Hi Charles,

You asked for ideas re cost of living, we are couple with son aged 13
we live in 4 bed townhouse, no rent or mortgage

electricity Dec and Jan €394 our neighbours were €460 and €411
july and Aug€250
we don't have gas
water €50 bi monthly
telephone and broadband €70
food between 100 - 150 per week all depending eat lots of chicken and fish
petrol diesel cost 87 cents at the moment

hope this helps
Sue

Wow those electricity bills seem high.....are you using radiators or reverse air conditioning.

That ís high! We pay € 60,- per month for electricity.
€ 50 Water
€ 70 Phone & Adsl
€ 120 Mobile phone
€ 50 wood for woodburner
€ 50 Gas
€ 50 House insurance
€ 70 Car insurance (Direct Seguros)
€ 100 Shopping per week
€ 10000000000 Beer :-)

Now thats odd, your beer bill seems low.....I guess you are just a light social drinker

Tell us about it,

the house is very modern open plan townhouse. We did put some curtains up this year which helped. We use the oil filled radiators in the evening. Our neighbour suspects we maybe on a higher tariff than other houses in the area. I think we may need to investigate this.

we do use aircon to cool down in summer.but try not to use too much in winter. I think it has just been a particulary cool damp couple of months.

Sue

Thanks everyone,

In general costs do seem lower although not proportional to the income I suspect. Things in London are alway sky high although the broadband/phone & mobile costs are staggering from what I can see (unfortunatley these will be essential for me).

It's a tough one for me and my family at the moment as I'm weighing up the pro's & cons. This is very much a lifestyle choice for me but I feel the timing could be better, i.e. credit crunch & very low rate of £ at the moment. The quandry is 'if not now, then when?'.

I fully realise that savings will only take us so far & like everybody else, I fear being in a postion where we have no income and everybody is fighting for work. My intention is to be self-employed & I'm currently reviewing a few business plans that I have. I was hoping in the short term that being TESOL qualified might bring us a livable income while we setup our respective businesses on the backend. Unfortunatley my feeling in the forum is that Ayamonte might not be the best place to start and my thinking is now heading to communities that are more populated with locals rather than ExPats where teaching english as an income might be more viable?

You`re in the wrong place. ;-))
Urbanization water 15€`s 3 months.
Electric 60 odd €`s two months.
Gas bottle 13.50 a month, more when it`s cold for the heating though.

Hi, I've just joined, and haven't posted on a forum before. We have a 1/3 share of a house in Isla Canela and often dream of relocating although think holidays are probably enough. I have enjoyed reading all your posts. I feel silly but I can't even work out how to post a new topic on here. Can you help? While I'm on, we have two daughters aged 3 and 4 and want to find friends to meet with in school holidays, and find places to go as a family. We have been visiting for 4 years. Many Thanks, Emma.

Click on the new thread button (lhs top of page) on the page where you read the title of this thread.

At first I didn't know what you were talking about, and then I went to the FAQ tab and saw how the option should look, but I haven't got it. Can I not post as a new member? I will go back to the FAQ, but I'm not just being dizzy, the option just isn't there on my screen.

Hi BoneyM,

You are not wrong, if you're viewing a thread, the "New Thread" button changes to a "New Reply" button.

So simply view all threads and you should be able to see the button

ps welcome to the forum !!!

Davexf

Ah, as DFX says, you probable arrived by Google or another search engine.
There are hundreds on the CE Ayamonte thread like that, they think that is the Spain forum. lol

The simplest way is to click on where is says Spain in front of this bold thread title (see attachment) then you can start your own thread from there.

I think you are right. Ayamonte is a small Spanish community that is already very anglicized. Local schools would have no difficultly filling posts with native English speakers and you would have too much competition.

If you can already speak Spanish fluently I wouldn't bother going to the tourist traps.

I still maintain that the best form of learning is total immersion from day one. Any properly trained teacher will know how you teach total beginners using just the language being learned....this would have formed part of their TEFL/TESOL training. Translating backwards and forwards is a bit of a cop out, and in my opinion is an indication that the teacher is not properly trained, or just lazy!

Totally dissagree there.
It is human nature for everyone to translate back and forward to their original language, no matter be it Chinese, Greek or whatever, it is impossible not to think of car when you see coche.
Only children learning their first words can do it.