Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

brenda50

Hi Man

I think it will be 24 feet or less. I don't want a monster. I have heard that everyone changes their first choice though after 6 months. There is an auction in Florida seeing MH's at amazing prices.

Yes I have done my research mainly from the MHer forums. They are a great bunch. I just need to make a move now....

krisskross

Spanish state schools are free but parents have to buy all text books. Can be quite a sizeable outlay. You need all sorts of paperwork to get a child enrolled in school and often there is no extra Spanish language tuition for them. Unless the parents can fund private Spanish lessons the children fall behind and become isolated very quickly.

If you have school age children think about going to Spain to live very carefully. You could ruin your children's futures.

motherearth31

thanks to all that replied to me i did to try to start a new thread but didnt know how to, we have been looking to move for a long time but the chldrens school is the main worry, we have £70,000 to take with us what is the minimum wage in spain as my husband is only on £14,000 a year hear so not far off min wage he works for a car rental firm and we are looking into himgetting a transfer i have done some reasearch but schools we looked at were all international schools with high fees if you have 3 to pay for children are only 9 month 8 years and 10 so should pick up spanish quite well they know some but not loads from holidays and internet i just think that with so many people moving to the england from other places it cant be that hard we have 8 polish in the boys school that do not speak any english, my husband and i are willing to work hard and long hours for the life we want to get to we need to sell up soon as prices to high in england

thanks again to you all for taking the time to help me with this info
kind regards rachel and family

droopsnout

The kind of research you need to do, Rachel, is on the spot.

When you know whether your husband can have a transfer, try to go across and suss out the school situation for real. Also check house prices. With your husband's income alone, can you afford a mortgage? If you spend your capital on a property, and things don't work out for whatever reason, you could end up having to move back to the UK with very little. You may not even be able to sell your property for a long time.

Have you drawn up a list of all the things you will have to pay for? Removals, new furniture, legal expenses, new clothes for a new climate, insurances, etc., etc?

I'm sure you could get the children into school. I feel that that is one of your smaller problems.

You may be willing to work hard, but is anyone willing to employ you? Why should they employ an English-only speaker when there are Spanish natives without jobs? Why should they take on the extra paperwork it would inevitably involve?

Only way to answer these questions is to be there and ask face to face, really.

You sound a really nice person, so I do hope your dream comes true.

motherearth31

my husband is going over next month to suss things out do you think we could get a nice house on are money the idea is to have no morgage so that if we have to come home it not really much of a problem if we dont have a morgarge to pay we are also looking in to going to a spanish langage school in spain after xmas but not sure as would be a lot of money and only have one week to learn, thanks for your help

Errata

It would be worth checking out what health care for adults and children is free and what has to be paid for. I think I read recently that the rules are about to change for foreigners living in Spain.

krisskross

Sorry that i sounded harsh previously . It is just that when we lived in Spain we saw so many families in absolutely dire straits because there simply is very little legal work available to foreigners.

My major piece of advice is to forget about buying a property. Tuck your money away and use the interest to rent a place to live for a year or so. Rents are cheap as there is, in a lot of places, huge oversupply. See how you go, whether you can find work, how the children settle etc. If it doesn't work out then you will have money without the hassle of selling a property. When you buy a property in Spain the taxes etc can add 10% to the selling price.

Good luck whatever you decide.

droopsnout

Rachel, if you spend your £70k on a house and have no mortgage, it seems that you would have no savings. Even if your husband continued to earn his present salary, would you feel safe in that position?

I'm not sure what you mean about having only one week to learn Spanish.

droopsnout

I'd also add that I tend to agree with krisskross about renting before you buy. It buys you time.

Errata

motherearth31 wrote: »

my husband is going over next month to suss things out do you think we could get a nice house on are money the idea is to have no morgage so that if we have to come home it not really much of a problem if we dont have a morgarge to pay we are also looking in to going to a spanish langage school in spain after xmas but not sure as would be a lot of money and only have one week to learn, thanks for your help

Have a look at the overseas section of Rightmove, it contains houses for sale in Spain and will give you some idea of what you could afford.