dmukgr
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Post by dmukgr on Feb 20, 2022 11:55:45 GMT
Yup, I always wanted to retire to Greece but after living there for a while and owning property etc. the plan now for retirement is Airbnb type living with a base in the uk.
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スコットランド
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Post by スコットランド on Feb 20, 2022 12:31:49 GMT
Surely with a Swiss pension you could afford to live somewhere else pretty well though. The problem is that anywhere else is not Switzerland, though. I've you live abroad for longer times, you start to miss stuff that you just take for granted in Switzerland. Tourist life is eay, but if you actually have to interact with local authorities and businesses, you start noticing how unprofessional they are in many countries. Paper lying on desks for months, being late half an hour for an appointment is normal, no answer to emails or only partial answers, making this way of communication useless, traffic behaviour that borders on criminal, bribes being required to put things in motion, etc. Depends where you go, doesn't it? No matter which country you decide to live in, there are pros and cons, it will depend on you personally which things are more important. I can imagine that as a retiree, staying in Switzerland would be attractive due to great healthcare, infrastructure, safety, hygiene etc. whereas in somewhere like Spain, things maybe don't work as well, but people are much more open and friendlier, food is better etc. I imagine health determines many things, if your health isn't great then travel is less likely, health insurance abroad could be tricky etc. whereas if you're fit then there are less limiting factors. I used to work with a guy from Germany that had been in Switzerland a long time, was married to a filipino and was keen on retiring with her to the Philippines but her had been a heavy smoker when younger and had had a heart attack so struggled to get long term health insurance that didn't exclude his existing conditions. We all get more conservative and risk averse with age but I'd love to still be adventurous and fit enough to spend say, half the year in Spain and half the year visiting friends and family and spending months at a time in places we love like Japan. With my inherently unhealthy Scottish genes I'll probably be goosed by then but you never know. |
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Feb 20, 2022 12:31:55 GMT
Surely with a Swiss pension you could afford to live somewhere else pretty well though. The problem is that anywhere else is not Switzerland, though. I've you live abroad for longer times, you start to miss stuff that you just take for granted in Switzerland. Tourist life is eay, but if you actually have to interact with local authorities and businesses, you start noticing how unprofessional they are in many countries. Paper lying on desks for months, being late half an hour for an appointment is normal, no answer to emails or only partial answers, making this way of communication useless, traffic behaviour that borders on criminal, bribes being required to put things in motion, etc. This. And if you are a miserable git like me it takes a lot of effort to not let it consume you. |
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Post by Dougs on Feb 20, 2022 22:46:24 GMT
Yup, I always wanted to retire to Greece but after living there for a while and owning property etc. the plan now for retirement is Airbnb type living with a base in the uk. My wife wants to retire to Greece/Cyprus, but I suspect it ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially post-Brexit. Would love to fuck off somewhere warm but I know it's much harder now. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2022 22:48:49 GMT
From a North American outsider persective, Spain or Italy seem like the ideal choices, architectural beauty, culinary, economic-wise. In California, I already have sun, but fuck is it expensive.
Feel free to school me, Euros.
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dmukgr
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Post by dmukgr on Feb 20, 2022 23:05:55 GMT
The issue with Greece is nothing works, even simple things like regular running water in the tourist resorts and islands, power cuts etc. Then there is the corruption, bureaucracy with everything taking an age and the general acceptance that if you are an outsider with a bit of cash then you are seen as fair game. On top of that there are expats everywhere and it’s hard to not be lumped in with them.
My wife is Greek and bizarrely this seemed to make dealing with stuff out there harder rather than easier. We built a house out there which was a disaster with illegalities that turned out to be crooked lawyers, civil engineer the whole works - ended up dragged through the courts with a prison sentence now hanging over our rogue builder rather than me as I was found innocent. Even though, we won’t get compensation and the local attitude is to shrug and not care. Best off out of it now, but the money it cost us would have bought a nice house outright back here in the uk.
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Post by technoish on Feb 21, 2022 0:02:09 GMT
My wife doesn't know it yet, but I plan on to move / retire to a country pad in not too distant future with our London bucks  set up some kind of local business, that is more to keep busy than needing to bring in the income. I doubt the balance sheet will stack up for a long time though haha! |
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Post by spacein_vader on Feb 21, 2022 0:36:24 GMT
My wife doesn't know it yet, but I plan on to move / retire to a country pad in not too distant future with our London bucks set up some kind of local business, that is more to keep busy than needing to bring in the income. I doubt the balance sheet will stack up for a long time though haha! We had a similar plan. In 2015 moving from a large city to a small town where people know each other. High Street has a couple of pubs, couple of takeaways, hairdressers, deli, butchers and greengrocers plus a small coop. Big enough to be able to do things without driving somewhere, small enough that we let the kids have free reign of the place. It's lovely and the change of pace was a huge mental boost particularly having a good sized garden. That was a life saver during lockdown for us all. I have a home office and my final step was going to be loving to self employed home based consulting. Was coming along a treat until the cancer hit. Still a plan I'd highly recommend, just without the cancer. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2022 0:38:58 GMT
Don't give up, spaced! If anything, these past 6 months have shown how strong your resilience is.
