Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire!

[frank]

We can't afford to eat at home here a four course lunch costs between €6.95 and €10 we couldn't buy the ingredients, cook them run the dish washer and heat the house for €15 a day and it is good wholesome food and we are loosing weight which saves us weight watchers et al. We get lots of free vitamin "D" and the climate is good for our arthritis. So it's win win all round.

Glad you've found Shangri-La!

[frank]

Please check things out before rushing in. We have a B2 visa and can stay for 6 months in 1 year. .

And they thought they were being so clever!

[Mowser]

It's a Frank and Katy love-in. Get a room.

[frank]

It's a Frank and Katy love-in.

Yep, that's good. What happened to your normal racist accusations, your posts don't seem the same without them.

[Lavanda]

As Frank has me on 'ignore' he won't get this but the word 'racist' is getting boring. British people are not, and never have been racist. They are the least racist people in the world. They are xenophobic. That's a different thing altogether.

[Chunky Monky]

Can't say I have ever been bored in any country..it's a state of mind.

Ain't that the truth.

[Mowser]

Yep, that's good. What happened to your normal racist accusations, your posts don't seem the same without them.

I don't post "normal" racist accusations. Grow up Frank.

[Free at Last]

[quote="katy"]We pay less tax than in Spain as we don't have gold plated civil service funded by the taxpayer pensions.

/quote]

Strange comment from someone who, by their own admission, charges "inflated rents" for properties where the rent is paid by taxpayer funded Housing Benefit. OK for you to take the taxpayers' shilling but not for anyone else?

[alisonb]

John and Kath said:

Absolutely spot on to move back to UK would cost us an extra £6000 a year in tax with absolutely no chance of claiming any benefits ( I do not consider my minimum State pension to be a benefit).

I don't know the sources of income for John and Kath, but we would pay much less tax in UK than here. It's the one thing which we find makes a difference.

Of the people I know who are going back, in most cases it's either missing family or getting to the point (age) where they need family support. I think that as long as you have enough to live on, whether it costs more or less to live in a particular country isn't a big issue.

[scampicat]

I wonder what I would find to do all day back in the UK. All my hobbies and favorite pursuits here in Spain are based either in the garden, on the beach, or in the hills, in other words, outside. With the weather as it is in the UK, I would be completely at a loose end, you can only visit a certain number of garden centers, museums etc, it would cost a fortune.

Funnily enough, one of the reasons we left Spain (me in particular), was that there was nothing to do that I wanted to do. I could not do my church work, I could not do a part time job, my husband could not do his open mic or other gigs. He found it less this way than me, but even he said after eight years that he had painted all the pictures and taken all the photographs. You don't want to walk in the hills every day (or at least I don't). We just began to find life in an Alpujarran village limiting and, dare I say it, boring.

But I'm glad we did it. For most of the time we enjoyed it.

[katy]

John and Kath said:

Absolutely spot on to move back to UK would cost us an extra £6000 a year in tax with absolutely no chance of claiming any benefits ( I do not consider my minimum State pension to be a benefit).

I don't know the sources of income for John and Kath, but we would pay much less tax in UK than here. It's the one thing which we find makes a difference.

Of the people I know who are going back, in most cases it's either missing family or getting to the point (age) where they need family support. I think that as long as you have enough to live on, whether it costs more or less to live in a particular country isn't a big issue.

Absolutely agree. Whats the point of an extra 6000 or so if you aren't enjoying it. We only found out we would be better off taxwise in the UK when we were looking into going back. I think we probably used the same tax firm as Lavanda Agree about family, most of the time we lived in Spain close family didn't live in the UK. when they came back and I made longer visits I realised it wasn't so bad after all.

We have seen a lot turn elderly whilst in Spain an they aren't coping. Infact my OH spent time doing jobs for them that we didn't have to do ourselves.

[katy]

We pay less tax than in Spain as we don't have gold plated civil service funded by the taxpayer pensions.

