Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

seven-day-weekend

Just in case anyone is still interested; our car finally has its Spanish citizenship - what a palaver!.

It has its new Spanish registration documents and new Spanish plates.

We are now driving it to the UK in July (it was illegal in both countries before:eek: ) as it is now Europe-wide legal.

Basically your car has to be registered/imported in the country in which you are resident.

The reason ours took so long is:

1. We were going to do the registration ourselves, but we kept getting conflicting advice and decided not to.
2. We gave a British gestor (para-lawyer, very common in Spain) the job - she did nothing for months. So we 'sacked' her.
3. We then asked the man at the garage to do it for us and he gave us a quote of 2400 euros, which everyone else said was a rip-off. So we did not accept the quote.
4. A German expat told us we did not need to officially import it, all we had to do was get an ITV (Spanish MOT). So we did. He said that was all we needed to do and seeing as he has lived in Spain for over 30 years we assumed he knew what he was talking about. Turned out he didn't, but we didn't find that out til much later.
5. We then gave it to a Spanish Gestor, he has eventually done the work, taking eight months. However, he only charged us 500 euros (including all taxes).

The trouble with Spain is, people don't know the law, even people whose business it is to know the law, such as lawyers, gestors and the police. This is mainly because the laws keep changing and the paperwork is a minefield.

Anyway, my strong advice to anyone is....buy a Spanish car! (Although second-hand ones are comparatively expensive).

Sorry to ramble, but thought it might help someone.

droopsnout

And I thought re-registering was a bit tricky here in France!! It's nothing compared to that!!

Well done, s-d-w!

seven-day-weekend

Thanks....people here know the saga of our car and I can't believe the amount of people who've come up and hugged us or shaken our hands! It's like we have won on the Premium Bonds or something! Our Spanish neighbours are delighted!

'Coche es espanol!' (Car is Spanish!) they say to us.

The thing is, many expats here don't bother importing their car. They either buy Spanish or drive illegally. We are somewhat of a novelty, especially as it has taken so long.

Still it's done now!

seven-day-weekend

We are even thknking of having a ' fiesta de placas' in honour of the number plates!

CyranoCat

Does anybody know if you are still entitled to pay into an ISA if you are living abroad?
I am moving to Madrid in September to teach, and will have Spanish residency although I may come back to the UK during school holidays.
I will be renting out my flat in the UK and would like to save some of the income but not sure of the best way to do it.
Any ideas?

donny-gal

Depends if you decide to be taxed in Spain or the UK, but if you can keep a UK address, and have it in before you go, I dont know how that works.
DG

missile

Cyrano Cat,

You can pay into an existing ISA. However, as a resident under spanish tax laws you ought to declare all your income, i.e. including your UK rental and ISAs. Then I believe the ISA interest will become taxable.

Interest rates are not as good as in UK but it is well worth seaking out fixed term deals. I recently got over 5% (after tax) return on a 12 month investment with CAM. Be very careful who you invest with, you may see very attractive adverts 7.0%+ and even 14% return, but these are not without risk and there is no FSA - spanish equivalent to regulate the market.

There are a number of reputable international IFAs and it would be worth while speaking to one as there are various ways to (legally) avoid paying too much tax. One obvious way is to time your exit strategy from UK tax system.

seven-day-weekend

CyranoCat wrote: »

Does anybody know if you are still entitled to pay into an ISA if you are living abroad?
I am moving to Madrid in September to teach, and will have Spanish residency although I may come back to the UK during school holidays.
I will be renting out my flat in the UK and would like to save some of the income but not sure of the best way to do it.
Any ideas?

We were told by our ISA provider that if we are resident in Spain, we can keep the ISA open and get interest, but not pay into it.

However, we have other British savings accounts (not tax-free) and can paay into those with no trouble.

seven-day-weekend

We have just exercised our democratic duty and voted in the Spanish council elections. In Spain we can vote in Council and European elections - in the UK we are still registered as non-resident voters and can vote in Parliamentary and European elections (obviously we can only do the European in one country!). Our son has a proxy vote for us in the UK.

In our village there were two main candidates -the doctor from one party and the bank manager from another. The Bank manager is the existing mayor.

We were sent a list of candidates from both parties and an envelope. How you vote is you decide which party you want, put the whole list in the envelope and take it to the polling station.

My heart told me to vote for the Dr because I like him better than the bank manager, but in the end I voted for the bank manager because he has done a good job as mayor and also one of the British expats from our village is a prospective councillor for his party, which will be useful.

There were nine candidates on the list, but the number of councillors they will actually get depends on how many votes they have.

Very interesting!

edited to add : The Doctor won and is the new mayor.

Inactive

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

.
Make sure also that you have a photocard licence (the green paper one isn't legal).

Where did you get that information from?

I, and many others, still use the old style paper licence to hire cars in Spain, so they must be legal.