Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

Lady_E

This is one of the most interesting threads on the board at the moment. I am 44 and Lord E is 38 with 2 DS aged 3 and 6 and this thread is making me think and AWFUL lot. Our long term game plan is to get the boys through full time education and then slope off to Spain in retirmement. Lord E is almost fluent in Spanish and I can mumble my way through some phrases . I was thinking , from your experiences would it be a good idea to buy a holiday home with the intention of eventually living in it , or upon retiring renting until the right place came up ? Any thoughts please would be very welcome . I was thinking Andulucia as location , maybe inland , but still close enough to get to the coast .

seven-day-weekend

Hi Lady E, sory I've only just seen your post.

If you want to buy a holiday home rent it out, be aware that Andalucia's rental market is rather saturated and you may have long periods of leaving it empty. We bought our house in 2003, a year before we came out, but the builders were working on it for some of that year as it needed some renovation.

As to regards where....I live in inland Andalucia, it takes around 50 minutes to get to the nearest coast. I live in a village in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in a very popular area called Las Alpujarras. These villages are still traditionally Spanish, with all the old ways and customs (Don't know for how much longer, as the young people are not learning the traditional skills, they are all going to University and working as lawyers or bank managers. Can't blame them really, they don't want to have to eke out a life farming marginal land, as previous generations have done).

Anyway, best of luck.

PM me if you want to know more.

xxOOxx_2

Hi Everyone

We have relocated semi-permenantly to Turkey, Fethiye in the South West, and the climate and lifestyle is very similar to the stories you recount above about Spain.

Getting information when you are considering a change of lifestyle is very difficult, and when we came to Fethiye in 2003 we found it had to get reliable information on the legal and domestic side of living here. We set up a community information website to share the information we collected on everything from buying property to the cost of living, local news, TV and heating options, residency - everything and anything we found out that we thought others may find useful too.

Anyone interested in fast tracking their way through hints and tips on Turkey is welcome to browse the website: https://www.fethiyetimes.org.uk.

Turkey is a great place to live and British pensioners will be interested to know that the Turkish Government doesn't tax a British pension. So if you are no longer resident in the UK, you'll get it tax free! BONUS.

In addition, Lira deposit rates are paying 18.5% gross interest (around 16% after tax), whilst headline inflation is around 10%. The savvy saver and shopper can really make their savings work for them.

Most things are cheaper here (except petrol!), and you can comfortably live on £9+k per year, or indeed much less depending on your lifestyle.

gunnyandbob

Capital Gains Tax in spain has changed, effective next April I believe.
The EU told the Spanish gov.t they could no longer tax members of other EU states at a higher rate. The result is a CGT, on all people living in Spain, set I have been told at about 20%. Good for us extraneros..

gunnyandbob

May I offer a suggestion or two, based on our own experience in Andalucia?
We rented a village house, stone built in a valley. It always felt cold.
We moved into a house of modern construction and insulation in the countryside on a hill. We enjoy about an hour and a half more sunshine per day, the house does not feel cold. Its also devoid of noisy mopeds, and we have a garden to tend.
We use the internet to transfer the pension, suggest opening a Halifax account in the UK, then a similar a/c with halifax.es. You can then transfer free of charge at a very good rate with no lower limit.
A word re heating....gas causes condensation, thats damp, you feel colder.
We use (experience tells ) a wood burning stove, more heat and drier.
One more thing, if possible, heat the water with electricity.That way, the heavy (14 KG ) gas cylinders last for 5 to 6 months when only used for a gas hob. Our experience is that gas water heaters struggle to give even a lukewarm shower.The cylinders in the other house lasted 10 to 14 days...

