Wednesday 21 May 2014

Living your dream

Our life in France - living our dream

Well we have been here just over 5 years now and we were talking the other day about if we were faced with the same decisions that brought us here would we do it again, would we burn all our bridges pack up all our belongings shove it unceremoniously into a hire van ( God knows how we got it all in) 

travel with our two wonderful friends all the way here with all the things going wrong that could go wrong, well we can hand on heart say YES we would do it again because living here in France is fantastic, we find it really calm and relaxing. 
Life is not always Rosy and things do go wrong, there are times when I have sat and wept with frustration and vowed I was going back to England as soon as I could book a ferry and the biggest frustration is not being able to speak the language so I very highly recommend that if you are in any way thinking that you would like to make the move across the water and make a new life in France then the first thing you must do is learn the language, I have spent many hours/years learning the language and I can make myself understood but sadly I still struggle with understanding spoken French which I must say is very confusing for the French, just imagine speaking to someone in English and when they answer you say you don't understand them!..
Of course if you have children then you will soon pick it up as they will just want to speak their new found language skill.
We also took many holidays to our chosen area over many years, coming in the dead of winter to make sure we weren't just seeing it through those summer tinted glasses, we bought our house in 2001 it was a village terraced house and structurally it was sound but needed total updating (which we are still doing) it wasn't exactly what we were looking for (we were looking for a more rural spot and ideally a longere but it was such a good price we really couldn't not buy it, we thought we would do it up and sell it on for what we were really looking for but then the recession hit so we are still here.

It took months of working out if we could afford to live here, I was retired but had started a small business which could come with us as it was internet based and would support us until John received his pension, I think the worst thing we do is look at something which is 10€ and think it is £10 when in fact it is only approx £7, we do have to watch our pennies and manage quite well now.


One of the biggest mistakes is not to make sure you are entitled to health cover,.. as a pensioner I was allowed health cover and John was entitled to cover as a dependent until he got his pension, we still have to pay a top up insurance as without it a stay in hospital could be very expensive.
  

So lessons to be learnt 

You will have to be able to support yourself
Make sure you know what you are looking for housewise
If you can afford it come and rent so that you can look properly
If you purchase a project find out how much it will cost to do

A bientot - see you soon