taz60-annie62

Hi UKTURK. Sorry for the delay - flew back into the 'sandpit' (Egypt) 5am this morning. Had a nice 10 days in BG. Found my dream house & in process of acquiring it. Will be near Yambol region. Thanks for your offer of help - have a British friend who lives out there most of the year and can speak Bulgarian so all is OK

taz60-annie62

Hi again UKTurk. Will check out those banks - was very disappointed in the % offered by BG banks - between 4% - 6% PLUS they tax you 10% on your savings as well. Quite agree about Cypriot-Greek banks and would definitely NOT go to those due to the bailout & austerity measures contaminating from Greece to South Cyprus.

ukturk

hiya
im glad you managed to find your dream home, i asked my gf about yambol region she said its nice, but there is hardly any tourisim and no one speaks english or very few and far between, houses are quite cheap but this does reflects on your investment compared to living in sofia,bansko,borvets,sunny beach as these places have tourisim so you property investment grows at a more steady rate, the good thing is you quite close to the turkish border so you can pop down and experiance it and to burgas whih is about 100km away, no other european country will offer the same % rate that north cyprus or turkey offer as these countries are not in the e.u so they are not dictated to by the emf, but over the years their % rate has fallen to be close and in line with other european countries like greece when i 1st moved to turkey i was getting 40% interest but the lira was very unstable so you could loose aswell as gain....

ukturk

another way of making money of your nestegg is to play the exchange rate game, especially with the tukish lira, at the moment its a good time at you get about 2.90 turkish lira to the pound, so wot you do is change at this rate then put it into a high intrest rate account and just keep a tab on the exchange rate and when it goes down which it always does you change back to sterling like last year i changed money at 2.80lira to the pound and by the end of the summer it droped down to 2.25lira to the pound so your making 55kurus (20p)on every pound you change, so you can imagine the money you can make if you do change a bit of money

taz60-annie62

Hi UKTurk - yeah, got the gist of that. Basically if the XE is more for the UKP because the local currency is weak (e.g. was 9 to 1UKP, but then goes to 9.5 to 1UKP I make 0.5 on every 1UKP x total of UKP 'in play'. What I do need to be aware of is whether the country where I have a bank account tax income & savings dividends. TRNC tax 10% I believe. Not sure what RoC do. Bulgaria I think might tax as well. Turkey I don't know

ukturk

hi taz
its the other way round e.g you change a £100 @ exchange rate of 2.90 lira to the pound you get 290lira then if the rate goes down to 2.20lira to the pound you change your lira back to £ you get your £100 back + 70lira profit, this drop is quite extreme but it has happend over the last few years more realasticly it flutarates between 2.50 to 2.90 lira.
i cant talk about other countries but turkey,north cyprus,bulgaria most of the banks you do decide to deposit your monies you will be advised by the teller how much tax you will have deducted from the money you would have earned and they do this automatically at the end of the period of time you chose to keep you money in the high interest/bond bank account
hope this helps :-)

taz60-annie62

Very helpful. As you say Yambol not too far from Turkish border so not far to nip across for sightseeing, shopping and banking. Now have to sort out procedures for getting my dog to BG - a local vet states that BG is a bit more relaxed. As long as dog chipped and a record card shows all injections given the dog can enter (basically they do not need to see blood test results from EU lab?). Also have to find agents to ship door to door our furniture. Have a quote already for the sea journey which is quite good so just a company in Egypt to do the road haulage to port and exit documentation and then a similar company to take over at BG end and deal with customs/import procedures. Loads to do but at the end of the day it will be worth it

scot47

Yambol is one of the areas where quite a few people from UK have bought property. Having a colony of Brit pensioners can have a down side as well as an up side.

English is much more common in BG than it was 20 years ago. Now taught to all from Grade 1. With the older generation, German or Russian can be more useful. In many areas there are Turkish-speakers.

If you are in a village, learning Bulgarian will be very usefull. It ios mich easier for English speakers than Turkish ! As a slavonic langauge it has common roots with other Indo-European languages. Grammar and vocabulary much closer to English than the fiendishly difficult Turkish ! Do not be put off by the Cyrillic Alphabet. With a bit of effort you can pick that up in a day or two (thea lphabet - not the language !)

taz60-annie62

HI Scot47. Thanks for your advice. The village where the house I hope to buy is apparently very friendly and Yambol centre is about 10 minutes away by car. I have my learn BG book and intend to have lessons once I move over. As I intend to settle there for the remaining days I have left I do want to fully integrate so learning the lingo is very important.

Now have to start finding out about BG rules for pet import (dog) and also looking for a company who can take over the importation of my furniture after the ship docks at Varna. So loads to do but it will all be worthwhile in the end

willb

[QUOTE=A.KS;10419160] 16% I wish. If you push it you may get 10% But norm is now 9.5%. You have to have a fair whack in though.

Plus, don't forget all the banks that pay high interest rares are private banks.

bgouldson

Hi there me and my partener have been planing to move to cyprus for a couple of years but we need some advice on where to go north or south ? were both hard working people we need to find jobs there but dont know where best north or south ? any advice would be great

Veronica-K

correct me if I am wrong but I thought this was the CYPRUS forum not BULGARIA

Veronica-K

You will find if you trawl through some of the older threads on tihs forum that there are discussions about the pros and cons of South versus North.
As far as the North goes its mostly cons as the North is an illegally occupied area and not recognised by the international community.

scot47

Cyprus, Crete, Athens, Bulgaria, Belgrade, Beirut - it is all part of what used to be the Ottoman Empire !