'A New Life in the Sun' - have you/would you make this move?

[PandoraRocks]

Stuck at home for the past 6 weeks with a broken shoulder I've watched a lot of this type of TV programme and fantasized about moving abroad.

It all looks so alluring - a fabulous property at least half the price of an equivalent in the UK, lots of sunshine, more space, fresh start etc. Yet everyone who makes the move seems to work their guts out! Supposedly, they moved for a better work/life balance!

They spend months or years renovating a wreck and depleting all their savings. If they're in France or Italy the plan is usually a holiday let or B and B. If in Spain or Portugal it's 'let's open a cafe or start an olive farm' 😆.

Has anyone here done this or was this your plan before Brexit?

Was talking to a new colleague recently who moved to Spain. She said that she worked like a dog over there, and that it’s not all it’s made out to be.
Also know of someone who has a place there and here, who jumps on a plane and comes back every time they need health care.

We did for four years. We moved to France, bought a house much nicer than anything we could buy at home, had a much better work life balance and enjoyed it very much. There were hard parts: being separated from family and old friends, the paperwork that is needed for everything in France. But overall it was a huge improvement in quality of where we lived, how much of our life could be outside due to weather, how much exercise we took, how we ate, healthcare was better, we enjoyed making new friends. We moved home due to elderly parents but I hope we will go back one day.

I can definitely see the value of wintering abroad in the sun when retired .

We’ve done it, but ours is a place in the cold 🤣

Unless you’re extremely wealthy, or you’ve moved somewhere with an extremely low cost of living you will likely work the same amount of hours as in the UK, or depending on the job/career work more in the first 2-3 years until you become more established in your field.

We’ve moved to Sweden, we have a lovely traditional detached house, we do have an airbnb downstairs (like many houses, we have an open basement which is essentially a self contained apartment), my husband is working in the same field he worked in the UK. I’m currently unemployed as for the first few months we needed someone at home to sort builders, decorating, furniture etc. He works four days a week 9am - 3pm, which are very normal office hours here, flextid means as long as he completes his hours he can work whenever he wants, but it would need to be at home sometimes as like many offices his doesn’t open until 8:30 am and it is locked up by 5:00pm. Parents can also take 120 paid days a year to cover child sickness, you aren’t penalised for this.

He is working slightly fewer hours than he did in the UK, but the working environment is more relaxed, he has very generous deadlines, and even on those hours he has a paid one hour lunch and a 15 minute break. He is earning a little less than he did in the UK, but when you consider he had no experience here, but six years in the UK, you can see that overall he is earning more here, which balances out as the cost of living here is higher, but the difference gets smaller all the time due to the high cost of goods in the UK at the moment.

I am watching A New Life in the Sun on ch4. It’s on late in the afternoon which suits my lifestyle as I sit down then to watch a little TV.
One of the drivers in my opinion for moving in the first place is wanting a better quality of life. They often move to an area where property is cheaper than the UK.
On the programme you see people working 12 to 18 hours a day. Often stressed and worried. Many have no experience of building renovation. No idea of the regulations in their new country of residence. In addition they also have no experience of the type of business they are setting up. This means they have to buy that experience by continually making costly mistakes.
However if they survive they then appear to have a business that allows them to stay where they are. They are still working very hard but they feel they are more in charge of their destiny than when they lived in the UK.
What the programme does not show are the failures, the marriage break ups or the nervous breakdowns.
There is perhaps more to learn from those stories. Than the successes.
I don’t live in the UK and therefore I know from personal experience that those that move out of the UK are very very brave people. Doing so after Brexit is more difficult which perhaps is not a bad thing.

Yes, I did it. Great when there were two of us. Language not so daunting, two of us to tackle the tax office, car re-registration, health registration etc… On my own ( he died suddenly) not so good. Was quite lonely and found the winters when everything closed down were quite bleak.
It’s the same as life anywhere, some is great, some is good and some is bloody miserable!

With ANLITS it’s probably a lot to do with the type of businesses they pick: cafes, shops, small holdings, B&Bs etc are labour intensive and hard to make money from wherever you decide to open one. They don’t magically become easy and profitable just because they’re in a sunny climate. And if you don’t speak the language or have professional skills, you don’t have many alternative ways to make a living.