palgrave124

best move we ever made to come back ,to england,,,its not all what its cracked up to be, beware costs are not cheaper than england gas works out more exspensive as it is bottled, the oil for central heating , the electric , is more expensive in the long run ,thats if you can get it ,plus phone and internet hardest thing in the world to get switched on if its not already in the house, waited 1year and thats with, having spanish friends helping us ,spain will scint you,as many english have found out,the insects will bite day and night, gets realy cold in the winter, food well,no answer to that,,, loads of cowboys doing work out,: there,half of them dont know what they are doing, beware who you employ,Paid for private school , as spanish was no good, education wise , kids glad to be back in english school have loads of new friends , and education now great , no complaints , wont go into doctors, hospitals in spain take to long and cost a fortune , (medical insurance ,)could go on all day and night writing , please beware about moving to spain , we have money and a good paid job , that was not the problem, please beware and think it through we did our home work for 3 years or more before we moved out to spain, and spoke, very good spanish ,we still have our house in spain but will sell it next year, please be careful this info is to help you , if you need to know anything please reply

palgrave124

forgot to mention we only lived half hour from coast and city , have a lovely house ,swimming pool. tennis court , all that does not bring happiness, we had great marriage and still have ,we where one of the lucky ones, but saw so many marriages break up many leaving their parner in spain, only to follow later through loneliness, or lack of money, the laws ,goverment, ,not like england where you can usualy sort the miner things out your self you always need a lawer over there for alsorts of things.people only tell you the good side of spain , there are loads like me , that have come back with there families, dont take notice of estate agents they only want to sell and will tell you anything ,please be careful

jezhuggins

Thank you for this Forum

We are looking to use are home in Kalkan for living in Turkey (most of the year) in 18 months time so the link to the web site http://www.fethiyetimes.org.uk is brilliant - thank you

At this time we are having our holidays there - and allowing friends and family to have their holidays there too

seven-day-weekend

palgrave124 wrote:

best move we ever made to come back ,to england,,,its not all what its cracked up to be, beware costs are not cheaper than england gas works out more exspensive as it is bottled, the oil for central heating , the electric , is more expensive in the long run ,thats if you can get it ,plus phone and internet hardest thing in the world to get switched on if its not already in the house, waited 1year and thats with, having spanish friends helping us ,spain will scint you,as many english have found out,the insects will bite day and night, gets realy cold in the winter, food well,no answer to that,,, loads of cowboys doing work out,: there,half of them dont know what they are doing, beware who you employ,Paid for private school , as spanish was no good, education wise , kids glad to be back in english school have loads of new friends , and education now great , no complaints , wont go into doctors, hospitals in spain take to long and cost a fortune , (medical insurance ,)could go on all day and night writing , please beware about moving to spain , we have money and a good paid job , that was not the problem, please beware and think it through we did our home work for 3 years or more before we moved out to spain, and spoke, very good spanish ,we still have our house in spain but will sell it next year, please be careful this info is to help you , if you need to know anything please reply

I can't agree with most of what you wrote. The cost of living here is MUCH cheaper than in the UK; the Spanish builders have done great work on our house at a fraction of the cost of a British one; I personally know nothing about the schools but a young woman who lives in the village is delighted with the Spanish school; my husband saw a specialist a WEEK after seeing the Doctor and the hospitals are excellent; we live here on £7.5k a year income;our gas shower is like a really hot power shower; our electric is much cheaper.

We live in a village house, I think if you live in a British enclave you do quite often get ripped off.....by other Brits. The Spanish have done nothing but make us welcome.

Or perhaps it depends where in Spain you live, we are in Granada province inland in the mountains.

seven-day-weekend

palgrave124 wrote:

forgot to mention we only lived half hour from coast and city , have a lovely house ,swimming pool. tennis court , all that does not bring happiness, we had great marriage and still have ,we where one of the lucky ones, but saw so many marriages break up many leaving their parner in spain, only to follow later through loneliness, or lack of money, the laws ,goverment, ,not like england where you can usualy sort the miner things out your self you always need a lawer over there for alsorts of things.people only tell you the good side of spain , there are loads like me , that have come back with there families, dont take notice of estate agents they only want to sell and will tell you anything ,please be careful

Of course it's not like England! It's a different country, that's why most foreigners want to live here! We've done a lot ourselves and only used a 'gestor' for things like importing the car.