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Post by Sarfrin on Feb 21, 2022 0:48:33 GMT
Good you got to enjoy some of it already. Here's to as much more as possible.
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Post by Dougs on Feb 21, 2022 7:58:43 GMT
The issue with Greece is nothing works, even simple things like regular running water in the tourist resorts and islands, power cuts etc. Then there is the corruption, bureaucracy with everything taking an age and the general acceptance that if you are an outsider with a bit of cash then you are seen as fair game. On top of that there are expats everywhere and it’s hard to not be lumped in with them. My wife is Greek and bizarrely this seemed to make dealing with stuff out there harder rather than easier. We built a house out there which was a disaster with illegalities that turned out to be crooked lawyers, civil engineer the whole works - ended up dragged through the courts with a prison sentence now hanging over our rogue builder rather than me as I was found innocent. Even though, we won’t get compensation and the local attitude is to shrug and not care. Best off out of it now, but the money it cost us would have bought a nice house outright back here in the uk. Jesus, that sounds horrific. No chance of being compensated at all? That's just wrong. Think the bureaucracy and corruption is common in Italy too. France has the former in spades too. I dunno, days gone by, I'd have gladly bought a small apartment in the sun and just spent a few months there in autumn/winter, living in the UK the rest of the time. Those days are gone now though. |
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dmukgr
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Post by dmukgr on Feb 21, 2022 8:45:44 GMT
No chance of compensation. During all our court cases where we were going against our civil engineer they seem primarily designed to make cash as you are allowed a certain amount of no shows, but we still then needed to pay our lawyer, bar fees, court fees etc. So they keep spinning the wheel knowing you will run out of cash at some point. Then, to make things even more laughable, at the height of it all our civil engineer's 18 year old son at the time, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He served two years before being allowed to walk free. There was a public outcry of course with it all over the news, tv special etc. but nothing changed - his dad used his government connections and that was that, which of coarse told us that there was no point pursuing it any further either. The last few courts cases have all not happened due to CoVid and Brexit makes it harder in certain respects too so we are back in England with the slight possibility of some compensation at some point but at least the threat of jail for me as now gone.
I feel I flew to close to the sun (trying for an easy life loafing about, living on next to nothing, rather than being a grown up) and with this current, third storm in Manchester, am now wondering if I will see the sun again.
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dmukgr
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Post by dmukgr on Feb 21, 2022 8:49:26 GMT
Spaced - sorry to hear about your cancer. Your idyllic life otherwise is what we were considering but ended up more urban - mainly due to wanting to be close to family as they are getting on a bit but also has the crazy house market last year put paid to a lot of the areas we were looking at. Where did you end up roughly?
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Post by Nitrous on Feb 21, 2022 9:32:55 GMT
CATPTGBHGSP £18 off a £60 spend at Sainsbury's. Home delivery saver slot £1. I was using Aldi website to check prices of a few things first.
No idea if it worked because I've not done an online shop with them before but worth a try for a good saving. No idea what the Hubbard's foodtore stuff is like but I'm hoping it's not completely awful.
