Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

ampersand

Just want to thank carrots and seven-day-weekend for this thread. I live in my head in France when I am not there and empathise entirely.
.........such a pleasure to read you all!

Janeywaney_2

seven-day-weekend wrote:

We have just over £7k to live on at the moment, which is my husband's actuarily reduced Teacher's Pension. He also receives Incapacity Benefit (although we try not to use this for everyday living, as it could stop - it is being reviewed at the moment). We are not at State Retirement age yet.

We can only live on £7k because we live in Spain (cost of living a lot cheaper) and we have no debts. Our 'Council' Tax here is 80 Euros a year, and our water rates 7E. Electricity is much cheaper and we use bottled gas. There is no TV licence. Car Tax is cheaper too. Telephone is about the same and internet is more expensive. Petrol/diesel is about two-thirds UK price. Groceries are cheaper, so is a night out at the local bar.

The expenses on our UK house are paid for from the rents of two lodgers and our son, who lives there, so it looks after itself. We could not afford to live there at the moment as we wouldn't be able to have the lodgers if we did.

We also have savings

I think you are very wise to be careful about spending any incapacity benefit. A friend told me that this is a 'non-transferable' benefit i.e you can only draw it when abroad for short periods rather than a permanent relocation. This may not be correct, but do check it out rather than get an unpleasant shock.I hope all goes well for you in Spain.

droopsnout

I live with my wife in SW France. We, too, are ex-teachers. In my case, ill-health lead to early retirement, so we sold our house in Lancashire, hitched the caravan on to the car and lived in it till we found a house and got the keys to it.

I was just 50 when I got early retirement, so my pension is not exactly luxurious! With tax paid in the UK we get about 1600 euro a month. We have a mortgage of about 300 euro a month, and then all the usual expenses.

We eat reasonably well, maybe go for a lunch (11 euros a head) once a month, have three or four bottles of local wine a week, but don't have anything really for clothes or shoes.

Expensive items, like the Christmas period, trips back to the UK, etc., all come out of our rapidly diminishing savings. Our UK car is almost 11 years old. We hope to get a replacement next November when a couple of insurance policies pay out.

It IS possible to live on a limited income here, but given the distances we have to drive for shopping, etc., there is a significant expenditure on petrol.

Our quality of life is much better, and, of course, neither of us is going through the hellish pressures we faced when we were both working. For that reason alone, it is worth making the sacrifice of living on approximately one quarter of our joint income in the late 1990s.

seven-day-weekend

Janeywaney wrote:

I think you are very wise to be careful about spending any incapacity benefit. A friend told me that this is a 'non-transferable' benefit i.e you can only draw it when abroad for short periods rather than a permanent relocation. This may not be correct, but do check it out rather than get an unpleasant shock.I hope all goes well for you in Spain.

You can draw IB indefinitely providing you pass the same tests for incapacity as you do in the UK.

My husband's IB is under review at the moment (just because it's time, nothing to do with being in Spain) ; he has filled in his (bilingual) questionnaire, the Spanish doctor has filled in his part and we sent it off seven weeks ago.

If they cannot make a decision based on the questionnaire, he will have to see an English-speaking doctor in Malaga. Then they will make their decision based on this doctor's report.

Keeping everything crossed!:rotfl:

seven-day-weekend

My husband was varnishing some wood outside in our picturesque little lane today when he noticed about thirty people at the top of the lane with cameras. We get a lot of people taking pictures of our lane, and our house (no-one ever did that in Wolverhampton ), so he didn't take much notice at first.

Next thing he noticed a large TV camera with Canal Sur on it (a Spanish TV station), so he stopped varnishing and got his own camera to take photos of them. Before he knew it, he had a microphone pinned on him and was being interviewed!

I was watching from our roof, and went down when I thought they had gone, I went downstairs. But they hadn't all gone and my husband wouldn't let me slink back upstairs again, so we both got on camera and interviewed. The interview was all in Spanish - we think they were asking us how long we had lived here, what we liked about it and whether it was better than England. We answered as best we could in our pidgin Spanish.

We'll probably be on the Spanish equivalent of Candid Camera, making Spaniards fall about laughing as the 'loco ingleses' who didn't know what the interviewer was asking them.:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

droopsnout

I used to receive IB, too, but it was stopped when they realised that my pension was at a level which precludes its payment. So they said.

From what you say about it, it seems that IB is being received as well as a retirement pension. Have I got the wrong idea?

What I do still receive is my "stamp" paid by the DHS/DoWP in Newcastle.

seven-day-weekend

No, he gets his teacher's pension and a reduced amount of IB because of the amount of teacher's pension. They take £27 off his IB. And he gets the 'stamp' credited of course. He's not old enough for retirement pension.

Looking at what you posted earlier, our income is half yours. I have no income at all.

droopsnout

Ah, OK. Thanks for the reassurance. I'd hate to think our dear friends in Newcastle were depriving me of what I should receive!

seven-day-weekend

No problema!

Janeywaney_2

Thanks for the useful info seven-day-weekend. I passed the it on to friends who wish to return to an ex-pat life but he is now on IB. It seems the same ruling applies to Cyprus (Greek side). My friends are not enjoying the cold, damp, English weather and would love to go back to sunnier climes.