maryg

I would be interested to hear of any opinions or thoughts regarding my calculations for a monthly budget of 700 euros for two adults (and a dog) living inland.
I know sums always look good on paper......but we have no mortgage to worry about just the ussual utilities and insurances. I haven't included satellite in my figures. We will only have a trike for transport.
Am I being too optomistic?
Mary

Chiclanagir

When I originally looked at moving to Costa del Luz I was told that you could live comfortably for between 500-600 euros. Unfortunately we seem to spend about 1200 euros a month. I have no idea where it goes but it sure does. However are friends spend far far less than us. Half of the trouble is that when you have visitors you have to go out with them either to golf or for a meal or two and then you have the extra food etc. it soon adds up.

countryboy

Hello Mary,
I live with my wife and daughter, we live quite well but as glynis says it does get out of hand even if you dont have visitors, I go out twice a week, once by myself to play pool and have a drink then My wife and I go out together.

My wife runs a womens group and she goes out with them every Friday, they do all sorts of things, Markets, meals menue of the day etc.

so we get through around 600 euros a month but we tend to buy bulk at the start of the month and then buy local fresh food stuffs during the week we seem to manage ok on that.

It all depends on what you do and where you go really.

Have Fun.

David SR

maryg

Thanks for the replies....my husband always uses the price of a pint as his guide to prices in general..... but just looking around local markets and pricing up the basics as far as food shopping goes, it is much cheaper inland where it's predominantly Spanish. We find that when we visit friends on the coast we end up spending approximately 3 times as much money.
We will be able to grow a lot of veg and produce more than enough olives for our oil, and almonds for the muesli! If anyone fancies some pickled lemons, let me know....absolutely delicious with one of our home made curries!
Bulk buying the main things is definately the way to go.
We took out house buildings and contents insurance with the bank when we bought the house, but next time it's due for renewal I'll look around for a better deal. I think we paid something around 425 euros.
I'd feel happier to have all our insurances with one company, ie health, home, travel, bike, and of course my liability insurance for providing holistic therapies.
We will be leaving the bulk of our savings in our uk account and draw on them as need be. My husband also gets a small monthly pension which I haven't included in my calculations.....rainy day money
Thanks again,
Mary

jenna m

Having read your thread re monthly budget (in euros) for a couple to live on reasonably comfortably. Do you think that 1200 euros a month is still a good guildeline for 2006?

Any info appreciated.

pwwm

Re the cost of living over here, It appears to depend on whether you are into golf and or going out to bars etc, ie living in an area with golf courses etc, we do not anything like that here and are lose to the coast but rural Spain, Spanish bars charging Spanish prices, no golf for some considerable way and not interested anyway (though we do scuba dive) Visitors are quite happy to take us out to restaurants in return for having them (again Spanish prices) so yes we live very cheaply here far less than 1200 euros, and we run two cars, a pool and live quite well.

I flew back to the UK for a family matter last April and was talking to a lady flying back, she lives up somewhere near Albox,ish and told me how expensive it is, she thought the costs were equal to UK prices, I was quite amazed at the costs she threw at me.
So as I say, it really depends on the area, if you have British supermarkets as I know some places do then they ramp up prices, I must own up to visiting them when we have a day out.
Our visitors are quite amazed at how cheap we can live. I suppose it is worth staying and getting the feel for a place maybe before you buy. But wherever you buy just think how nice our winters are in the south here, today we have 24dg and is extremely pleasant.
Good luck in your venture.

pwwm

jenna m

Thats great news pwwm - will use the 1200 euro figure to allow some leeway for the moment.
As you say it depends also where we eventually settle.
On eating out I did notice on my last trip that the Menu del Dia had crept up on each visit - usually by about 1 euro. Although some great tapas bars more than made up for this!

We would save the 155 euro we pay at the moment for our t.v. licence straight away.

My main area of concern now will be private health insurance as I have this in Ireland but my insurer does not provide for longterm living in Spain. Can anyone suggest some links on web for me to check please.

24degrees today sounds wonderful - we have had south-easterly winds all day with pouring rain.....

All the best for now.
Jenna.

Gray C

We are seriously thinking this through as an option. We are in our 40's with a 14 year old daughter and want to chill out a bit in our life. I am sick of commuting 40 miles each way up and down the M6 to make a living.

As I have said before on this site I get a pension of approx 800 Euros and dependent upon the price of a reasonable 3 bedroomed rural home, we can top up our income from savings to around 1100 or 1200 Euros a month.

