Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

seven-day-weekend

Er..no... how is it doing????

droopsnout

1 gbp = 1.15422 eur
1 eur = 0.866388 gbp

seven-day-weekend

Brilliant!

gfplux

I sold some UK Pounds yesterday.
The rate I got was 1.14666 at 14.45 Luxembourg time. I did this in my local Bank and that is the time on the receipt.
I was quite content as this is above the average (interbank rate) of 2009 of 1.123
However only time will tell.
Last year I made two trades that averaged at 1.1215 so although I could have done better I also could have done worst as the high was 1.19 and the low 1.021during the year.
I also consider that normal mortals like us do not achieve the interbank rate.
Any one sold some pounds this week?

donny-gal

Oh guys, I had spotted it, but was keeping quiet for as soon as we mention it it drops like a stone.
DG

droopsnout

The weakness of the euro was due to the poor state of the Greek economy, not some quirk of fate. The pound is holding at around the 1.14 mark. At that rate, a significant improvement would be noticed in my next pension payment. Perhaps one or two other eurozone economies would like to experience a difficulty or two, and then my pension could be restored to 2007 levels??

Ah, well, I can dream, can't I?

By the way, gfplux, whilst in England I tried to open a bank account with Barclays, but they just didn't want to know. Do you think the staff at the Accrington branch were not as well informed as the staff in your London branch?

seven-day-weekend

droopsnout, I believe you own a place in the UK? Could you open an account using that address?

droopsnout

Not sure, really. Depends what proof of residency they want. After all, I'm not resident in the UK at all.

Opening a new account was on my list of things to do, but despite spending over a month there, I found only one opportunity to go into the bank to ask.

It won't help with the bank account, but early next month, we're going for a holiday to get over the hectic travelling and visiting in the UK!!

Of course, it's always lovely to see friends and relatives, and regretfully we weren't able to visit everyone we wanted to see, and some people very close to us were disappointed that we couldn't see them. I hope they don't take offence!

I'm really not sure what the solution is. Various possibilities have been put forward to us, including the idea that we should go to one place only, and that anyone who wants to see us should make the effort to visit, since we made the effort to travel the much bigger distance from France. But it can never be as simple as that! (And we could end up with no visitors at all!!)

So now we wait to see who would like to see us here at home. There could already be a queue for June ...

hartcjhart

proof of residency would normally be utility bills in your name,
with banks it depends what sort of account you want to open as to the exact 'proof' they want.
try going to nationwide and setting up a 'basic' account,you will only get a hole in the wall card though

seven-day-weekend

droopsnout wrote: »

Not sure, really. Depends what proof of residency they want. After all, I'm not resident in the UK at all. I opened one at Nationwide when I was in the Uk. I explained the situation and said I had a house in the Uk as well as one in Spain. He asked me what address was on my driving licence ( it's my UK address) and I was able to open it on the strength of that. Have you anything to do with that house with your name and address on it? That may suffice. We actually made sure we kept our names on one or two of the bills specifically for such a situation (although we also kept UK bank accounts too).

Opening a new account was on my list of things to do, but despite spending over a month there, I found only one opportunity to go into the bank to ask.

It won't help with the bank account, but early next month, we're going for a holiday to get over the hectic travelling and visiting in the UK!!

Of course, it's always lovely to see friends and relatives, and regretfully we weren't able to visit everyone we wanted to see, and some people very close to us were disappointed that we couldn't see them. I hope they don't take offence! We can't always see everybody. Even being there for five months we didn't see everybody. If they don't understand, well that's a shame but people normally seem OK about it.

Having said that, we enjoy travelling around the country seeing our friends; also several of them came to Pembrokeshire to join us on a long weekend while we were on our home exchange holiday.

I'm really not sure what the solution is. Various possibilities have been put forward to us, including the idea that we should go to one place only, and that anyone who wants to see us should make the effort to visit, since we made the effort to travel the much bigger distance from France. But it can never be as simple as that! (And we could end up with no visitors at all!!)

So now we wait to see who would like to see us here at home. There could already be a queue for June ...

I'm not surprised you have visitors queuing up to visit you!!