/quote]

Strange comment from someone who, by their own admission, charges "inflated rents" for properties where the rent is paid by taxpayer funded Housing Benefit. OK for you to take the taxpayers' shilling but not for anyone else?

You do realise I pay tax on the income

[Free at Last]

We pay less tax than in Spain as we don't have gold plated civil service funded by the taxpayer pensions.

/quote]

Strange comment from someone who, by their own admission, charges "inflated rents" for properties where the rent is paid by taxpayer funded Housing Benefit. OK for you to take the taxpayers' shilling but not for anyone else?

You do realise I pay tax on the income

So do people with civil service or other taxpayer funded pensions, if they exceed personal allowances. And they paid tax via PAYE throughout their working lives, no clever tax avoidance schemes for them.

[gus-lopez]

I must be missing something here ?? If i upped sticks & moved back to the house I left in the UK I would straight away be £50+ a week worse off just for the council tax payment. Diesel is 21% dearer in the UK.
Even racking my brains for some positives , I cannot think of even one thing that would put me in a better position , or even an equal position in the UK. There would be no tax benefit.

I am not trying to say it is better here than the UK but for me there is no competition . I could not afford to live in the UK.Even if I wanted to go back it would be nigh on impossible & at the very least would mean me having to start working again .

[Free at Last]

I must be missing something here ?? If i upped sticks & moved back to the house I left in the UK I would straight away be £50+ a week worse off just for the council tax payment. Diesel is 21% dearer in the UK.
Even racking my brains for some positives , I cannot think of even one thing that would put me in a better position , or even an equal position in the UK. There would be no tax benefit.

I am not trying to say it is better here than the UK but for me there is no competition . I could not afford to live in the UK.Even if I wanted to go back it would be nigh on impossible & at the very least would mean me having to start working again .

I would be in the same position were I to move back to the UK. £800 a year at the very least worse off because of Council Tax, paying for a TV licence, paying far more than I do here in utility bills, public transport is way more expensive if you are not a pensioner and don't qualify for a free bus pass (I'm a non driver).

If you don't feel that you are in the frying pan here, there's no point thinking of jumping into the fire!

I was talking to a British couple last week who were on holiday here, they'd been out walking for the day and were waiting for a bus to take them back to where they were staying. They said they'd been a bit dubious about what to expect as they'd been reading all the media stories about the terrible economic situation and horrendous unemployment levels in Spain, but were amazed at how "normal" everything seems. I don't know where they lived in the UK, but they said the effects of the recession seemed worse there and town centres, especially, looked more run down, with lots of empty commercial property around.

[katy]

I don't know where they must live either. Everything seems to be booming, retail sales up, car sales up, jobs up. In Marbella last year it was noticably gloomy around the old town and shopping centres.

Comparing tax etc depends on an individuals circumstances. Just because someone pays a pittance in spanish council tax doesn't mean everyone does. Ours was around 1250€ plus there were urbanisation fees of 850€, probably more now. We now pay £2400 in the UK which is only a small increase and at least if we fall on hard times it's free Don't use buses, haven't been on one for years

As Alison said, where you live isn't just about money...it's where you want to be and are happy.

[gus-lopez]

As Alison said, where you live isn't just about money...it's where you want to be and are happy.

That rules out everywhere for me then !

[alpujarran]

As the saying goes - money can not buy you happiness - but it does buy you a better class of misery.

[gus-lopez]

As the saying goes - money can not buy you happiness - but it does buy you a better class of misery.

[Free at Last]

I don't know where they must live either. Everything seems to be booming, retail sales up, car sales up, jobs up. In Marbella last year it was noticably gloomy around the old town and shopping centres.

It's good that some areas of the UK are still doing so well, but the ever growing gap between them and the less fortunate places does bother me. It's not as simple as a North-South divide either (which has always existed but does seem to have got even more pronounced), I was just reading a comment on another forum from someone who had been back to the UK (not from Spain) and visited Torquay and was struck by how run down it seemed with lots of closed shops. I would never have thought of Torquay as a deprived area.