We agree that it is important to buy in bulk and watch the pennies far more than we do now, but at least we can be together a lot more as a family.

We do not wish to live on the coast. Can someone recommend some cheap (cost of living) but nice places to consider living, whether it be the Costa Blanca, Costa del Sol or anywhere else in Spain that meets our criteria. Countryboy has recommended the Sax area, but can anyone else suggest some alternatives that we can consider?

If we were to budget about £150,000 for a property are we likely to find a three bedroomed home (finca or small villa) with a good acreage of land that may also support our lifestyle by selling olives, oranges etc? I accept that we may need to do some DIY, but as long as it is habitable we would be happy. Are we being realistic, or do we need to budget more for our home?

It would be great to hear the views of those of you that live there and can recommend their little piece of paradise. We are very open minded as to where we intend/want to live.

pwwm

Hi Gray c & Jenna

We are on Costa Tropical where prices are still quite low in comparison to CDS etc, but it is still quite cheap to live here and the locals are foreever giving us veg etc, far more than I can use. re medical cover, we do not have private cover but have a socual security card and are registered just as in UK with our local surgery, works just as in UK but better (in my view that is)
Have a look at property in this area, but, you may not like it as it is very rural, although our town is looking good now, we do have some greenhouses that will be going in two to three years time. Property is still not to expensive but with the motorway due to be finished sometime in the next year or so, prices will rise.

Best of luck in your choices, try to visit and stay a while in some of the area's you may like and get a feel for it.
pwwm

bfg69bug

how ? by selling olives and oranges? you´ll make around 50 euros once a year unless you have a VERY big plot and are in full time production. olives = 40c a kilo, oranges = 35c a kilo, something like that. you´ll need a few tonnes, every month to make a living. stop reading "my life in provonce" or watching those stupid programmes on tv. its never gonna happen.

er, unless u want a mansion, i could get you a 3 bedroom house in the campo for around £100.000. for £150.000 (€210.000) i´d expect to get a BIG house with ALOT of land, and STILL have change. we are soon to put our fully refurbished 5 bed house on the market for €180k.

yes you are and no you dont.



these tv programs and books put some strange ideas into peoples heads

TheArmChairDetective

I take it your moving to an even better spot n Spain, care to share?

Chiclanagir

There are a lot of people that I am aware of who are returning to the UK just because they are not able to make a living. However if you don't try you will never know. Although I would be a bit wary of moving a 14 yr old when she must have GCSE's due shortly. Perhaps it might be sensible to wait until after these important exams.

pwwm

I agree with you Glynis re moving a 14 yr old, we have seen the problems some have had here with schooling, ok for younger children as it does not disrupt their schooling and they learn the language quickly when starting school. We moved out after marrying off the kids etc and had no "baggage" luckily we have enough money from the sale of our UK house to live on until retirement comes.
Lot of things to think about re moving over, what we so call learnt st the "seminars" at some of the Spanish shows were wrong when we got here same with the books you can buy. Things change fast as in the 6 month period to change number plates from UK to Spanish (if you have taken out residencia that is). that now is only one month.
A young couple I met at the police block told the police, they have only been here two weeks but, then they owned up to applying for residencia, even though they had British insurance MOT etc they got told to change and not use the car.
Etc etc

On another note, boy is it raining at the moment, heavens have opened with a vengeance, even the dog is baulking at going out, ho hum!
pwwm

bfg69bug

we were looking to move to arcos de la frontera.. to buy a resturant. it had a 4 bedroom flat above it, bar and resturant underneath, and was 142,000€

its still for sale.

Gray C

Thanks for your comments and advice. We are pleased to hear that the budget for our home is realistic. With regard to the income from olives oranges etc, I think that I should clarify what I meant to say:

Our income of about 800 Euros is from a pension and the top up income to 1100 to 1200 Euros will come from investments (5% drawdown from a Distribution Bond), so we are not really expecting to generate much income from selling olives. In actual fact on second thoughts we may be better doing a part time job looking after British based villa owners (on a small part time basis) or something similar, but not too stressful. I would only need to bring in about an additional 200/300 Euros a month to give us a reasonably comfortable lifestyle (hopefully).

As for our daughter, we were thinking of putting her into an International School to finish her education, if that is feasible. It has got to be better (hopefully again) than the school she currently attends where we live.

All the above will come into play if we are unsuccessful in our application to move to Canada (should know within the next couple of months or so)

Cheers

Graham & Pauline