We thought about moving out to Portugal a couple of years ago as we have a few friends who moved out there under the golden ticket entrepreneur scheme, which we would be eligible for. They run their companies and do the same roles as in the UK. Property is a little cheaper and the weather is better overall. But we realised that for none of them has it been a real change in lifestyle. A lot of the time it’s just the same shit with different scenery, and a lot of drawbacks like isolation / not seeing friends and family very often: whilst it might only be a 2.5 hour flight, by the time you’ve added in travel either side of the airport and lag time at the airport, people don’t actually want to make the effort to come and see you half as much as they originally promised they would when you left.

We did this and are still doing it, but we we work remotely with our UK business. Our company was very well established (15 years) so we're confident we could run it remotely with a team back in the UK. Been 4 years now and it's the best thing we ever did. I do miss my adult children ( Still have 1 at home) but they are often over for a visit . It's so safe, so less congested, people are happy ...and it was 23c today 😁

There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of Brits living and many working in the EU27. I run a Facebook group of which a few thousand of them are members. Generally people are happy but as said before, just because it’s sunny it doesn’t make your problem easier. Or for those living in Austria even if there is good skiing you can still be depressed. We have members in Finland where they live with the very cold (-30c recently) but don’t complain.
The group does not accept people still living in the UK as there are a few million who think about moving overseas but only a small % actually do it.
Its a focused group for those who have made the move.

I moved to Italy in 2014 to complete a renovation project and extend a trullo in Puglia. After finishing that we sold up and moved to Tuscany a year ago to renovate and update an old stone house. Wouldn’t have missed the opportunity for anything. Great fun. Hard work. Lots of laughing and crying along the way. Have to say I am a grandmother and it has given my daughters and granddaughters fabulous holidays. If you can and have nerves of steel go
for it. It’s not easy but life isn’t.

I've watched this programmes too. I reckon most of them don't end up moving over.

I love these programmes, but often think they make silly job choices," I've 30 years in the law sector, so we are well placed to start a vineyard". I'm lucky enough to have a holiday home in Spain and use it about 5 times a year, seeing the hours people put in, my plan is to spend half the year there when I retire but going and trying to make a living seems like very hard work.

We've been half half UK and half EU for a number of years. Will make the big move next year. Our quality of life is so much better overseas, and our home cost a third of our UK property, despite being 3x the size.

We're retired now, but know plenty of Brits working; the bureaucracy is annoying but everything else more than makes up for it.

I love the quiet, the lack of traffic, nobody striving for a bigger house/car or better job, and most of all the kindness because people have time to do stuff for each other

I think many people will consider a move in retirement. Cheaper cost of living , better weather etc . Living in Britain now seems like a race to the bottom . Nothing works and little optimism for growth .

I'm laying the groundwork now. When my caring commitments end here, I'm off. It's probably slightly different for me as I'm going to a house that's been in the family for over 70 years and it feels more home than the UK.

I have dual nationality and Brexit really made me feel alienated and uncomfortable in the UK. It's a strange feeling being rejected from somewhere you were born, educated and spent most of your life in.

I did it in 2004 and lived in the Dordogne for almost 9 years. I was 39 at the time and It was an amazing experience. We bought a decent size property which included a huge barn. Spent the first 2/3 years converting the barn into 4 separate gîtes and by the time we left it was a viable business. We sold it to a fabulous French family and it's still going from strength to strength today - Les Gites de La Treille
+33 5 24 14 11 27

https://g.co/kgs/9ePPGdv

Our downfall was taking my parents to live with us (they were both approaching retirement age at that time as well as being fit and healthy) which proved a monumental mistake. Without going into detail (which is still very painful to recall) they went back home to the UK after just 6 months. This split created a massive chasm within my own marriage which never healed and was the catalyst to us eventually selling-up and also returning to the UK . We split just 12 months later and quickly divorced after a 28 year marriage.

I loved France, the Dordogne and the lifestyle and only wish our circumstances could have been different to allow us to have stayed there forever. One day maybe I'll go back but as the years go by it's looking less and less unlikely 😥...

If you or anyone else is considering doing it - go for it 😎