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Feb 21, 2022 9:42:05 GMT
The issue with Greece is nothing works, even simple things like regular running water in the tourist resorts and islands, power cuts etc. Then there is the corruption, bureaucracy with everything taking an age and the general acceptance that if you are an outsider with a bit of cash then you are seen as fair game. On top of that there are expats everywhere and it’s hard to not be lumped in with them. My wife is Greek and bizarrely this seemed to make dealing with stuff out there harder rather than easier. We built a house out there which was a disaster with illegalities that turned out to be crooked lawyers, civil engineer the whole works - ended up dragged through the courts with a prison sentence now hanging over our rogue builder rather than me as I was found innocent. Even though, we won’t get compensation and the local attitude is to shrug and not care. Best off out of it now, but the money it cost us would have bought a nice house outright back here in the uk. Tales like this are only to true in Spain as well. For us it took us nearly 2 years to find a house that we could actually buy and owners who where willing to make it legal enough to buy. It cost us shit loads in lawyer money because we had gone through the process a few times only for it to fall through as there was always some form of illegality that could not be easily fixed. But we did finally find a place so all good, right? Not so fast, within months we find out that our property boundaries have been changed. They took 100sq meters off of our land, assigned it to the neighbours and technically renders our house illegal. Because they can just change the land registry as they see fit. Surely a clerical error that's easily fixed but no. Turns out they were flying drones(now upgraded to helicopters because the drones made too many errors) over the town with software to map any new undeclared builds. The software decided that the retaining wall was the actual boundary and that was that. The lawyers couldn't help us despite paying them thousands to make sure we had a legal property because this process is so common and normalised. The only way to fix it is for us to assume responsibility and pay up to 2 grand for them to fix the error which also kicks off a long process of inspections, surveys and other bullshit that can take years to resolve. It'll be a nightmare when time comes to sell but fuck it, that's what everyone does out here. But you also need to take into account the level of unreasonable bullshit that occurs in day to day life too and just how tolerant you are of these things. Like I was saying in the rant thread, it took us 4 months from paying for a communal post box until we received the key for it. 4 months with no mail or acceptable postal address. I don't think I'm the one being unreasonable there and my post in that thread highlights a number of other issues regarding post/deliveries all which do my head in as well. Maybe when the electrician says that he can't upgrade your electricity any more because a) You are contracted as a warehouse and therefore it is illegal for a residence to have that and b) even if I could I'd have to rewire the whole house because the gauge on the wires are not capable of taking the load. Or to be told that the reason the power has a micro cut at the same time each day to the entire town is because of birds and not the fact the street lights are being turned on via a timer. And thankyou to the storm who made the power go on and off like a disco ball that blew up our sat tv. And it goes on but the sooner as you realise lubing up offers the path of least resistance it gets easier. Complaining makes things worse, you are never right and always the one responsible. Still waiting on the second vaccine because of the shitty system too. |
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スコットランド
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Post by スコットランド on Feb 21, 2022 11:14:05 GMT
Still waiting on the second vaccine because of the shitty system too. Why? All my family in Spain are fully vaxxed and boosted. |
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Feb 21, 2022 11:22:18 GMT
I'll be fucked if I know to be honest.
The first time we went and asked they said you only need the one because we already had covid. Which we hadn't and don't know where they got that idea from so they put us back on the list. Went to check again a couple of months later and naturally, we are not on the list again.
So they added us to it again but by this stage with the omicron surge there was now a shortage of vaccines.
Still waiting. I'd happily pay for it at this point.
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Post by spacein_vader on Feb 21, 2022 12:07:27 GMT
Spaced - sorry to hear about your cancer. Your idyllic life otherwise is what we were considering but ended up more urban - mainly due to wanting to be close to family as they are getting on a bit but also has the crazy house market last year put paid to a lot of the areas we were looking at. Where did you end up roughly? Northamptonshire. My wife's family is from Leicester and mine from Cambridgeshire so it's about an hour from both. Smallish town but big enough to have facilities (4 pubs, all decent!) and only a 15 minute drive to Wellingborough which is on the mainline into St Pancreas. |
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dmukgr
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Post by dmukgr on Feb 21, 2022 12:17:11 GMT
Sounds lovely and really well placed for visiting loads of other places too.
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dmukgr
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Post by dmukgr on Feb 21, 2022 12:25:22 GMT
H-alphaFox - all the illegalities for ours stemmed from the fact that they changed our boundaries illegally at the land registry but you can't know that yourself as only registered civil engineers are only allowed to look at the records. It came to light when the neighbouring land applied for planning permission and now half our house was on 'forestry' due to reclassification based on a neighbours land reverting after 50 years of none usage due to them moving to Oz and the family not doing anything with it, but by moving our boundary to it the builder could fit an extra house in the urban area of the village. I put forestry in quotes as it was just scrubland, but anything 'forestry' enabled huge fines etc. Ended up knocking the fucker down as the fines etc. were horrendous and no chance of selling.
Over the first few months I was told on numerous times that had I paid a bung it would have all gone away and that that was how the world worked but unfortunately we couldn't pay a bribe as we didn't know about the issue until it made such public news that it was too late to make it silently disappear. Anything Forestry in Greece is now a big deal and we were made an example of.
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Reviewer
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Post by Reviewer on Feb 21, 2022 12:30:17 GMT
Yup, I always wanted to retire to Greece but after living there for a while and owning property etc. the plan now for retirement is Airbnb type living with a base in the uk. My wife wants to retire to Greece/Cyprus, but I suspect it ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially post-Brexit. Would love to fuck off somewhere warm but I know it's much harder now. The Airbnb approach is what I’m working on too. Stay somewhere for a few months then keep doing that with a few months in the uk each year. With longer term airbnbs they’re not far off the normal rental price. |
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 21, 2022 12:31:00 GMT
So I set up my first overpayments on mortgage the other night, which will start in April, though I may just throw a lump at it now.
All being well, I'll have it paid off somewhere between 47-52. I could even go lower if I wanted. Got about £78k left as I only took out £90k. But I'm going to put some money towards solar and generally making the house a bit nicer/ sustainable.
