movingtoportugal

I’m pleased to tell you that today’s post finds me finally enjoying some summer weather, with the mercury pushing up to the 30C mark yesterday. It also catches me in something of a rush as I have to do double work this week in order to free up next week to have a much anticipated holiday. So, today, here is a guest post kindly provided by Ben Slade, who discusses some of the essential things to consider before moving abroad.

For many Brits, retiring to the sun and enjoying the later years soaking up a different culture is a long-held dream. With the euro currently in a relatively weak position against the pound, UK homeowners could use the opportunity to get more bang for their buck by selling their home quickly and jetting off to warmer climes on the continent.

However, there are a wide range of points to consider before making such a life-changing decision. You need to get your finances in order, of course. This involves speaking to HM Revenue & Customs for an estimate on your state pension entitlement, as well as seeking information regarding your tax liability on any income over the UK personal allowance.

Getting finances in order is essential before moving abroad

Importantly, the amount of tax payable from abroad can vary depending on where you choose to live. If you’re retiring, however, you can reduce your tax liability with offshore banking. All of this can get quite complicated, so it pays to seek professional advice from someone versed in the intricacies of the tax system.

There are also healthcare considerations, which you must factor into your long-term budget for living costs. By moving to another European Economic Area (EEA) country or Switzerland to live permanently, you are no longer eligible for medical treatment under normal NHS rules. Living abroad you will need to budget for the potential medical bills you could face, including possible regular insurance payments. Again, this can get complicated if you’re retiring, so think about talking to an expert.

Buying any property can be stressful, but when you’re trying to deal with an estate agent in a foreign country it can be even more testing. Once you’ve found somewhere, you don’t want to miss your window, which is why some people use property buying firms to sell their property quickly and without the hassle of separate solicitor’s fees. Selling to one of these firms also reduces the potential for your plans to be scuppered by problems further down the buying chain, as the deal can be completed according to your timescale.

When we moved to Portugal, we had to have a huge clear-out, as everyone does unless they wish to spend a fortune shipping clutter to their new home!

Back when we were in the process of moving, I had intended to write a post on how we had gone about selling the items we weren’t going to ship. I didn’t get round to it then, so as part of

Ebay

my mission to provide more posts to help those in the process of moving to Portugal, here are some tips to help you offload your unwanted items.

Starting with the most obvious: Ebay. By the time we arrived in Portugal, we had sold around 800 items though our ebay account. Ebay can be wonderful and infuriating in equal measure. One of the best things about ebay is you can, by using the “completed listings” feature on “advanced search,” get a pretty good idea of what your items will sell for by taking an average from the last few times that item was sold.

Ebay is great for selling certain things: electrical and computer bits, video games, DVDs and musical instruments tend to consistently sell for what they are worth. Other things are less successful. Since Ebay stopped allowing people to charge postage for books, there is little point in trying to sell those via Ebay. Similarly, we sold some furniture towards the end, and this went for upsettingly low values.

Having said that, where Ebay does come in handy in terms of furniture is when you stipulate in the listing that the buyer will have to dismantle the item to take it away. We managed to get rid of our king size bed, which we would never have managed to get down the stairs had the buyer not come to take it to pieces. Although it sold for less than it was worth, the fact we saved ourselves a day of work taking the thing to bits was a very fair trade.

On the subject of stipulating certain things in the listings, this brings us to the part where ebay becomes infuriating. The majority of buyers are good and honest people, but there does seem to be an inherent inability to read specific details. If you say “collection has to be on Monday or Tuesday,” you can be sure at least three people will ask to collect on Sunday and Wednesday. One of those three people is likely to actually turn up at your house on Sunday or Wednesday and then send you an email asking why you weren’t there. It is best to assume a “idiot factor” of 1 idiot for each 20 items sold.

For people with plenty of time, Amazon Marketplace is a good bet for books and CDs in good condition as they tend to fetch better prices than Ebay.

Onto car-booting. Car boot sales are tremendous fun and great for getting rid of the lower-value items that aren’t worth putting up on Ebay – provided you can resist the temptation to go home with more crap than you arrived with.

Car Boot Sales - Fun

Nobody expects to go to a car boot sale and pay a lot for ANYTHING, so they are not the place to take high value items, though we did have success with some obscure kitchen gadgets. Also surprisingly successful were any power adaptors and cables – people seemed to snap them up, and clothes go well too.

Car-boot sales also give you the opportunity to meet some of the world’s more unusual people, including a strange man who strolled the stalls stroking a glove puppet, and another who claimed to be allergic to “digital waves,” and was pleased to buy a tatty old analogue cordless phone from our stall. Unfortunately he then used “interference from digital waves” as his excuse to try to walk away from our stall without paying.

It is worth mentioning that VHS videos do not seem to be wanted by ANYONE. Your best bet for those is to drop them off in a charity shop and then leg it before they realise they are VHS videos are try to give them back!

Finally, don’t overlook friends and family when offloading your treasures. We set aside our dining room for everything we were getting rid off and insisted everyone to visit our house had a good look around our “shop.” You do end up giving a few bits away but you also find that several items people are happy to give you money for things.

Our final tip: when you reach the final stages where people are collecting ebay items, buying things from you directly, and handing you money at car boot sales, make sure all the money goes into the moving fund, and not straight into the wallet or purse!

(Ebay photo credit rmfphoto.net/)