 1980s when my kids were small. I was a qualified teacher and Head of Faculty. But it was virtually impossible to find work in France, and the move had to wait for my retirement. OK, I'm probably more cautious than most.

Now if this sounds like we're all warning you off, that would be a shame. Moving your family abroad could be just the right thing for you all, opening up a better future for your child, especially. But you DO need to spend MUCH more time getting to know the location of your choice, and understanding the deep-reaching nature of what you're proposing to do.

Speak to as many people as possible who have actually made this move. A young lady called asea has been on this thread, and she lives in Italy at the moment. Find her posts and send her a PM. That's a start. (You may also find her on the forum at www.internations.org).

Whatever you decide, I'm sure the good folk on here wish you good luck. Please do let us know how you get on both with your researches and your move.

magictom123

Thank you all for your replies. They have given me some serious things to consider. One thing I would like to add is that I can see how my post was quite general. Maybe it comes across as quite naive because of this. The information you have given me is invaluable. Thanks again.

At the moment, we just got a new 5 year fixed deal on our mortgage so my plan is to use that time to try and become as fluent as possible. If this happens sooner then we may rent out our home here in England and go rent in Italy ourselves. The site I use to learn Italian is called Livemocha.com I am also friends with an Italian called Gabriele who has been extremely helpful in teaching me Italian via the Internet.

I know I am waffling here but I wanted to point out our situation. Without being nosey, can anyone give a rough idea of savings needed to up sticks and move to another country. Of course you need money for rent in the short term and need to find a job asap but what other things are there to consider when moving abroad. Have the people here that have moved abroad used agents to transfer their possessions or have they just gone with the clothes on their backs.

Thanks again for the information and I look forward to reading through some of the older comments in this thread and hopefully contributing as much as I can if any newbies to this idea want to chat etc.

droopsnout

Hi, Tom.

Congrats on your mortgage deal!

So you're thinking of moving in up to five years? That's reassuring! How old will the little one be then? Because the school transfer thing is important, but the younger they are, the more adaptable and flexible they are, and they cope better.

I don't know the language site you mention, but I'll pop over and have a look later. I taught myself some Italian many years ago for a holiday, and would very much like to get better at it. The re-starting point will be very low!!

Hehe!! Don't worry about waffling. You're a youngster here on a thread inhabited by old wafflers, and I'm probably the one most at fault!!

To your queries, then ...

We moved almost all of our possessions from the UK to France using a professional removal outfit. With hindsight, I think we should have sold most of it in local papers, car boots, etc. But to be honest, our move was so fast that we didn't have time to think all that through properly, I suspect. (Our house in the UK sold before the "For Sale" board went up). We were charged £1700 for the removals and a few weeks' storage six years ago, and we were told by others that it was not a lot to pay.

We sold our house and had the money in the bank before coming here, so I find it difficult to answer your question about how much cash to have. As a general rule, you should always have six months' income in the bank for emergency use anyway. I would probably multiply that by three for living abroad. If you're renting, and your house is safely being paid for back in the UK, you always have that safety net. Most of us here, including me, have a home in the UK as well as abroad, because, well, you just never know what will happen. Some friends of ours sold a large house in the UK and bought a small one nearby, just to have a foothold, and they rent it to their son. So to cover your UK mortgage AND your Italian rent, you're going to need a considerable income and/or the rent money you speak of. At any rate, I certainly think you should have a place in the UK, even if it's just a little flat somewhere.

If you read this thread, you'll see that some of us are getting by on quite small amounts of money, once the bills are paid. There's some useful info on this not far above. But your expenses will be bigger, because you need to keep buying children's clothes and shoes, not to mention books (English or Italian?!) and toys. You will probably spend more than us wrinklies on days and evenings out, too. But you can work that out from your present outgoings. To be safe, add 25%.

One other word of advice ... In the UK there are often foreign property exhibitions around the country. If they cover Italy, go to them. (Maybe even if they don't, just to get a feel). But bear in mind that these agencies often charge somewhat over the odds. You'll find more genuine prices if you go to your chosen area and see the local estate agents. But, BUT, do use a legal representative you can both understand and trust. (In France, the notaire is working more for the government than for either vendor or purchaser, and so is generally accepted by both parties. But you may well wish to appoint your own solicitor. I don't know the situation in Italy). Make sure that you understand fully all contracts you sign. When you do go for a mortgage for an Italian property, will you want it in sterling or euros? Weigh up the pros and cons. Remember that all the expenses you have for your UK house, you'll also have for your Italian house: local taxes, insurances, etc.

Also consider inheritance. The laws are different in our different countries. In France, for instance, you CANNOT normally disinherit a child you may have perhaps become estranged from, or who turns out to be a murderer, or something!

Think about wills. You'll need one in both countries to cover possessions in each.

But most of all, research the employment market. have a look here. The article is three years old, but ...

Thanks for offering your advice to others. Like yourself, there are always new people coming along, so do feel free to pontificate as much as some of us bossy seniors! The more, the merrier. (That's for my sig!)

droopsnout

By the way, Tom ... When you leave your monkey's office job, is there any chance I could do it, as I really need the dosh right now!

droopsnout

Good news!

The pound is standing at 1,08€.

On a property costing 200,000€ that saves you nearly £11,000 compared to when the rate was 1,02€, Tom!!