Then, when the parents die, I can put the money from their house towards a monster truck.
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Feb 21, 2022 13:22:11 GMT
H-alphaFox - all the illegalities for ours stemmed from the fact that they changed our boundaries illegally at the land registry but you can't know that yourself as only registered civil engineers are only allowed to look at the records. It came to light when the neighbouring land applied for planning permission and now half our house was on 'forestry' due to reclassification based on a neighbours land reverting after 50 years of none usage due to them moving to Oz and the family not doing anything with it, but by moving our boundary to it the builder could fit an extra house in the urban area of the village. I put forestry in quotes as it was just scrubland, but anything 'forestry' enabled huge fines etc. Ended up knocking the fucker down as the fines etc. were horrendous and no chance of selling. Over the first few months I was told on numerous times that had I paid a bung it would have all gone away and that that was how the world worked but unfortunately we couldn't pay a bribe as we didn't know about the issue until it made such public news that it was too late to make it silently disappear. Anything Forestry in Greece is now a big deal and we were made an example of. Sounds like a right nightmare, sorry they put you through that. You get similar nonsense here if the land is classed rural, quickly found out not to deal with those properties at all. And funnily enough we only found out about our land issues as our neighbours wanted to build a wall and tried it on to grab the land. I consider us lucky though compared to your situation. I must say though after 5 years of living in this house it was a real nice touch to receive a tax bill with unpaid fines that the previous owner didn't pay due to him being dead but is our responsibility because it is. |
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dmukgr
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Post by dmukgr on Feb 21, 2022 13:26:33 GMT
I was lucky in that I could move on with my life and recovered financially relatively quickly due to having a well paid job. In fact, I am possibly financially better off now as the financial crisis in Greece would have bolloxed me up, whereby being in England meant I had work etc. and having to start again and scramble a deposit to buy a home to live in was a good kick up the arse career wise. I am amazed the wife and I survived though. If anything it made us stronger as a unit though I suspect some of her ill health since is a direct result - as is my hairline  Forgot to say - as an interesting aside I always thought not having kids was beneficial as I wouldn't have been able to start again so easily and save money for a fresh start etc. but it seems that some of the outcomes against me in Greece were based on not having kids so them not being as compassionate in their decision making. Kids rule in Greece and a family without is weird. |
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Solid-SCB-
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Post by Solid-SCB- on Feb 21, 2022 17:33:07 GMT
Had a nice result from that job offer I got a few days ago. I called them to turn it down citing travel costs as the only reason, they counter offered me more money and 1 day WFH to offset the extra expense. Will skip into work tomorrow to hand my notice in there. Result.
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Post by Danno on Feb 21, 2022 17:34:18 GMT
Had a nice result from that job offer I got a few days ago. I called them to turn it down citing travel costs as the only reason, they counter offered me more money and 1 day WFH to offset the extra expense. Will skip into work tomorrow to hand my notice in there. Result. Score, congrats |
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スコットランド
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Post by スコットランド on Feb 21, 2022 17:39:42 GMT
I'll be fucked if I know to be honest. The first time we went and asked they said you only need the one because we already had covid. Which we hadn't and don't know where they got that idea from so they put us back on the list. Went to check again a couple of months later and naturally, we are not on the list again. So they added us to it again but by this stage with the omicron surge there was now a shortage of vaccines. Still waiting. I'd happily pay for it at this point. Sounds as if you've been unlucky. I have family in Barcelona, Murcia and Alicante who got their ages ago with no issues. Maybe need to be more pushy, I don't know. |
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Feb 21, 2022 21:46:08 GMT
Yeah, everyone we speak to including the people at the health clinic find it bizarre.
It is what it is, all they can do is input our names into the central database. Hoping more walk in's pop up or people will actually be able to make an appointment at some stage.
I'm just over the whole covid thing in general at this point and the situation doesn't help. We all are to be fair.
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zagibu
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Post by zagibu on Feb 22, 2022 0:31:39 GMT
We all get more conservative and risk averse with age but I'd love to still be adventurous and fit enough to spend say, half the year in Spain and half the year visiting friends and family and spending months at a time in places we love like Japan. With my inherently unhealthy Scottish genes I'll probably be goosed by then but you never know. Actually leading a semi-nomad lifestyle and rotating through some nice places with 3 month tourist visas is much more feasible in my opinion than really settling somewhere else. It should also be doable financially, if you avoid tourist hotspots. Like, summer in your home country, autumn and spring somewhere in the lesser known Balkan countries and winter in Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal. |
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 22, 2022 8:41:13 GMT
I don't think the Balkan countries will be on many visitor's lists for the foreseeable...
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set up some kind of local business, that is more to keep busy than needing to bring in the income. I doubt the balance sheet will stack up for a long time though haha!
